Though not his first film, Russian director/cinema theorist V. I. Pudovkin's
Chess Fever
(
Shakhmatanya goryachka
) was the first to be released. Essentially a comedy, this 2-reel exercise in montage manages to make the game of chess seem thoroughly cinematic. Illustrating his theory that "The foundation of film art is editing," Pudovkin uses apparently unrelated images to fashion a smooth, well-integrated unified whole. He goes so far as to rabbet in shots of legendary chess master Capablanca so that his film will have a "star."
was but a prologue for the Pudovkin masterpieces to come:
Mother
(1926),
The End of St. Petersburg
(1927) and
Storm Over Asia
(1928).