Chess In Movies

Chess in movies include the following:

• The Thomas Crown Affair (1968) - Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway, in their primes, play perhaps the most enthralling chess match in film history.^[1]
• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), considered by some to be the greatest movie ever, "astronaut Frank Poole plays a game against the ship's AI computer, HAL 9000."^[2]
• From Russia with Love (1963) - the opening scene is a chess match, played on the entire floor of the room. The novel on which the book was based was a favorite of President JFK, and Frank Sinatra sang the theme song for the movie.
• Star Trek (1960s) - a television series in which a game of 3-dimensional chess is featured in one segment.
• The Queen's Gambit (2020) - the most popular series ever on Netflix, about a girl who became a chess prodigy.^[3]
• Casablanca (1942) - considered one of the greatest movies of all time, it has a legendary chess scene and the actors frequently played chess during breaks in filming.^[4]
• The Luzhin Defence (2001) - much of the movie, including its climax, is about chess.^[5]
• The Lodger: A Story of the London Fog (1927) - the last silent movie by Alfred Hitchcock, it has a tantalizing, flirtatious chess game between a serial murderer and unsuspecting blonde woman model, beginning at 25 minutes into the 90-minute movie that went into the public domain on Jan. 1, 2023. "Be careful – I'll get you yet!" the ostensibly homosexual murderer "smilingly warns the landlady's blonde daughter as they play a flirtatious game of chess."^[6]
• The Tempest (1610) - one of Shakespeare's final four plays, this includes a scene where two characters are playing a game of chess.

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See also[edit]

• List of movies containing chess scenes

References[edit]