Chess Player

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"The Chess Player" was a milestone of the French silent cinema, so it's more than appropriate that Milestone Film & Video was responsible for its belated North American release. The film, produced by La Societe des Films Historiques, caused quite a stir when it premiered in 1927, and not just because French cinema wasn´t used to the epic scale. Contemporary film buffs will quickly see that many of the techniques that are now considered "edgy" are incorporated alongside the melodramatic standards that characterize silent-era films. Yes, there's the stage approach to character presentation: the heavenward gaze, lingering looks, the long pauses, and exaggerated emotions that audiences needed in lieu of sound. And there are moments where the pacing is so leisurely that it's not difficult to imagine filmmakers and audiences still savoring the notion of motion pictures during this age of early development, or needing time to absorb the plot with minimal narration. But there are also elements that are strikingly "contemporary" in this film about the failed 1776 Polish revolt against their Russian occupiers.

Watch an early American silent epic and compare the battle scenes. What immediately stands out is Raymond Bernard's liberal use of hand-held cameras and extreme close-ups of body parts and sabers, juxtaposed against fully shown galloping charges of Polish cavalrymen (of which thousands were used as extras). Cameras tilt at extreme angles, so that the images lose their sense of order and clarity, and Bernard's quick cuts enhance the dramatic quality of the battle without its feeling overly jarring. Other times, a stationary camera aimed at the ground is first filled by the rush of hooves, then horse legs, and finally an entire frame full of mounted cavalry. Perhaps the most innovative part of the major battle scene is that Bernard interspersed fight scenes with shots of Sophie, the living symbol of the revolution, playing at her piano in rapture, imagining a great victory. For one amazing moment the two parallel scenes converge, and we see the battle in the background from Sophie's perspective, looking across her hands playing on the keyboard in the foreground with sabers and bloodshed rising just above the ivories. In other scenes, Bernard uses double-exposures and juxtapositions of alternating, simultaneous scenes to create a sense of irony. As the revolt foments, there are wonderful shots of the peasantry and upper class living different lives in transition, for example. And throughout the film, which was shot on location in Poland, France, and Switzerland, he relies on severely cropped shots of horse legs and body parts to suggest the whole picture.

For most of 140 minutes, Bernard maintains a credible tension and interest that's augmented by the title character: a chess playing automaton based on the story of a real "invention" called The Turk, which bested the best minds of the era at the chess board-including Benjamin Franklin, Edgar Allan Poe, and Napoleon (who tried to frustrate the "machine" by deliberately and repeatedly cheating). It was the biggest hoax of the time, but because large mechanical toys were all the rage in Europe and the Industrial Revolution made it seem as if science could do just about anything, the public eagerly believed that this turban-headed animated wax figure could think and move.

Based on a novel by Henri Dupuy-Mazuel, "The Chess Player" opens with a title card that sets the stage: "In 1776, at the first division of Poland between Prussia, Russia, and Austria, Polish Lithuania fell into the hands of Catherine II, Empress of Russia. The town of Vilnius, once the citadel of Polish Lithuania, suffered under the newly imposed Russian yoke." It's a tale of two houses, for at one house the adopted Sophie Novinska (Edith Jehanne) plays piano at Chateau Vorowski, headquarters of the Polish Nationalist Movement. To test the loyalty of the Poles, Catherine II had created a regiment composed of both Russians and Poles, under the command of the Polish Count Boleslas Vorowski (Pierre Blanchar, who looks a bit like Francis X. Bushman). Sophie's countenance has become, like Delacroix's Liberte, the symbol of the revolt, and a banner has been made which features her likeness. Her birthday celebration begins with a song of independence. Meanwhile, in a house isolated from the rest, reputedly strange things happen. Here, Baron von Kempelen (Charles Dullin) creates automatons that look like slightly grotesque figures from Madam Toussaud's Wax Museum.

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