The chess player

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Movie
German title The chess player
Original title Le joueur d'echecs
Country of production France
original language French
Publishing year 1927
length 3071 meters, at 20 fps 135 minutes
Rod
Director Raymond Bernard
script Raymond Bernard, Jean-José Frappa , Henry Dupuy-Mazuel
production Société des Films Historiques
music Henri Rabaud
camera Marc Bujard , Willy Faktorovitch , Joseph-Louis Mundviller
occupation

The chess player (original title: Le joueur d'echecs ) is the German title of the French silent film Le joueur d'echecs , which Raymond Bernard realized in 1926 based on the novel by Henry Dupuy-Mazuel for the Société des Films Historiques . The screenplay was written by the director and Jean-José Frappa with the help of the author of the template.

In this 'excellent classic of the fantastic film' (André Schulz, Pascal Simon), the fascinating story of the chess Turk by the inventor Baron Wolfgang von Kempelen is transported to revolutionary Poland in 1770.

action

Vilnius, 1776. Poland is under Russian occupation and tensions between occupiers and locals threaten to escalate. Baron von Kempelen, an eccentric inventor, lives alone in a bizarre mechanical house. Surrounded by his bizarre creatures, he only cares about the outside world because he has two troublemakers under his wing: Boleslas Vorowski, a stubborn soldier, and his foster sister Sophie Novinska - both leading figures in the Polish resistance in Vilnius. Sophie's portrait even adorns the flag of the movement.

When Boleslas kills a Russian soldier who tries to rape a Polish dancer, the murder sparked bloody fighting between Russians and Poles. Boleslas is being chased by the enemy soldiers. To enable him to escape, Kempelen hides the insurgent in his latest invention, the "chess player". Jammed in the machine, Boleslas goes on tour with Baron von Kempelen and Sophie in the direction of Germany.

You are approaching the border, Kempelen's plan seems to be working. Until Catherine the Great, Tsarina of the Russian Empire, plays a game against the "chess player" - and loses ...

Production notes

“The Chess Player” was a production by the Société des Films Historiques . The stage design was designed by Jean Perrier , the equipment was designed by avant-garde architect Robert Mallet-Stevens . The costumes were designed by Jean Perrier and Lucien Carré . Joseph-Louis Mundwiller , Marc Bujard , Willy Faktorovitch and Jean Hémard were responsible for the photography . Jean Hemard also assisted the director. Lily Jumel was the production assistant, and Walter Percy Day was responsible for the special effects .

The illustration music was composed in 1926 by the Massenet student Henri Rabaud . For the restored version it was played in 1990 by the Radio-Télé Luxembourg symphony orchestra under the direction of Carl Davis .

The film premiered in France on July 20, 1927 and on May 17, 1930 in the United States. It also ran in Germany, Great Britain, Spain and Portugal, Denmark and Greece and Yugoslavia, overseas in America and Brazil. In Austria it was also shown under the title “The Prisoner of the Tsarina”.

Jean Dréville made a resounding remake in 1938 with Conrad Veidt . It was also shown in Spain.

The copy in the Federal Film Archive is 3106 meters long.

The culture channel ARTE showed Le joueur d'echecs in a restored version on Friday, August 31, 2007 at 0.05 a.m. on German television. In autumn 2010 the film was shown at the Festival Lumière in Lyon, where Florian Doidy accompanied it with improvised music on the piano.

reception

Around 1770, the Austrian court official and mechanic Wolfgang von Kempelen astonished all of Europe: he constructed the “Chess Turk”, a chess-playing machine that defeated the most famous players of the time, as well as Frederick the Great and Napoleon. For decades, nobody could discover the secret of the mysterious machine inside which a human was.

raca [d. i. Siegfried Kracauer ] reviewed the film in Frankfurter Zeitung No. 61 of January 24, 1927. Ernst Jäger and, in Austria, Fritz Rosenfeld (as Friedrich Feld ) also wrote reviews.

