At the time of “Strike”, his first film, Eisenstein was a director of the Proletkult Theatre, an organisation with a boldly original technique of acting which led him logically to the medium of the cinema. The film has little formal plot in the conventional sense; a characteristic brilliance of wit and image association here achieves an almost surrealistic intensity. The photography often achieves effects reminiscent of the ‘metaphysical objects’ school of painting.