With State secret — released in the USA as The great manhunt — we go back to 1950 It’s a classical action movie with solid acting, a decent plot, and beautiful scenery. It’s about a doctor Marlowe who is lured to a fictional Balkan country1 to operate on the local dictator but is then held in the country, because the local government doesn’t want the frailty of health to be known to the public. The doctor is none too pleased with this turn of events and tries to get out of the country, but the police is after him – which explains the American title The great manhunt. It was both a critical and financial success because it has a chess scene in it.
It’s not a rather brief scene and deleting it would barely affect the plot. In fact, not a word is spoken during it. That, at least, is normal for a game of chess. How about the position? Is that normal? Well, I can’t really say. The film is very old and I have not been able to locate a high definition version, making the reconstruction a very big problem. Such a big problem, in fact, that I couldn’t solve it. Yes, normally there should be a diagram here,2 but I couldn’t make an even halfway reasonable attempt.
There’s definitely something weird going on, because the pieces are unnaturally clustered around the h1-a8 diagonal. But what exactly and how weird it is, I have not been able to figure out. And so it all peters out in a big disappointment.
I’m sorry. Please don’t start a manhunt.
Realism: ?/5 I really can’t say. I guess it will remain a state secret forever. Or at least until I find a version in high definition.
Probable winner: We never get to find out, but I find it hard to believe the colonel is letting the doctor get away, so probably black.
1. [The country is called Vosnia. I don’t know whether the near-homophone for Bosnia is a coincidence.] ↩
2. [With a weak joke and a link to a diagram editor.] ↩