Russian imperial history - films

[Zielinski]

Steven P Hill:

>> A French silent film dating from the 1920s, "The Chess Player," depicts a 
>> (factual? fictional?) chess-playing robot which allegedly became a 
>> Russian court favorite around the end of the 18th century.

By R. Bernard. Based on the 1926 novel by Henri Dupuy-Mazuel, "Le Joueur 
d'Echecs".

William Ryan:

> The chess-playing 'robot' did indeed exist, and was the subject of a 
> considerable and fanciful literature in which it allegedly played against 
> Catherine II and Napoleon. It was designed by a Hungarian, Baron von 
> Kempelen and demonstrated at several courts in Europe as well as touring 
> extensively - for its history see most recently Tom Standage, The Turk, 
> NY, 2002. I have a Victorian novel, which I prize, which was evidently 
> written for the School Prize market: Sheila Braine, The Turkish Automaton, 
> London, 1899 (1898) (republished in 1912 as A Polish Hero), in which the 
> secret of the 'automaton' is that it is operated by a concealed maimed 
> survivor of a Polish insurgent clash with the Russians.

Edgar Allan Poe has seen the automaton in Richmond, see his "Maelzel's Chess 
Player". Ludwik Niemojowski published in 1881 in Warsaw a short story "Szach 
i mat!", based on the life of von Kempelen (filmed in 1967).

Jan Zielinski 

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