User Reviews

This is a delightful little film. It is about ultimate addiction. The basic plot involves a young man (they had nerds back in 1925 in Russia), and his relationship with his fiancée. He lives and breathes chess (as do, it seems, most of the Russian people). He carries books, pamphlets, and little chess sets all over his person. He shows up three hours late for a meeting with his young lady, and while she is forgiving him, he has set up a board on a checkered handkerchief that he has put on the floor so he can kneel. As the young woman decides to kill herself, she can't get away from chess. It's there at every turn. Even the container of poison she buys looks like a chess piece. It is all ludicrous, but the comic timing and pratfalls are really cute.

An absolute pippin of a short, all the more surprising when you think of the dour heavy-handedness that mars Pudovkin's most famous work. Just as delightful is the subject's ambiguity - a welcome break from the wearing, mathematical propaganda that is much of Soviet cinema.

The central ambiguity of the film is: does it celebrate conformity, or is it a satire on it? In favour of the former proposition is the fact that everyone's playing chess. Like the myth that all Dublin cab-drivers are learned Joyceans, the Soviet populace as a whole seem obsessed with the rigorously intellectual game of chess. The film opens with some dispiritingly authentic chess tournaments - yep, just grandmasters sitting at tables, playing chess, and people watching. Then the comedy begins. Its conflict is that a chess nut's fiancee loathes the game, and cannot escape from it wherever she turns. Her only chance of happiness is to conform to society's pleasure.

On the other hand, this pleasure is roundly mocked, and the insanity of the chess obsession leads the film from documentary realism, into fantasy, absurdity and the supernatural. The hero is a bonkers chess addict - his cap, scarf and socks are checkered, as is his cigarette case, while he has miniature chess boards, rule books and problem setters all over his body. His straightforward journey to his fiancee is constantly interrupted by chess-related obstacles, which are quite clearly seen to have a fetishistic power over him. This power extends to society as a whole: in one particularly piquant episode, a thief about to be nabbed by a policeman is saved because a stray chessboard falls his way; the hunter and hunted stop to play. Here the mixture of chess and chance are seen to have a disruptive effect on the smooth running of society.

I suppose whatever way you read it depends on how you view the game itself. In one way it calls for extraordinary intellectual and imaginative powers, the ability to think of alternatives, which runs contrary to the rigidities of a police state. However, chess itself is a rigid game, the board a prison with minutely defined rules. The pieces, like the citizens in a police state, are at their masters' bidding, forever running around in labyrinthine patterns. The film might be quite subversive.

What it certainly is is a hilarious treat, full of great visual gags and in-jokes, as well as a disturbingly logical Alice in Wonderland-like erosion of structures, and a heroine whose unhappiness is a strange melancholic malaise. There is an irreverent sense of jeu d'esprit almost entirely absent from Soviet cinema.

This is very funny and quite creative, and it's particularly enjoyable if you like to play chess. You'd never expect something this genuinely amusing from a Soviet-era film. The movie makes very good use of a simple plot idea, with a young man's "Chess Fever" causing problems for him and his fiancée, setting up a pretty good variety of gags that work quite well. If you are a chess fan, it is also fun to see the great Capablanca making a film appearance, plus shorter appearances by several other well-known players of the era. It's all good entertainment, and a movie well worth seeing.

A Russian silent comedy doesn't really sound that enticing, does it? But this really isn't that bad. It follows the fortunes of a young man who is completely obsessed with chess. At first the film looks as if it might be a dry and serious study of the game, but then we're introduced to our hero. For some reason he has dozens of kittens in his flat, most of them living in his shoes or his jacket pockets. This chap is so obsessed with the game that he is magnetically drawn to a chess shop even though he is late for a date with his girlfriend. Even his socks and hankie have chessboard patterns. Of course, this is all driving his girlfriend to distraction…

There are quite a few good laugh-out- loud moments in this short, directed by the Russian master Pudovkin, and it's at least the equal of most of the comedies coming out of Hollywood at the time. There's also the bonus of glimpses of a snow-covered Russian cityscape with troikas rushing past in the background.

Just like the best Hollywood equivalents, this short silent film has a simple storyline which is, of course, a wee bit over the top, is extremely funny and is perfectly paced. I wasn't expecting anything like this at all and it was a joy from start to finish.

Later, it made me think, once again, just how many wonderful short films there have been made and lost, from all corners of the world ... a darned shame.

If ever you get a chance to see this film, you won't be disappointed.

I've seen a reasonable number of Russian films and it seems that all the Soviet films available in the US are extremely serious in nature--such as ANDREY RUBLYOV, WAR AND PEACE, POTEMKIN, IVAN THE TERRIBLE, THE CRANES ARE FLYING, SOLARIS and the like. So I was not expecting to find a funny film--and CHESS FEVER was hilarious! In fact, I'd place this silent comedy in the same category as a Keaton or Chaplin short--it's that funny.