“A film inspired by a historical novel, which captivates with its attention to detail and the splendid set-up, while the wooden characters develop hardly a believable life. At the same time, it is an outstanding silent film epic, which was considered lost for a long time and was painstakingly reconstructed in 1990. " (Kabeleins.de)

“The 'expressionistic aesthetics' […] can be determined by the gloomy mood and the rapid change of images. The interaction of mind and mechanics reaches its climax when towards the end of the film the inventor's human mind is able to control the mechanics even from a great distance. " (Göhler pp. 250–251)

“ Le Joueur d'échecs tranche donc sur les superproductions de l'époque avec son mélange d'intrigues historiques et de péripéties très science-fiction (l'attaque des automates de von Kemplen mérite de figurer désormais dans l'histoire du cinéma fantastique) ”(Lenny Borger)

“Cinéaste humaniste et moraliste lucide, Bernard incarné l'idéal de la mesure française. L'honnêteté et l'esprit, davantage que la tourmente du génie, le caractérisent. Le rapport à l'Histoire que manifestent ses films, dans lesquels l'aspiration individual à la liberté et à l'autodétermination est broyée par les passions collectives, en est d'autant plus tragique. Les automates du 'Joueur d'échecs' qui reproduisent cet assujettissement de l'homme, tout comme l'omniprésence spectrale de la mort qui poursuit les vivants des Croix de bois, témoignent d'une conscience aiguë de cette maléfique duplicité. " (J. Mandelbaum, October 2010)

“As if director Raymond Bernard had partially anticipated his future fate in this film: In 1940 the Jewish filmmaker fled from the Nazis and hid in a mountain range in the French Alps until the end of the war. His film, restored in 1990, still impresses viewers today with its elaborate equipment and spectacular depiction of the Polish uprising. " (André Schulz, Pascal Simon)

literature

  • Michael Ehn, Hugo Kastner: moments of fate in chess history. Dramatic decisions and historical turning points. Verlag Schlütersche, 2014, ISBN 978-3-86910-260-3 , p. 57.
  • Friedrich Feld: Fritz Rosenfeld, film critic (= proletarian cinema in Austria. Volume 2). Verlag Filmarchiv Austria, 2007, ISBN 978-3-902531-27-8 .
  • Antje Göhler: Reception of antiquity in literary expressionism (= literary studies. Volume 25). Verlag Frank & Timme, 2012, ISBN 978-3-86596-377-2 , pp. 250f. and note 1039.
  • Ernst Jäger, Heinrich Lewinski: Ernst Jäger, film critic (= film & writing. Volume 2). Edition Text & Criticism, 2006.
  • Jacques Mandelbaum: Le cinéma oublié de Raymond Bernard. In: Le Monde. October 10, 2010, online at lemonde.fr
  • Wenzel Mraček: Simulated bodies: from artificial to virtual humans (= Ars viva. Volume 7). Böhlau Verlag, Vienna 2004, ISBN 3-205-77187-7 , p. 119.
  • E. Wenzel Mraček: Simulatum Corpus. From artificial to virtual people. Thesis . Inst.f. Art history, Graz 2001. Excerpt from “Baron von Kempelen's chess“ Automat ”” online at chess.at
  • André Schulz, Pascal Simon: Le joueur d'echecs (The Chess Player) at ARTE. In: Chess News. August 22, 2007.
  • Ernst Strouhal: A flexible story. Kempelen's Turk, a chess metaphor machine from the late baroque era. online at karlonline.de

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ 1885–1962, French writer (playwright and novelist) and journalist from Perpignan , cf. bnf.fr
  2. ↑ according to prisma.de and André Schulz, Pascal Simon in: Schach Nachrichten , August 22, 2007.
  3. ↑ cf. Movie poster from Pathé Rural 1927.
  4. ↑ cf. IMDb / release info
  5. ↑ cf. Cinema poster for the premiere of the film in Austria in 1927 by Eduard Weil & Co., Vienna. Design: Anton Ziegler , Georg Pollak poster studio, Austria 1927. Without publisher's mark. Size approx. 182 × 363 cm.
  6. ↑ cf. IMDb and fr.wiki , ill. Of the cinema poster at cinema-francais.fr
  7. ↑ cf. Movie poster of remakes from 1938 in Spanish language
  8. ↑ Entry number: BSP 2249-14, cf. Federal archive / film archive
  9. ↑ cf. Festival Lumière , Lyon on October 7th 2010.
  10. ↑ cf. Small writings on the film. Volume 6, Part 1, p. 535.
  11. ↑ cf. Jäger-Lewinski p. 134, field p. 94.
  12. ↑ cf. filmdienst.de