Chess Fever
About Chess Fever
During the 1925 Moscow chess tournament, Vladimir Fogel ignores fiancée Anna Zemtsova, and even while kneeling to apologize he starts a game on a checkered cloth, so she throws his chess things out the window. At a pharmacy she is handed a chess piece instead of poison, and José Raúl Capablanca tells her that beside a beautiful woman he hates chess too. Fogel finds her at the tournament and they end by playing together.
Cast & crew
More about Chess Fever
Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky (Wikidata: Mykola Shpykovskyi) directed, with Shpikovsky credited for the script, during a pause in Mechanics of the Brain. Anatoli Golovnya photographed the mix of acted scenes and tournament footage. Wikidata dates the release December 21, 1925, and lists 28 minutes.
Themes
Look
Anatoli Golovnya shot the acted scenes alongside footage from the 1925 Moscow tournament.
Notes
- Capablanca plays himself. Frank Marshall, Richard Réti, Carlos Torre Repetto, Frederick Yates, and Ernst Grünfeld also appear.
- Yakov Protazanov plays the chemist and Yuli Raizman his assistant. Boris Barnet, Mikhail Zharov, and Anatoly Ktorov have small parts.
- The hero sits on a bridge and throws chess pieces into the river, then chooses not to jump.
Scenes
- He starts a game while kneeling to apologize.
- The chemist hands her a chess piece instead of poison.
Also available
- Wikimedia Commons (Chess Fever (1925) by Vsevolod Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky.webm)
