This blog entry is part of my “movie year countdown”. To read more about that check out my first Spout filmblog entry.
Stachka (Strike)
I think I may have seen enough old Russian films now to realize I'm just not going to get a lot of enjoyment or interest out of them.
I've been watching them because of their reverence in the world of cinema history. Many Russian filmmakers of the 20s were considered to be pioneers of editing theory. If you want a lot of wild montage and cuts you can see it with these guys. Many people have criticized what's called MTV style of editing to contributing to recent society’s attention deficit disorders, but if you look back to these films it's not much different.
Now some of these films of course had different goals. I think you could call a lot of this stuff by Eisenstein propaganda. And certainly The Man With a Movie Camera which I saw recently was trying to redefine what film and art could be. I remember rating Eisenstien's Battleship Potemkin higher when I watched it, but maybe I just felt embarrassed to rate it any less. I wonder how I'll feel if I watch it again now that I've gone through a few more silent films.
I'm sure there's something important historically for what these filmmakers showed the world that film could do, but even with that knowledge I'm not overly excited to see many more.
Rating: 5/10