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.
© James Travers 2022
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