User Reviews

There are negotiations to avert a strike, but a title tells us that they fail because of an unwillingness to compromise. Then we see the factory owner emerge from his domain, with armed guards to confront an angry mob. They fire, and several men in the crowd drop. Next we see "the murderess" arrested, and her trial. Finally, we see a man hard at work, while a rich man pours a bag of gold on the floor, and then another on the scales of justice.

I have the impression that a shot of the murderess killing the rich man is missing. We do see her wounded husband lying in bandages as the gendarmes drag her out.

Add in that missing shot and it makes sense. The French film makers quickly realized that the poor made up their audience, and this would fit in nicely with their positions, making it a popular film.

Zecca directs this in carefully labeled chapters, and the sequence in front of the factory has a nice panning shot, starting on the entrance, to show the angry mob.

"La Gréve" ("The Strike") is a curious dramatic exercise from the early silent era and directed by Ferdinand Zecca. It tells the story of a worker's strike that goes wrong thanks to police brutality and the assassination by a boss on the hands of a worker's wife. She is taken to jail and to court to respond for the murder. But a nice twist might come her way...Really moving and well filmed, here's a powerful drama made in three acts, well acted by the main actress (unfortanely we can't find any information on cast members neither from part of the large crowd in that strike sequence), a movie beautifully filmed. Here's the real dimensions of a human and present tragedy. 8/10.