La Diagonale du fou (1984)
Directed by Richard Dembo

Film Review

The noble game of chess may not seem to be a suitable premise for a gripping thriller but La Diagonale du fou proves otherwise, showing that even the gentle 'game of kings' can make compulsive cinema, in the right hands.  It was with this intelligently crafted but utterly compelling chess-themed psychological drama that Richard Dembo made his directorial debut, and he could not have asked for a more auspicious start to his career.

Born in Paris, Dembo belonged to a family of immigrant Jews from Eastern Europe, so the East-West divide was something that affected him personally, making it particularly apt that this should be the subject of his first feature as a director.  Prior to this, he had served his apprenticeship working on a number of short films for Jean Schmidt, and then assisting André Téchiné on Paulina s'en va (1969).  Significantly, he was a founder member of The Directors' Fortnight (Quinzaine des Réalisateurs), an independent selection of the Cannes Film Festival, in 1969.

Notwithstanding the high regard in which it is now held, La Diagonale du fou was not a commercial success when it was first released in 1984.  However, it was widely lauded by the critics of the time and achieved international acclaim after winning a series of prestigious awards.  These include: France's Prix Louis Delluc for 1984; the Oscar for Best Foreign Language film in 1985; and the César for Best First Work in 1985.  Today, the film is considered a cult classic, essential viewing for anyone with a keen interest in chess.  It puts to shame other films that have attempted to use the game as the basis for a human drama, notably Caroline Bottaro's Joueuse (2009) and Elodie Namer's Le Tournoi (2015).
    
It would be another eight years before Richard Dembo made his next film, the historical drama L'Instinct de l'ange (1993).  He subsequently co-scripted the Marie Curie biopic Les Palmes de M. Schultz (1997) for Claude Pinoteau but directed only one other film before his premature death in 2004, La Maison de Nina (2005).  In common with all too many promising rookie directors, Dembo was a one-shot wonder, but the one great film he did make was sufficiently classy to earn him enduring recognition.

La Diagonale du fou (a.k.a. Dangerous Moves) is in essence an allegory of the fraught stand-off between the East and West at the height of the Cold War in the early 1980s.  The two principal characters in the film are based on two well-known Soviet chess grandmasters of the time - the reigning world chess champion Anatoly Karpov and the contender Viktor Korchnoi, who had two memorable face-offs, in 1978 and 1981.

In the film, Karpov becomes the older, more conventional player Akiva Liebskird, played to perfection by Michel Piccoli, whilst Korchnoi is re-imagined as the maverick dissident Pavius Fromm, a gift of a role for the young Russian born actor Alexandre Arbatt.  There are some striking similarities with the 1973 Columbo episode The Most Dangerous Match, which was itself inspired by the American Bobby Fischer's victory over the Russian grandmaster Boris Spassky in the 1972 World Chess Championship.

Liebskird and Fromm are clearly intended to represent the opposing sides in the Cold War.  The former, rigid and highly disciplined, epitomises the West's public perception of the seemly implacable Soviet Union, whereas the latter is a free-spirited individualist who fully embraces the freedoms and opportunities afforded him by his newly adopted western lifestyle.  As the film develops, this initially black and white characterisation begins to dissolve and both characters are shown to be far more complex, more morally ambivalent, than we first thought.

Piccoli's portrayal of Liebskird is particularly fascinating.  The actor is renowned for his ambiguous character roles which allow him to do what he does best, performing a metaphorical dance of the seven veils in which his character's inner contradictions and perversions are gradually exposed, often to devastating effect.  Prior to this, he had turned in a memorably disturbing performance in Pierre Granier-Deferre's Une étrange affaire (1981), and here in Dembo's film he is just as darkly compelling as a neurotic torn between his longstanding loyalties to the USSR and his own personal needs and aspirations.

Although Alexandre Arbatt's portrayal of the younger chess player is somewhat more sympathetic, Fromm is soon revealed to be just as hard to pin down as his adversary.  His ostensibly heroic stand against Soviet imperialism would seem to be no more than a tissue-thin justification for a career of blatant self-interest, his flight westwards being motivated more by personal hunger for fame and fortune than a sign of any deep-seated political conviction.  Fromm is nothing more than a shallow, cowardly egoist, and it is Liebskird that we ultimately have most sympathy with, a man trapped not only by a regime that will not let him go, but also by his lack of inner conviction, his inability to follow his rival's example and make his own rules in life.

Mirroring the dramatic plight of the two male protagonists are two strong female characters, the players' wives magnificently interpreted by two other cinematic legends, Leslie Caron and Liv Ullmann.  How these two are affected by the strain of the chess competition and its wider political context provides the film with an intriguing secondary strand, which again has obvious parallels with the ongoing real-life drama involving the western nations (particularly the United States) and the Soviet Union.

It was just within a few years of La Diagonale du fou's release that the USSR began its dramatic reforms of glasnost and perestroika under President Mikhail Gorbachev, creating the circumstances for the complete collapse of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991.  White had won this particular game of chess - or so it seemed at the time.  Watching Dembo's film almost four decades after it was made, you are immediately struck by how frighteningly pertinent it still is - not just a slick intellectual thriller, but more importantly a bleak commentary on an ideological confrontation that refuses to go away.

Film Synopsis

In the early 1980s, the Russian grandmaster Akiva Liebskird is set to defend his title as world chess champion at a highly publicised tournament in Geneva.  His opponent is a temperamental but brilliant prodigy, Pavius Fromm, twenty years his junior.  Both men were born on the Soviet side of the Iron Curtain, but whereas Liebskird is a staunch supporter of the Communist regime, Fromm is a notorious dissident who is now living in exile in the West.

Fromm's lack of discipline and obvious contempt for rules unnerves his rival, so a fierce confrontation of opposing ideals rather than a civilised game of chess would seem to be in the offing.  Away from the chessboard, both men are having to contend with immense problems in their private life.  Liebskird's health is failing and Fromm is becoming increasingly paranoid that his Soviet enemies are using his wife to bring on a nervous breakdown.  All too late, the two chess players come to realise that they are no more than pawns in a dangerous game of international politics...