"The Killing" Chess Club Scene (Stanley Kubrick, 1956)

"Shut up, patzer"

I love this fascinating scene from Stanley Kubrick's second feature, "The Killing (1956), a powerful "noir" heist picture starring the wonderful Sterling Hayden. The dialog is dymanite stuff. David Mamet himself called this scene, "one of the great talk scenes in movies.

The scene takes place in a New York City chess club, based on a place on 42nd St. that Kubrick (himself an avid chess player) used to hang out at. It was known as The Flea House. This scene is a between Johnny (Sterling Hayden), brains in the heist , and Maurice (Kola Kwariani) who is to be the brawn. Though it is intereresting that the dialog clearly flips these roles about who's who.

Kola was an acquaintance of Kubricks from the old days at the Flea House. Kola was an avid chess player and had been a champion wrestler. As you will see watching this, Kola had an incredible screen presence, thick Georgian accent and all. His accent is so thick it makes this scene a bit hard to understand, so I also put up a version with subtitles. The dialog in this scene is wonderful stuff. You must understand every word to get how good it is.

Enjoy this snippet, and if you havent seen THE KILLING, search it out; Its Top-notch Kubrick. Easily missed, even the camera move with the mirror at the start is a brilliant solution Kubrick came up with. Here is a later scene showing Maurice doing what he was hired to do; start a bar fight and be a distraction for the heist.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKipKWE5Y9U


patzer --noun
Slang; A poor or amateurish chess player.

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• Stanley
• Kubrick
• Noir
• heist
• The
• Killing
• 1956
• Sterling
• Hayden
• chess
• club
• Kola
• Kwariani
• classic
• film
• cinema
• black and white
• Mamet
• sharp
• dialog
• black
• white
• Georgian

[MrRezz0]

Kola Kvariani was Georgian actor and not russian. author plz edit your description.

[serotta2]

Noted

[pollywogA1]

The bald headed guy is professional wrestler and chess expert, Kola Kwariani, who played chess in New York City's Chess & Checker Club where he met Stanly Kubrick. Kola Kwariani was beaten to death at age 77 in the chess club on February 1980 by five black teenagers.

[serotta2]

Thanks for posting that. I've mentioned a bit about him under "More Info"; I heard about his tragic, senseless end. He was wonderful in the few short scenes in THE KILLING he's in. He's unforgettable.

[saltwaterebel]

tarrantino borrowed heavily from this film for resevoir dogs

[serotta2]

He certainly did especially as far as the "fractured time structure" the The Killing utilizes.

[jimbolimbo369]

I thought life was supposed to be like a box of chocolates?

[Vebinz]

A true masterpiece, in many ways more entertaining than "Asphalt Jungle".

[barmatuxany]

Nick came in the downstairs floor entrance one evening when about five black youths were leaving. They bumped into each other. Words were exchanged. Nick never took any gruff from anybody and soon he was engaged in a fight with all five black kids at once. Nick probably could still have handled any one or two of them, but five were too many. Nick was beaten. The ambulance was called. Nick was taken to the hospital, and died shortly thereafter at age 77.

[TheClam88]

@doctornoooo 2001 was his masterpiece.

[chh5555]

@pollywogA1 What a story! 

[theschwantz]

"Stop talking or I'll call Fischer" lol

[doctornoooo]

It must not be forotten just how good a player Kubrick was: he used to hustle

chess at Washington Square, and his moves bristle with that kind of energy:

for me he was not as good as his rep, but the early Kubrick was no slouch:

the first of Lolita, DR S, and pieces of this and much of Paths of Glory, they

zing right along, then he got flaccid, almost incomprehensible and boring, but

what the hell, we still have the early Kubrick which is more than most of the

stuff we have today.

[Lamporre]

@pollywogA1

What the hell?! :O He was beaten to death by teenagers? A senior citizen at that?

Who would want to kill someone like him? That's awful...