Bobby Fischer in 1972

It’s hard not to feel that this film is really about cars and not chess. Some fine automobiles in evidence, including a Citroen DS and an early Range Rover.

This was when the world was young. A year after the fall of Bretton Woods, but before the deployment of the Oil Bomb. Some consider 1972 the last full year of a golden age.

It’s a beautiful film, anyway, and makes me wish I could feel interested in chess. Even meeting Nigel Short in 1993 (in St James’s Park during his spanking by Kasparov; he told me to go forth and multiply, if I remember rightly) didn’t manage that.

More Chess

Here’s Capablanca playing speed chess with a variety of opponents. Insofar as it goes: what we’re really meeting here is the same old problem of poor quality film and bad camera angles that we saw in the case of early football films. Was chess any good then? It’s hard to tell from this:

And here’s a longer version of the first film. At least this one comes with helpful subtitles:

Rating Past Sport on Video Evidence

We’ve discussed how good - or how not so good - football was in the past. And we’ve used what little film is left to help us judge.

Let’s see if we can do the same thing for chess:

(Capablanca, Torre v Marshall)