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Member Since:
Jun 2, 2009
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Last Login:
Sep 16, 2010
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Profile Views:
977
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Hello! こんにちは！ Salut !
I am from the United States (Seattle) and have lived abroad most of my adult life: a decade in the Kansai region of Japan and now in Paris, France, though my French remains quite poor.
In mid-May 2009, a friend and I began to learn chess together. Soon after, we visited Chess Forum in Greenwich Village where one of the staff members recommended this site.
The clip below is the last segment of the 1925 silent Russian film "Chess Fever" featuring Capablanca.
[Here we see a woman who has just broken her engagement to a chess fanatic because of his addiction. Distraught, she goes to the pharmacy to buy poison so that she can commit suicide, and though the pharmacist and his assistants are busy playing chess, she's handed her purchase. Meanwhile, her ex-fiancé is at a bridge, ready to jump and emptying his pockets of all his chess paraphernalia when he decides that love is after all more important than chess and hurries to find her and win her back. But before he can find her, she drinks the poison. However... it's not poison, it's one of the chess pieces from game the pharmacist was playing. Disgusted, she throws the piece and a charming passer-by (Mr Capablanca) catches it. She tells him how awful chess is and how it's ruined her life and her relationship. His ready reply: I can't stand chess either... when there is a beautiful woman in the room. She is grateful to find another chess-hater and they leave, coincidentally just before the fiancé arrives on the scene. As he failed in finding his love, he decides to go see the chess world tournament taking place there at that moment, where strangely he does find her. She's suddenly deeply interested in chess and they are happily reunited with chess as the foundation of their love. Oh darling, she says to him, let's do the Sicilian Defense together! The end.]