The Chess Scene in Movies: All the Different Meanings!
Chess blog for latest chess news and chess trivia (c) Alexandra Kosteniuk, 2013
Hi everyone,
Here's a truly neat chess feature from denofgeek on how chess has been used as a motif to mean so many different things in the movies. In fact, the 'symbolism' of chess has evolved in art, literature and cinema. Chess is both sexy and geeky nowadays - it depends. Read on:
A symbol of cunning, intelligence and death, the movie meanings of chess are as varied as the actors who've played it, Aliya writes...
You may not know much about shorthand typing, but if you’re a movie fan then you’re a trained professional in reading the dots and squiggles of the screen. Writers and directors use our preconceptions from watching thousands of hours of movies in order to make a more satisfying viewing experience. It’s a kind of shorthand, and it gives us a lot of information. Unfortunately, it can also take the place of decent acting, scene-setting and characterisation. But hey, that’s what we get for being so darned clever at this reading film stuff.
The game of chess has a long history, dating back to the sixth century AD, so it was already well-established in our collective psyche by the time movies came along and started to make use of it. Since the silent era, films have used chess as code for a number of character traits. Here’s a list of the classic ones:
I’m smart and I might be an evil robot
I’m sexy
In 1968, Thomas Crown made chess sexy. It was quite an accomplishment, as traditionally chess was seen as a purely male pursuit. It was objective, and rational, and about the mind, not the body. But suddenly smart and sexy came together for movie women, and Faye Dunaway was able to portray what would have traditionally been a male character – the investigator hot on the trail of the criminal.
Read more »Hi everyone,
A symbol of cunning, intelligence and death, the movie meanings of chess are as varied as the actors who've played it, Aliya writes...
You may not know much about shorthand typing, but if you’re a movie fan then you’re a trained professional in reading the dots and squiggles of the screen. Writers and directors use our preconceptions from watching thousands of hours of movies in order to make a more satisfying viewing experience. It’s a kind of shorthand, and it gives us a lot of information. Unfortunately, it can also take the place of decent acting, scene-setting and characterisation. But hey, that’s what we get for being so darned clever at this reading film stuff.
The game of chess has a long history, dating back to the sixth century AD, so it was already well-established in our collective psyche by the time movies came along and started to make use of it. Since the silent era, films have used chess as code for a number of character traits. Here’s a list of the classic ones:
I’m smart and I might be an evil robot
Building on its established reputation of being a game for the elite, chess made one of its first movie appearances in an adaptation of a true story involving the global hoodwinking of the aristocracy.
Raymond Bernard’s 1927 silent film, The Chess Player, tells the story of an inventor who creates an automaton that conceals a Polish nobleman. It’s not far from reality – at the end of the eighteenth century a famous automaton called The Turk travelled the world and won a number of chess matches against the rich and famous, including Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. In fact, The Turk was not an automaton at all, but a machine that could be operated by numerous chess masters. This part of the story didn’t make it into the movie version.
Still, to come up with the idea of making a false chess automaton and then getting nobility all over the world to buy it just goes to prove how clever that inventor was, making him the perfect subject for the first ‘I’m smarter than you’ chess movie. It was good enough to spawn a remake in 1938 with Conrad Veidt as the inventor.
From there, chess was established as easy shorthand for being deeply brainy. If you’re a clever character, you have a chess set in your house somewhere, whether you get to play it or not. For instance, in Cape Fear (1962) Gregory Peck has a chess set in his office. In Dante’s Peak (1997) Pierce Brosnan has a chess set on his coffee table. Basically, if you were a professional doctor, lawyer or volcanologist, you had a chess set.
