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By PAUL BRENNER
In the late 1700s, an
automated contraption confounded the most
brilliant minds of Europe and America. Concocted
by Wolfgang von Kempelen, "the Turk" was an
automated chess master that challenged such
luminaries as Napoleon, Benjamin Franklin, and
Edgar Allen Poe and came up the winner. Kempelen
was part inventor and part charlatan and the Turk
a brilliant flim-flam that, nevertheless, so
entranced European salon society that the upper
crust insisted on believing in it.
The Turk is the subject of French director Raymond
Bernard's spirited 1927 silent epic, "The Chess
Player," which has been restored by Kevin
Brownlow, Patrick Stanbury, and David Gill with
the film's original orchestral score (conducted by
Carl Davis) and is now available on DVD from Image
Entertainment.
The title "The Chess Player" belies the grandeur
and scope of the film, somewhat like re-titling
"55 Days at Peking" to "The Mah Jong Enthusiast."
Based upon a novel by Henry Dupuy-Mazuel, "The
Chess Player" shoehorns the Turk into an
historical pageant concerning the fate of Polish
independence under the yoke of Russia. The first
half of the film is all freedom songs, cavalry
charges, and idealistic romance, ladled with
dollops of Abel Gance in a few obligatory
hand-held camera shots and curious impressionistic
imagery. The romance is a romantic triangle
between a beautiful young woman (Sophie, the
Polish symbol of freedom) and her two suitors, a
Polish freedom fighter and an upper class Russian
and it is all hogwash.
The curio value of the film kicks in after the
Russians squash Polish independence, Kempelen
invents the Turk and is summoned by Catherine to
Great to the Russian court so that she can take a
whack at beating the automaton in a chess match.
Then all the spectacle strips away and "The Chess
Player" turns into a tale of subterfuge and chess,
culminating in a wild masked ball where the
machine is shot at sunrise and (in a weird scene
anticipating "Blade Runner") a collection of
automatons hack away at a nasty aristocrat. It may
not make much sense, but it sure is fun.
The special features include a radio interview
from WNYC radio's "The Leonard Lopate Show"
featuring Tom Standage, author of "The Turk: The
Life and Times of the Famous
Eighteenth-Century-Chess-Playing-Machine," the
original press kit, a stills gallery, and a print
interview with Raymond Bernard that is accessible
as a DVD-ROM extra. |
