Le Joueur d'échecs (1927)
Directed by Raymond Bernard

Film Review

Despite its comparative obscurity, Le Joueur d'échecs is one of the great cinematic achievements of the silent era, a sumptuous blend of historical wartime epic, romantic fantasy and farce. Its awesome scale and breathtaking cinematographic innovation (including some daring use of superposition and hand-held camerawork) call to mind another great film of this period, Abel Gance's iconic Napoléon (1927).  There are also echoes of another cinematic master, Sergei Eisenstein, most notably in the chaotic battle scenes.  The film was directed by Raymond Bernard, a French filmmaker of the highest calibre who, although far less well-known than Gance and Eisenstein, deserves to ranked along such great pioneers of the cinematic art.  Bernard's most famous film is his five-hour 1933 epic Les Misérables.

Raymond Bernard's creative flair is unsurpassed in this, probably his greatest film.   In addition to the beautifully shot exterior sequences (which wistfully evoke the romantic snowscaped Russia of Pushkin and Turgenev) and lavish interior set pieces, there are two sequences that stand out for their sheer artistic brilliance.  The first is where scenes of a particularly brutal and destructive Polish uprising are intercut with one young woman's idealised fantasy about war.  As she plays an uplifting hymn to courage and freedom on the piano in the comfort of her parlour, Sophie (the symbol of Polish resistance) imagines a cavalry charge of brave souls racing forth to set their nation free from the Russian oppressor.  Meanwhile, the world outside her window is in ghastly turmoil, with men, women and children being butchered in an animalistic orgy of pointless destruction.

The second unforgettable sequence is near the end of the film.  A Russian major is searching Kempelen's workshop when he inadvertently brings to life all of the inventor's automata.  The major is petrified as an army of mechanical men close in on him with swords drawn.  He has become a part in some grisly clockwork mechanism - and the outcome is as certain as it is chilling.  The intentionally slow killing is a gruesome parody of war, reminding us that human soldiers are themselves no more than clockwork toys in a ritualistic game of death.

A more thoughtful anti-war statement becomes apparent in the latter part of the story, where Catherine II agrees to settle her differences with Poland in a game of chess.   How much better things would be for humankind if the leaders of the world could resolve their differences via a game of chess, rather than resorting to the ritual bloodbath which consumes lives like a hungry fire devouring dead bits of wood.  Unfortunately, humankind is not logical and real blood must be shed to nourish the hungry soil of our world; intellectual contest is not enough.  When Catherine loses her game, she orders her mechanical opponent to be destroyed - and she gets the blood she wanted.  These are themes which Raymond Bernard would return to in his later film Les Croix de bois (1932), a horrifically realistic portrayal of life in the trenches of World War I, one of the most effective anti-war films ever made.

Le Joueur d'échecs is based on a novel by Henri Dupuy-Mazuel, which was inspired by the true story of a chess-playing automaton named “The Turk”, the creation of the Hungarian baron Wolfgang von Kempelen.  The automaton was a sensation in the 1770s, through its near-infallibility - it managed to beat Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe and Napoléon Bonaparte, as well as eminent chess masters of the time.  The Turk was later revealed to be a clever hoax - its interior concealed a human chess playing prodigy.  It would be more than two centuries before a machine could be built that would successfully challenge human opponents in a game of chess.

The film's impressive cast is headed by Pierre Blanchar, a distinguished actor of French cinema in the 1930s.  The part of the eccentric inventor Kempelen is sympathetically portrayed by Charles Dullin; his wife also appears in the film, as Catherine the Great.  Some light relief comes in the form of the comical, cross-dressing soldier Roubenko, played by Armand Bernard, a likeable comic actor who would become very popular with French cinema audiences in the 1930s, in films such as Compartiment de dames seules (1934). He was also an accomplished musician and worked as composer and musical director on a number of films, including Luis Buñuel's L'Age d'or (1930) and Jacques Feyder's Pension Mimosas (1935).  Le Joueur d'échecs was remade in 1938, directed by Jean Dréville.

Film Synopsis

The year is 1776.  Under Catherine the Great, Russia has annexed Poland, Lithuania and Prussia.  Polish nobleman Boleslas Vorowski is the leader of a secret resistance movement that intends to free Poland from the yoke of imperialist Russia.  After a failed uprising, Vorowski becomes a wanted man and goes into hiding.  His guardian, the inventor Baron von Kempelen, devises a plan whereby he can leave the country in safety.  Kempelen constructs a full-size automaton, in the shape of a Turkish chess player, inside which Vorowski can hide.   The scheme goes badly wrong when the Empress Catherine, hearing about the marvellous chess playing machine, demands that it be brought to her imperial court...