The Strike
About The Strike
In the director's office a workers' delegation asks for arbitration. He refuses, even after his son argues for a compromise. Soldiers guard the factory. When the crowd tries to force the gate an officer orders them fired on, and men and children fall. A woman who has just seen her husband killed throws a brick and kills the director. Gendarmes arrest her beside his body, in front of their children. In court the director's son asks that she be freed, and the judges acquit her. A last tableau sets Labour and Capital side by side, with Justice over them.
Cast & crew
More about The Strike
Ferdinand Zecca directed the five-scene short for Pathé Frères. The French title is La Grève. It opened at the Grand Cinématographe Américain in Rouen on 29 September 1904.
Themes
Background
Pathé was exporting story films by the reel in 1904. This one puts a strike, a volley from the guard, and a courtroom acquittal into five title-card scenes.
Making
Zecca staged the riot with a large crowd in front of the factory and then cut to a single room for the arrest and a single setup for the trial. No cast list survives.
Reviews
Richard Abel records that a December 1904 Boston screening was watched with deep interest and ended in applause, and that Keith theatre managers in Cleveland and New York filed good notices that year.
Look
Zecca, who also photographed it, holds four of the five scenes in one frontal wide shot. In the factory scene the camera pans right and then left as the workers run past the lens.
Preservation
A print survives and has been posted on Wikimedia Commons.
Notes
- The scenes are titled Refusal of arbitration, The Director's murderess, Arrest of the culprit, Acquitted, and The Future.
- Pathé sold it in Spain as La Huelga and in Britain and the United States as The Strike.
- In the United States it also went out through Kleine Optical, Edison, and Lubin.
- Richard Abel calls it one of the few films of labor unrest then shown in the United States.
- Wikipedia calls it the first film to adapt parts of Émile Zola's Germinal (1885).
- M. Keith Booker reads it as liberal rather than radical: the blame falls on a bad manager, not on the wage system.
Scenes
- An officer orders the guard to fire, and men and children drop in front of the factory.
- The widow throws a brick and kills the director as he tries to talk to the crowd.
- Gendarmes pull her away from her children and her husband's body.
- The closing tableau lines up a worker and a rich man under a figure of Justice.
Influenced by
- Émile Zola's Germinal (1885), in episodes rather than as a full adaptation
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (La grève (Ferdinand Zecca - 1904).webm)
