I've been reading about early Soviet cinema, and I stumbled across
this video
of
Vsevolod Pudovkin
and Nikolai Shpikovsky's 1925 short film
Chess Fever
(ШАКМАТНАЯ ГОРЯЧКА).
The twenty-minute comedy tells of the estrangement of a couple over the
man's obsession with chess during the 1925 tournament held in Moscow. So
engrossed is he in playing both positions on his chessboard that he is
hours late to a meeting with his beloved, who sends him packing; but no
matter where she seeks solace, she cannot escape chess in the time of
"chess fever". (I had no difficulty understanding the film without the
Russian intertitles, but I found
these translations
later.)
The film is notable for an appearance by the great Cuban chess player
José Raúl Capablanca
(who was then the reigning world champion, though he placed only third
in Moscow), and it also features footage of actual game play from the
tournament.
There are even some cute kittens tossed in.