The film begins with a geeky guy who absolutely loves chess. It's his wedding day, but he can't seem to focus on anything but chess. Seeing him in his crappy apartment with cats EVERYWHERE was pretty funny--you just have to see it to believe it. By the time he eventually makes it to his fiancée's home, hours have passed and she has had enough. She dumps the jerk and runs into a sympathetic man--who just happens to be the Soviet champion. However, he's no dummy--and he ISN'T interested in chess! Eventually, the boyfriend decides to give up chess forever--leading to a funny conclusion.

From the description above, it doesn't sound like a very funny film...but it is. There are so many cute little jokes and laughs that I couldn't help but laugh out loud several times--something I don't normally do when I watch a film. Overall, it's well written, acted and a lot of fun and it left me wondering if there are any more Russian films like this! If you know of any, let me know.

A clever and funny story of a man addicted to chess. Most interesting for its place in the infamous Soviet montage period of early cinema, this film takes us through the cartoon-like events of a man and his girlfriend. She becomes desperate to sway him from his chess fever, and can only think of one solution...

On the whole, the film is worth watching, short, and lots of fun.

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.

From afar, this is a simple film, as funny as Buster Keaton in his best day and at least half as inventive - but without the acrobatics. It is a funny vignette, about obsession and love subsumed into plan.

But there is more to it. Say you have noticed the subterranean waters that connect Franco-Russian cinema into one, and have perhaps noticed that Eisenstein accomodated fractures for the eye while Epstein for the mind; you will want to take a look at this, the most French film made by the Soviets at the time, decades before the French would actually make them.

The film is about chess. Two levels therein, as in film noir; down below the pawns, moved about according to some inscrutable whim, now and then facing extinction, and on the higher level gods pulling the strings, according plan and movement. This is generally about the game, now notice how the game becomes self-referential in-sight.

On the outer level there is a Grand Chess tournament, ostensibly real footage of national champions conniving each other over a chess board. Propped before an audience is a giant chess board, where the movements of the players are replicated for the audience to participate - everyone is looking at the screen transfixed, it's a primitive screen, cheering or keeping notes.

And the nested level inside; a story of love thwarted by a man's morbid obsession with chess. The woman confronts him about it. But it turns out, the world entire is chess. Chess as structured life, the Soviet dream. Even kids are playing it, policemen with those just arrested. The dismayed man walking out of his girlfriend's apartment, staggers onto a floor painted like a chessboard - he moves around as though pulled by strings.

The denouement takes place on the outer level, back in the tournament hall. The woman, who has newly discovered the wonders of chess, has shattered the juvenile love she clinged to for happiness; instead, she concedes to be part of the plan, the board where life is arranged into pattern and there to move and be moved. You may read what you want into this, but there is power behind the idea; love, that is to say emotional love, is not allowed final say here. Higher laws govern.

Self-reference; games of fiction; role-playing; and chess as the metaphor that weaves them together. This is what the French made a film culture of - it is certainly nothing like what we know of Pudovkin from his subsequent features. I'd like to think that people like Chris Marker, Jacques Rivette, Raoul Ruiz - who departed just a few days ago - would have adored this. I know I will.

One of the best films on Chess and one of the best shorts, "Chess Fever" (Shakhmatnaya goryachka) is a delightful romp on the addictive nature of the game. A young man is about to marry his gal but his obsession over the game is a constant delay with his fiancée about to go insane with his madness. What emerges is a comedic and amusing ride through a city fixated over the great game. Centered around the 1925 Moscow Tournament taking place at the time the film is important in featuring some of the best Chess masters of the era. Priceless footage of world Chess champion José Raúl Capablanca making a memorable cameo and legends like Frank Marshall, Carlos Torre and Richard Réti highlight the historical aspect of the film. A must see for Chess enthusiasts and silent film fans.

I just overdosed on heavy German determinism, a four hour shot of Lang and needed some lightening up.

If you are similarly in a silent movie frame of mind and just want something that is impossible to fall too deeply into, I can recommend this. The same year that Eisenstein was making his mark. Four years before "Man with a Camera," this silly little piece was made.

The setup is simple: a young man and his fiancé. He is besotted by chess and cannot think of anything else, even setting up a board in mid-proposal. But he is not alone; every male in the world is similarly captured. We have a cop who stops in midarrest to play with his captive. It goes on a bit too long, but the humor is unexpected in a part of the world between two huge wars and two equally destructive rules.

But the message is good Soviet doctrine, since the woman comes around in the end and accepts this "fascinating game."

In old movies, part of the fun is in how fashions have changed and in particular what attractive young girls look like. This is a stocky, rude girl with a faint beard and a beginning dowager's hump. But makeup, of course.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.