La febbre degli scacchi

Of all the board games cinema's plots have revolved around, the most popular would be the game of chess. There are literally dozens of movies centered around chess preparation and competition as well as the character dramatics of those involved in the game. 1993's 'Searching for Bobby Fischer, 2016's 'Queen of Katwe,' and 2014 'Pawn Sacrifice" are some of the movie classics that come to mind.

The first movie structured around the game of chess is director Vsevolod Pudovkin's December 1925 short comedy "Chess Fever." The film looks at the Soviet Union's obsession with chess in a clever, humorous way. Using actual footage of the Moscow 1925 chess tournament showing the best of the country's chess players competing against one another in front of enormous crowds, "Chess Fever" focuses on one young man's obsession to the game. It's his misfortune he's engaged to a woman who hates chess. Named 'hero' in the film, Vladimir Fogel, portrays a nerdy character who sleeps, eats and drinks chess. He has chess hankies, chess ties, chess shirts; he plays chess in his kitten-infested apartment by himself.

The Nikolai Shpikovsky script makes a point that Fogel isn't the only one obsessed by the sport. Chess during the 1920s was a national passion everywhere in the Soviet Union, and especially in Moscow. Fogel's fiancee, called 'the heroine' (Anna Zemtsova) is so despondent about her lover's chess mania she buys some deadly medicine at the local drug store, where, coincidentally, the pharmacy's workers are playing chess in front of the counter. Outside, she unfolds the suicidal drug, only to discover its bottle is shaped like a chess piece (a rook). In a cameo appearance, World champion Jose Raul Capablanca, chess' real-life best player from 1921 to 1927, arrives to save the day. His secret: he says deep inside he also hates chess. Zemtsova is immediately attracted to him. Events lead to a surprise ending viewers would least expect to happen.

"Chess Fever" was the first movie directed by Pudovkin. He was involved in cinema from 1920 as a screenwriter, assistant director and art director for several films. He earned his first opportunity to create this short movie during a break from directing his first feature documentary, 'Mechanics of the Brain." He soon became one of cinema's most respected theorist on montage editing.

From afar, this is a simple film, as funny as Buster Keaton in his best day and at least half as inventive - but without the acrobatics. It is a funny vignette, about obsession and love subsumed into plan.

But there is more to it. Say you have noticed the subterranean waters that connect Franco-Russian cinema into one, and have perhaps noticed that Eisenstein accomodated fractures for the eye while Epstein for the mind; you will want to take a look at this, the most French film made by the Soviets at the time, decades before the French would actually make them.

The film is about chess. Two levels therein, as in film noir; down below the pawns, moved about according to some inscrutable whim, now and then facing extinction, and on the higher level gods pulling the strings, according plan and movement. This is generally about the game, now notice how the game becomes self-referential in-sight.

On the outer level there is a Grand Chess tournament, ostensibly real footage of national champions conniving each other over a chess board. Propped before an audience is a giant chess board, where the movements of the players are replicated for the audience to participate - everyone is looking at the screen transfixed, it's a primitive screen, cheering or keeping notes.

And the nested level inside; a story of love thwarted by a man's morbid obsession with chess. The woman confronts him about it. But it turns out, the world entire is chess. Chess as structured life, the Soviet dream. Even kids are playing it, policemen with those just arrested. The dismayed man walking out of his girlfriend's apartment, staggers onto a floor painted like a chessboard - he moves around as though pulled by strings.

The denouement takes place on the outer level, back in the tournament hall. The woman, who has newly discovered the wonders of chess, has shattered the juvenile love she clinged to for happiness; instead, she concedes to be part of the plan, the board where life is arranged into pattern and there to move and be moved. You may read what you want into this, but there is power behind the idea; love, that is to say emotional love, is not allowed final say here. Higher laws govern.

Self-reference; games of fiction; role-playing; and chess as the metaphor that weaves them together. This is what the French made a film culture of - it is certainly nothing like what we know of Pudovkin from his subsequent features. I'd like to think that people like Chris Marker, Jacques Rivette, Raoul Ruiz - who departed just a few days ago - would have adored this. I know I will.

Just like the best Hollywood equivalents, this short silent film has a simple storyline which is, of course, a wee bit over the top, is extremely funny and is perfectly paced. I wasn't expecting anything like this at all and it was a joy from start to finish.

Later, it made me think, once again, just how many wonderful short films there have been made and lost, from all corners of the world ... a darned shame.

If ever you get a chance to see this film, you won't be disappointed.

A Russian silent comedy doesn't really sound that enticing, does it? But this really isn't that bad. It follows the fortunes of a young man who is completely obsessed with chess. At first the film looks as if it might be a dry and serious study of the game, but then we're introduced to our hero. For some reason he has dozens of kittens in his flat, most of them living in his shoes or his jacket pockets. This chap is so obsessed with the game that he is magnetically drawn to a chess shop even though he is late for a date with his girlfriend. Even his socks and hankie have chessboard patterns. Of course, this is all driving his girlfriend to distraction…

There are quite a few good laugh-out- loud moments in this short, directed by the Russian master Pudovkin, and it's at least the equal of most of the comedies coming out of Hollywood at the time. There's also the bonus of glimpses of a snow-covered Russian cityscape with troikas rushing past in the background.

This is very funny and quite creative, and it's particularly enjoyable if you like to play chess. You'd never expect something this genuinely amusing from a Soviet-era film. The movie makes very good use of a simple plot idea, with a young man's "Chess Fever" causing problems for him and his fiancée, setting up a pretty good variety of gags that work quite well. If you are a chess fan, it is also fun to see the great Capablanca making a film appearance, plus shorter appearances by several other well-known players of the era. It's all good entertainment, and a movie well worth seeing.