Movies and Chess

The Following Films were sent to rec.games.chess.misc as films which contained a 'chess plot' rather than just a chess scene.

• Chess Fever was a hilarious old Russian short film. A bride nearly gets mad because her betrothed (played by the russian comidian Pudovkin) has more interest in chess than in her (and everybody around her likewise). The grandmaster tournament Moscow 1925 plays an important part in the plot. The world champion in this movie is played by J.R.Capablanca.
• Fools Mate is a French short by Claude Chabrol which has nothing to do with chess at all. The title is just a metapher on the tricking and cheating going on.
• Knight Moves (1992) A who's killing everyone thriller
• Night Moves, a 1975 Classic Detective movie not to be confused with the more recent Knight Moves, this movie featured Melanie Griffith and Gene Hackman as a detective who uses the famous game where the GM missed the sacrifice of his queen to mate with three little "Knight moves" to illustrate how he feels he is overlooking something important to solve a murder.
• Searching For Bobby Fischer (1993) Notice in the scene where Josh is playing the guy at the Manhatten Chess Club (the Gummy Bear guy) and notice what colour he has when the game begins. Then notice what colour the guy is playing when he tips over his king and resigns.
• Fresh (recent)
• Dangerous Moves (Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 1985?)
• Return From the Ashes (1962?)
• The Seventh Seal (1959?).
• The Great Chess Movie with an interview with Igor Ivanov.
• Born American It was really a very bad movie, 3 young Americans decide to test the security on the Finnish-Soviet border, get caught and thrown in a gulag, in the gulag they find that the prisoner society is run by chess games, with human pieces, that decide who is the strongest.
• Long Live the Queen A Dutch childrens' movie, Esme Lammers. Tiba Tossijn stars as a bright but misunderstood schoolgirl who escapes unhappiness when, in her imagination, chess pieces come alive and the White Queen (vivacious Moniqe van de Ven) advises her both on the best moves to make on the chess board and in life itself.
• La diagonale du fou and stars Michel Piccoli as a Korchnoi-type soviet defector who has to face a brash young soviet for the world championship.
• Le maitre des ichecs is a period piece about a monstrous child prodigy who takes on the infamous "Mr. Staunton".
• Schwarz und Weiss wie Tag und Nacht which is in German and has English subtitles. It's a little corny, a computer genius programs computer to play chess, it loses badly to the World Champion who makes fun of the programmers effort, so the genius learns to play at the top level himself with the idea of getting even.
• Searching for Bobby Fischer is a very good movie about a father and son relationship in which chess takes an important part. But it's not a film "about chess".
• The Chess Players
• The King of Chess

The Following contain chess scenes

• Silence of the Lambs Lt. Starling asks two "bug experts" for help >> in solving the case; the two are playing chess with bugs.
• Mr. Hollands Opus I has a chess scene where Mr. Holland mates the gym teacher.
• Prospero's Books, Peter Greenaway's version of "The Tempest". At one point about mid-film, chess pieces start floating about in a phantasmagoric haze superimposed on the action. (I'm sure film people have a name for this). If you watch really carefully, you can see that the pieces' apparently random dance (there's no clearly defined board) is in fact recreating RJF's combination vs. D.Byrne in "The Game of The Century". It's very subtle, but that's clearly what it is.
• Ingmar Bergman's Seventh Seal features a stark, beach-front chess game between the hero (famed swedish actor whose name I forget), and Death. The image returns several times in the movie, a metaphor for the hero's struggle against fate, but if I recall, Death loses!

You can also try this "hollywood" theme list

Then there is the list from Bill Wall of movies with chess scenes or where chess is mentioned. An old version is listed below with additions.