Perhaps the most interesting offshoot of the brainy chess player trope is its connection with artificial intelligence, and the threat that it is perceived as representing. In Blade Runner (1982) JF Sebastian and Tyrell play a game of chess via videophone. When Sebastian comes up with some killer moves, Tyrell invites him over to his penthouse – unfortunately the moves were provided by the android creation of the Tyrell corporation, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) who wants answers. Here the creation has out-thought the creator. The moves were based on a real chess game, played between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in an 1851 tournament in London and known as ‘the Immortal game’: Blade Runner is a film with an amazing number of layered meanings throughout.
Yes, computers love to play chess. In WarGames (1983) chess is one of the options available to Matthew Broderick’s character when trying to stop super-computer Joshua from instigating global thermonuclear war. Thank goodness they decided to play noughts and crosses instead. But perhaps the smartest of them all is Hal 9000, who wins against astronaut Dr Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) in Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal even points out where Poole is going wrong, being a helpful sort of computer. In fact, Hal cheats during the match. But since Kubrick was a great chess player, we have to assume that Hal’s cheating is not a movie mistake but proof that Hal is so much smarter than Poole that he can smugly declare a win without having to go to the trouble of actually winning, and Poole will accept his judgement. Now that’s clever.
Raymond Bernard’s 1927 silent film, The Chess Player, tells the story of an inventor who creates an automaton that conceals a Polish nobleman. It’s not far from reality – at the end of the eighteenth century a famous automaton called The Turk travelled the world and won a number of chess matches against the rich and famous, including Napoleon and Benjamin Franklin. In fact, The Turk was not an automaton at all, but a machine that could be operated by numerous chess masters. This part of the story didn’t make it into the movie version.
Still, to come up with the idea of making a false chess automaton and then getting nobility all over the world to buy it just goes to prove how clever that inventor was, making him the perfect subject for the first ‘I’m smarter than you’ chess movie. It was good enough to spawn a remake in 1938 with Conrad Veidt as the inventor.
From there, chess was established as easy shorthand for being deeply brainy. If you’re a clever character, you have a chess set in your house somewhere, whether you get to play it or not. For instance, in Cape Fear (1962) Gregory Peck has a chess set in his office. In Dante’s Peak (1997) Pierce Brosnan has a chess set on his coffee table. Basically, if you were a professional doctor, lawyer or volcanologist, you had a chess set.
Perhaps the most interesting offshoot of the brainy chess player trope is its connection with artificial intelligence, and the threat that it is perceived as representing. In Blade Runner (1982) JF Sebastian and Tyrell play a game of chess via videophone. When Sebastian comes up with some killer moves, Tyrell invites him over to his penthouse – unfortunately the moves were provided by the android creation of the Tyrell corporation, Roy Batty (Rutger Hauer) who wants answers. Here the creation has out-thought the creator. The moves were based on a real chess game, played between Anderssen and Kieseritzky in an 1851 tournament in London and known as ‘the Immortal game’: Blade Runner is a film with an amazing number of layered meanings throughout.
Yes, computers love to play chess. In WarGames (1983) chess is one of the options available to Matthew Broderick’s character when trying to stop super-computer Joshua from instigating global thermonuclear war. Thank goodness they decided to play noughts and crosses instead. But perhaps the smartest of them all is Hal 9000, who wins against astronaut Dr Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) in Kubrick’s monumental 2001: A Space Odyssey. Hal even points out where Poole is going wrong, being a helpful sort of computer. In fact, Hal cheats during the match. But since Kubrick was a great chess player, we have to assume that Hal’s cheating is not a movie mistake but proof that Hal is so much smarter than Poole that he can smugly declare a win without having to go to the trouble of actually winning, and Poole will accept his judgement. Now that’s clever.
I’m sexy
In 1968, Thomas Crown made chess sexy. It was quite an accomplishment, as traditionally chess was seen as a purely male pursuit. It was objective, and rational, and about the mind, not the body. But suddenly smart and sexy came together for movie women, and Faye Dunaway was able to portray what would have traditionally been a male character – the investigator hot on the trail of the criminal.
Labels: chess in cinema, chess scene
posted by Chess Blog Admin @ 4:05 AM
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