Some films could not exist without chess, including the following:
- Chess Fever (1925 – silent comedy, short, with Jose Capablanca)
- Searching for Bobby Fischer (1993 – based on the life of a real boy)
- A Little Game (2014 – fiction – a ten-year-old girl learns chess)
- Pawn Sacrifice (2014 – about Robert “Bobby” Fischer)
Remove the game of chess from those four movies and the stories would evaporate, although some kind of sport might have been substituted for it in A Little Game, albeit no sport would likely be as effective as chess for this tale.
The 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal has a critical chess contest that is interrupted during the story, which ends at around when that game comes to a close. How important is that game to the story! But most of the dramatic elements are not directly related to chess, and the moves of the pieces on the board appear to have mostly symbolic value.
Knights of the South Bronx, a 2005 television movie, could not exist without chess, but a television episode of Sherlock Holmes, played by Jeremy Brett (mid-1980’s to mid-1990’s), could have had the chess set omitted without damaging the story.
The following additional movies include chess but only as supplemental variations in the stories or as incidental elements:
- The Chinese Cat (1944 – Charlie Chan detective movie)
- The Killing (1956 – crime drama)
- 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968 – epic science fiction fantasy)
- Independence Day (1996 – epic science fiction thriller)
- Young Victoria (2009 – period drama)
- Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows (2011 – action mystery)
Images from the above six movies
The Chinese Cat – start of the film: man uses a chess book or pamphlet
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In The Killing, chess is only incidental and temporary
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2001: A Space Odyssey – Human loses to a super-computer
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Chess gives evidence for intelligence in the film Independence Day
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Part of a game of chess is included in the movie Young Victoria
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From the 2011 film Sherlock Holmes – A Game of Shadows
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Many movies have some reference to the game of chess, if only with a brief sight of a chess set. In a few films, the royal game is a big part of the theme . . .
In the 1957 Swedish film The Seventh Seal, a man’s life depends on a game of chess. The title of the movie comes from the Book of Revelation in the Bible . . .
This post has three brief reviews of new chess books: two on precise opening variations and one (Beat That Kid in Chess) for early beginners.
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