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• A Safe Place (1971)
• Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls (1996)
• Alice in Wonderland (1933)
• Animal Crackers (1930)
• Arch of Triumph (1947)
• Around the World Under the Sea (1966)
• Assasins (1995)
• Batman Forever (1995)
• Beast Must Die, The (1974)
• Bishop Murder Case, The (1930)
• Black and White Like Day and Night (1978)
• Black Cat, The (1934)
• Black Rose, The (1950)
• Blade Runner (1982)
• Blazing Saddles (1974)
  Gene Wilder (aka the Waco Kid) checkmates Cleavon Little (aka Sheriff Bart) in a game in the city jail while both of them are co-miserating.
• Bogie: A Biography (1980)
• Brainwashed (1961)
• Casablanca (1943)
• Cass Tamberlane (1948)
• Charlie Chan and the Curse of the Dragon Queen (1981)
• Chess Fever (1925)
• Chess Game, The (an odd, gothic tale from Europe)
• Chess of Life (1916)
• Coming Home (1978)
• Condemned, The (1948)
• Criss-Cross (1949)
• Dangerous Moves (1985)
• Deadlier Than the Male (1967)
• Devil Times Five (1985)
• Devil's Nightmare, The (1971)
• Dr. Blood's Coffin (1961)
• Escape from Sobibor
  prison leaders plan a major escape and discuss how to arrange it while apparently playing chess at least from a distance to fool the guards.
• Embryo
• Entr' Acte (1924)
• Frankenstein: The True Story (1974)
• Fresh (1994)
• From Russia With Love (1963) (game from Spassky-Bronstein, Leningrad 1960)
• Funeral in Berlin (1966)
• Fury, The (1978)
• Get Out Your Handkerchiefs (1978)
• Ghost of Flight 401, The (1978)
• God Told Me To (1976)
• Grumpier Old Men (1996)
• Grumpy Old Men (1993)
• Hackers (1995)
• Harum Scarum (1965)
• Heaven Sent (1988)
• Hercules in New York (1970)
• History of the World, Part 1 (1985)
• House of Frankenstein (1945)
• House of Whipcord, The (1974)
• Humanoid Woman (1980)
• I, Monster (1971)
• Independence Day (1996)
• Ivan The Terrible (1944)
• Killing, The (1956)
• Knight Moves (1992)
• Knights of the Roundtable (1956)
• Knock On Any Door (1949)
• Leave Her to Heaven (1945)
• Les Creatures (1966)
• Lodger, The (1926)
• Lolita (1962)
• Lonely Guy, The (1984)
• Man With the Power, The (1977)
• Mandy (1953)
• Massacre at Central Hight (1976)
• Merry Widow, The (1934)
• Miracle of the Wolves, The (1924)
• Monkey Business (1931)
• Monkey Shines (1988)
• Mr. Holland's Opus (1996)
• Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation (1939)
• Murder in the First Degree (1995)
• Murders in the Rue Morgue (1989)
• Nero Wolf (1977)
• Night Moves (1975)
• Night of the Howling Beast (1976)
• No Contest (1995)
• Omega Man, The (1971)
• One Spy Too Many (1966)
• Our Man in Havana (1960)
• Paradine Case, The (1948)
• Pennies From Heaven (1936)
• Play it Again Sam (1970)
• Prospero's Books
• Quest, The (1986)
• Radio Bugs (1944)
• Rambo III (1988)
• Rent-A-Kid (1995)
• Return From the Ashes (1965)
• Rollercoaster (1977)
• Scavenger Hunt (1979)
• Sea Hawk (1942)
• Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993)
• Sensation
• Seventh Seal (1957)
• Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1944)
• Silent Partner (1978)
• Spookies (1986)
• Stairway to Heaven (1947)
• Stalag 17 (1953)
• Star Trek (1979)
• Star Wars (1977)
• Stitches (1985)
• Swamp Thing, The (1982)
• Sword in the Desert (1949)
• Terror of Frankenstein, The (1975)
• The Thing (1951)
• Thief of Baghdad, The (1940)
• Thief Who Came to Dinner, The (1972)
• Thomas Crown Affair, The (1968)
  McQueen and Faye Dunaway playing a very erotically charged game. The McQueen character lost due to Dunaway's artful feminine distractions.
• Three Musketeers, The (1921)
• Three Musketeers, The (1973) with Faye Dunaway, Raquel Welch and Charlton Heston among others, there is a scene near the very beginning where King Louis 13th is playing chess on the lawn using human servants to play the part of the pieces.
• Towering Inferno, The (1974)
• Tron (1982)
• Unguarded Moment, The (1956)
• Virtuosity (1995)
• War Games
• Warlock, Armegeddon (1993)
• Web, the (1947)
• What the Peeper Saw (1971)
• Wierd Science (1985)
• Wind and the Lion, The (1975)
• Wishing Ring, The (1914)
• Wrestling Women vs. the Aztec Mummy (1965)
• Yentl (1983)

• GOOD Chess players are always portrayed as upper class. (Go to any tournament and see how many rich guys there are there. NONE! They're too busy chasing women and driving fast cars to play chess.)
• Chess players in movies are always all around brilliant and charming people. (With very few exceptions, REAL chess players are introverted and so involved with chess they have little time to WASTE pursuing anything as trivial as LOVE, A PROFESSION, or SOCIAL GRACES. Exception: Computers! Most Chess players are, or will become, Computer nurds).
• Great Chess players are always honored to play on some rich guy's fancy Philipino Art Set. (In reality, better players are almost always adament about playing on a plain, unadorned wood or plastic "Staunton" set. No red or blue pieces, no ceramic or metal, no elephants for rooks.)
• The board is usually set up wrong, with the black square at the players lower right, or with one or both of the King/Queen set up backwards. (WHITE SQUARE GOES ON THE PLAYERS RIGHT. QUEENS on thier own color: white QUEEN on white, black QUEEN on black.)
• Supposedly brilliant players usually miss one move checkmates in critical games. This is akin to a professional race car driver backing his station wagon into the garage door.
• On the other hand, good players are often portrayed as seeing 15 or 20 moves ahead in detail from a middle game, when there are still many pieces on the board. (One could more easily predict the next president and all 535 congressmen correctly before the election. In the End Game, when the number of pieces is limited, looking ahead often becomes a question of counting moves, who can get to the critical square first, or of very limited numbers of moves, and is more feasible.)
• Beginners usually beat experienced players, as a mechanism for showing the neophyte's native brilliance. (This is about as common as a tall, athletic man who's never seen a basketball beating an NBA player in one-on-one. It could happen, if the pro had a really bad day, but who would you bet on?)
• Players who are really behind (have lost more pieces) come up with brilliant ways to win anyway. (If they're so good, how did they get behind in the first place?)