When a1 is a white square and “castling kingside” goes to the left…it’s so…realistic…
Sigh. Another good video spoiled because they set up the board wrong. And no digital clock. But they did get Gary Kasparov’s mannerisms at the board correct. Why didn’t they use the real last game, the botched Caro-Kann Defense?
Because they spent all their time getting a license to use the IBM logo…
I can ignore the analog clock. I can ignore the game selection (if there was one…when I saw GK playing white I figured it wasn’t the Caro-Can’t). Can’t ignore botching the setup.
The best movies that got the setup right:
- Casablanca - a French Defense. How appropriate. Bogart held the pieces in his hand the way a player of his era would have done so. A good start to a film.
- 2001: A Space Odyssey - HAL was as dispassionate and stubborn in following a wrong path as most computer chess programmers.
- From Russia With Love - Even when SMERSH calls a player just has to finish the game.
That’s not surprising – as noted in George Koltanowski’s article “Chess with Bogey” (Overboard magazine; Fall 1974), when Humphrey Bogart was staying at the Sabena Hotel while filming 1951’s “The African Queen”, he played $1/game vs. Dr. Paul Limbos (who won 17, drawing three “just to keep the client happy”). Limbos stated that Bogart appeared to be a strong Class B player, who generally played the French Defense as Black (the annotated game Limbos-Bogart was a French Winawer).
Koltanowski played Bogart once, at the offices of the San Francisco Chronicle. “I played blindfold and had my hands more than full with Bogey.” (Koltanowski-Bogart; French Defense, Exchange Variation; 1-0 in 41 moves).
My wife’s son helped on a short film: Checkmate on youtube. The WR and BQ were staring at each other on the same file and neither piece moved. The film was pretty much finished when i married so I didn’t have any input.
Chess shows up in several of Stanley Kubrick’s films, and, like Bogart, he was said to have been strong enough to play chess for money in his youth.
At the end of the film you find out why taking was a bad move.
That was an interesting item.
The dramatic atmosphere was so heavy that I was sure it would turn out to be a send-up. I expected “Kasparov” to break the computer open, whereupon a startled Bobby Fischer would tumble out on the floor.
“Aha!”
