I've seen Chess Fever - it was great (well, you have to be a bit chess obsessed to think that but it was ...). Seeing Capablanca is a treat anyway.
What other chess related films are there? Searching for Bobby Fischer sounds good but I haven't seen that.
The Seventh Seal's good but not really about chess :-)
The Luzhin Defense i think i spelled it wrong,but any ways great movie and novel,has to do with an obssesed chess player!!
I borrowed and watched it a few months ago--it's a fascinating short. It's rare that we're exposed to the world of then with such clarity.
"waxmat" = chess
It showed a clip of Capablanca and then a lot of footage from the 1925 Moscow International tournament - Spielmann, Grunfeld, Marshall, Torre, and others.
Aarrgh... "Others"? how can you put "Lasker" in the category of "others"... the great, the incomparable Lasker!He was one of the oldest players in the tournament and he finished ahead of everyone, Capablanca included, except Bogoljubow...who won. But Bogoljubow's score was helped by a lot of late wins, full points, against other Russians. Boguljubow was no doubt a great player, perhaps it was legit... but, well, one wonders...I personally think the real winner was Lasker. Greatest chess player of all time. Lasker's games in this tournament, and Capablanca's too, are credited with influencing the emergent "Soviet School of Chess."
Here's a fantastic game from Lasker that shows the master at the top of his fearless "Lion in Winter" game. Annotations by Scott Massey at the Kennilworth Chess Club. (The move list has Massey's full annotations with variations)
I'll have to watch the opening of the film again. There were so many players and Russian writing and the names in English went by so fast that I only caught a few.
I'll look for Lasker and Bogoljubow!
Thanks for telling me more about that tournament. The opening was the best part of the film and it did not last very long.
stwils
I watched the opening of Chess Fever showing the 1925 Moscow Chess tournament, and it did not show Lasker or Bogoljubace. They may have been "represented" but they did not play themselves.
Two more who did play themselves were Yates and Rete.
I even checked the full cast list on IMDb (Internet Movie Database) and they were not listed.
stwils
With my limited cyrillic knowledge,identifiable players in start of movie are
CAPABLANCA (intro)
TORRE - MARSHALL
GOTTILF - GENEVSKY
RETI - YATES
SPIELMANN - GRUNFELD
Movie can be seen on YouTube,as far as I can see.
I add four russian chess magazines from 1925 ( Shachmati '64' Magazine No. 21-24 ) to download under the Resources > Chess Downloads > Other's section here on the site.
Look for the archive: RussianChessMags1925
Lots of pictures and annotated games (in russian) from the Moscow 1925 tournament,easy to print out.
Files are in the e-book format .djvu which can be read by wellknown freeware IrfanView if the .djvu plugin has been installed (comes with the plugin package).Another freeware is WinDjView / MacDjView from Sourceforge.net (recommended)
IrfanView link:
WinDjView link:
http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=114927
It was a short, silent, Russian film, produced in 1925. It was about a chess obsessed young man (no one here would understand that .
)
It showed a clip of Capablanca and then a lot of footage from the 1925 Moscow International tournament - Spielmann, Grunfeld, Marshall, Torre, and others.
It was of course in black and white, lots of snow, old cars, real people, and about this Chess-Obsessed man and his girl friend who hated chess and then got obsessed herself and wanting to play the "Sicilian." It was funny.
But the thing I enjoyed most, was seeing the real people at the 1925 tournament in Moscow. They were real people, and the looks on their faces as they sat down to play chess was wonderful. Some looked strained, others thoughtful, some pondering with a scowl - but the face I most enjoyed, and I wish I knew who he was, was a face filled with the joy of anticipation! He looked lovingly over the chessboard as he reached to move his piece.
I think what I really took away from the film was that man's face - the joy of anticipation at the start of the game.
It's on DVD.
stwils