Reviews of silent film releases on home video. Copyright © 1999-2026 by Carl Bennett and the Silent Era Company. All Rights Reserved.

Chess Fever (1925)

This short comedy, directed by Vsevelod I. Pudovkin and Nikolai Shpikovsky, stars Vladimir Fogel and Anna Zemtsova, with José Raúl Capablanca, Sergei Komarov, Boris Barnet, Ivan Koval-Samborsky, Yakov Protazanov, Yuli Raizman, Mikhail Zharov and Anatoli Ktorov.

The film is likely accompanied by a music score performed on piano by Rodney Sauer.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary for Mother (1926) by historian Peter Bagrov; audio commentary for Storm Over Asia by historian Jan-Christopher Horak; a presentation of the comedy Chess Fever (1925); the short film Notebooks of a Tourist Presents: St. Petersburg (circa 1920); the short film Amateur Images of St. Petersburg (1930); a comparison of Pudovkin’s “Five Principles of Editing”; “A Revolution in Five Moves,” a visual essay showcasing the five edits that inspired the Bolshevik revolution; and an insert booklet featuring a new essay by film author and historian Amy Sargeant.

This collection may contain the best-available home video edition of this film.

This Regions ABC Blu-ray Disc edition is available directly from . . .

The film is accompanied by a music score performed on piano by Rodney Sauer.

This edition should be of similar quality to the FPA disc noted below.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition is available directly from FLICKER ALLEY through . . .

This DVD edition of Chess Fever (1925) is presented from a very-good 35mm print, with both English intertitles and Russian intertitles on the alternate video angle.

The film is accompanied by new music performed on piano by Rodney Sauer.

Supplemental material includes audio commentary for Bed and Sofa by Julian Graffy, professor of Russian Literature and Cinema at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College, London, and author of Bed and Sofa: The Film Companion (I.B. Taurus Publishers, 2001).

The out-of-print edition was reissued on DVD-R disc but is now replaced by the Flicker Alley edition noted above.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD-R edition has been discontinued and is . . .

This DVD edition has been mastered from 35mm materials that are of very-good quality. A decision on which edition with Chess Fever to purchase may be based on which films are packaged with it.

The film is accompanied by a music score composed and performed on synthesizers by Roger White.

This Region 0 NTSC DVD edition has been discontinued and is . . .