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.
