I’m going to continue my movie marathon today with Robert Paul’s 1903 A Chess Dispute, as found in The European Pioneers section of The Movies Begin. The central theme is an all-too-human case of one-upmanship where one party thinks outside the box and mayhem ensues.

This short is said to be the oldest movie with a chess scene: I hope my 15-panel picture book does it justice. Bill Wall has put up a list of over 1700 movies with chess scenes, footnoted with: “a more thorough list can be found in the book Chess in the Movies by Bob Basalla”. I’m going to have to invest in a copy!