Today’s chess video

Bergman’s 1957 film The Seventh Seal is the clássic reference for those who understand that chessplayers often make deals with the devil.  Case in point is Bobby Fischer’s meteoric rise to the world championship–wiping away all opposition that stood in his way–and then his equally meteoric fall into obscurity and madness…the story has it that one day in 1957, while 13-year old BobbyFischer was travelling by car from tournament to tournament in the US with Mednis,Evans and one of the Byrne brothers (I don’t remember which), they stopped at a restaurant along the road.  Bobby met the devil in the washroom:  ”What do you want more than anything, Bobby?” asked the devil. Bobby: ”I want to win the world championship and be the strongest player in history.”  So they made a deal…the world championship for Bobby in return for his soul…I don’t know how much of this is true, but by the end of the summer, those 3 future GMs were still driving from tournament to tournament in a car, while Bobby had started to win everything that he played in and was flying from tournament to tournament in a jet plane.

But getting back to what we can see and touch, The Seventh Seal uses the game of chess as had never been seen before in mainstream cinema.  Here is one of my favourite scenes…