Review of Brainwashed

The German title for this film is "Die Schachnovelle", but it can be found under several English-language titles. these would be "The Royal Game", "Brainwashed", "Three Moves to Freedom" and maybe some others to. It was made in 1960, so it's already over 55 years old and it is a black-and-white film. It features some of Germany's finest actors from around that time such as Curd Jürgens (later a Bond villain) playing the main character, Hansjörg Felmy playing the main antagonist and Mario Adord(even if he is Swiss-born), who is still alive today just like female lead actress Claire Bloom in one of her very rare (maybe only) excursions to German film. The director and also one of the writers who adapted Stefan Zweig's novel here for the screen is Gerd Oswald, a Berlin-born filmmaker, who mostly worked in Hollywood, and this 100-minute film here is among his most known movies. It is a bit difficult to say why I did not like the film that much. The acting was solid, but the script was not I guess. I personally like the game of chess and I am also interested in the Nazi years from a historical perspective. However, this movie here lost itself too frequently in mind games and psychological wishy-washy instead of really making an impact in terms of relevant story-telling. Maybe Zweig's novel is even at fault as it may be difficult to turn this into a great film if it is not a great read. I am not entirely sure, but I think we read it at school and I was not impressed there either. As a whole, like I said, you cannot really blame Jürgens etc. for this not turning out well, but the bad outweighs the good and I give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.