This is a serious contender for the title of best movie I’ve ever spotlighted on my blog. It stars great actors like Steve McQueen,1 Charles Bronson, and Donald Pleasance and the Internet Movie Database, for example, gives it (at the time of writing) an impressive 8.2 and a 162nd place in its top 250 movies of all time. The plot is based on the real story of a large-scale escape of, mostly British, prisoners of war from the German Stalag Luft III prison in present-day Poland during the second world war.
Word on the street has it that it’s historically quite accurate, but I don’t trust that judgement. I suspect people were largely looking at the lay-out of the camp, the equipment used, the uniforms, and so on — but not at the chessboard. A good hour into the movie, two of the prisoners are playing chess.
The first thing to note is that h1 is a black square, which explains why these two are imprisoned. The view of the board isn’t especially clear, but I feel — I fear — that the position is this one:2
We find the game with white to move and he finds himself in quite a predicament. He has lost a rook and a knight somewhere, his bishop on e4 is currently hanging and if he saves it with Bxd5, both Nc2+ and b2 are very scary.3
He has two options: resign or play Bg6+. He chooses the latter, but after Kd8 and a conversation with a rather dimwitted prison guard, he moves the bishop right back to e4. Black, probably betting on his opponent’s continued stupidity, plays Bc4. The bet pays off immediately: white takes the bait on c6 and gets checkmated with Nc2.
At last we know why he is locked up.
Realism: 1/5 I have to admit that it really is a good movie, but this is a serious blemish on it.
Probable winner: Black,4 obviously. Mate is mate in peace and war.
1. [Who started his career between McKing and McBishop.] ↩
2. [I’m tempted to just give a link to the great diagram editor, but I feel I have to clarify that the ‘great’ in the title of the film is a specification of spice, more so than quality.] ↩
3. [But maybe things are different after your rickety plane has been shot down by the nazis.] ↩
4. [Later on in the movie, black turns blind. I think he subconsciously didn’t want to ever see a game like this again.] ↩