I was wondering the other day how many movies feature the game of chess in some way? Who was playing it? What were the stakes? How did the movie use the game -- to show power dynamics? To demonstrate how brilliant a character is? Or just for fun? Bonus points if the game is odd in some ways -- a futuristic variation, or the pieces are large or unusual, etc. I'll start with perhaps the most famous chess match in cinema history. The knight takes on Death in Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Antonius Block (Max von Sydow) has just returned from the Crusades to discover his country ravaged by the plague and famine. The Grim Reaper has now come to take him away as well before he can see his wife and family. The stakes: if he beats Death in a game of chess, he lives; if not, he dies. No spoilers, watch the film to see who wins! But I will say that Death did a better job against the knight than he would when playing Twister against Bill and Ted a few decades later!
Fresh is interesting because it’s about a young boy who learns how to control his life through understanding the game. He’s playing against everyone in his life. Stewart Copeland score as well.
I have seen many movies with some sort of chess game being played, but this one is what immediately sprung to mind. Dejarik, or Holochess, being played aboard the Millenium Falcon....oh, and let the Wookie win if you want to keep your arms.
Blade Runner - JF Sebastian (with some help from Roy Batty) sacrifices his queen for the win against Tyrell.
A friendly game of chess between the new Sherriff and Jim, "The Waco Kid" in Blazing Saddles. This game is a vehicle to give us some one liners, as well as an introduction for two major characters of the movie.
The Search for Bobby Fischer: The kid playing speed chess with Laurence Fishburne in a park in New York City is a great scene involving chess. 2001: A Space Odyssey: HAL playing chess with Frank.
'Brainwashed' a 1960 movie starring Curt Jurgens as a prisoner in solitary confinement who manages to steal a book only to fond out it's about chess. It's all he has to keep his sanity though.
The 60s James Bond knockoff Deadlier Than The Male (with pulp detective Bulldog Drummond re-imagined as a secret agent) features a human-sized chess board, with giant motorized chess pieces. Drummond and the villain play against each other in one scene. I remember one of those retro/nostalgia film magazines running a story a couple of years ago, of a fan who attempted to track down the set, and was able to find one of the pieces (the rest had been destroyed, if I remember correctly).
It's a gem of a movie. I love that one. I think it's titled Searching for Bobby Fisher. There's a funny scene where Ben Kingsley, as the kid's disciplinarian chess teacher, remembers that board games can also be fun, and plays against the kid in a game of (I think) Monopoly.
It's not a movie but there's s great chess game in an episode of 'Columbo' where two grandmasters who are about to play a championship game the next day meet by chance in a restaurant and start playing on a checkered tablecloth using bits of food and the salt and pepper shakers as the chess pieces.
I've just watched a British film from 1963 called Master Spy which features a few games of chess. The games are used as an excuse for meetings.
This is from TV, but when the British series The Avengers premiered in the US the original show opening took place on a chess board.
Kubrick was an avid chess player and had the game in several of his films, sometimes playing but other times just as imagery.
