Bobby Fischer Against the World

THERE'S A SCENE in All the President's Menwhere, as Bob Woodward readies himself for the day, a newscaster relates details of the increasingly bizarre goings-on at the famous chess match between Bobby Fischer and Boris Spassky.

Watching it now, the sequence reminds us how odd the early 1970s could be. While the US government was bugging itself into oblivion, while Muhammad Ali was preparing another comeback, the popular media found time to exercise an obsession with the most cerebral of indoor pastimes. And nobody minded.

The strange story of Bobby Fischer – a genius who descended from severe eccentricity to outright madness – is very well told in this first-rate documentary by the experienced Liz Garbus. Made for HBO, the film, comprising solid talking heads and excellent archive footage, has little time for cinematic flourishes, but its story is as gripping as that of any recent thriller.

Raised in Brooklyn to an unusual mother (a communist under constant surveillance by the FBI), Bobby taught himself chess while confined in the family’s small apartment. After winning the US chess title as a teenager, he eventually got to compete for the world championship in 1972. At that match-up with Spassky, Fischer’s already careering brain caused him to make increasingly paranoid demands on the organisers.

Following his eventual victory, despite being the child of two Jews, he gave in to virulent anti-Semitism and obsessions about the American intelligence community.

Chess aficionados may regret that Garbus doesn’t dally too much with close analyses of the great man’s games, though casual players will find just enough board action to keep them interested.

Garbus’s real interest is the personality behind the pieces. Celeb contributors such as Dick Cavett and Malcolm Gladwell add a bit of glamour, while Fischer’s friends and rivals – all sad, all regretful at the lost potential – do their best to make sense of the inexplicable.

The most poignant moment comes, perhaps, during archive footage showing Fischer in conversation with actor Tony Randall, who tentatively suggests that chess players tend to burn out at a young age. Fischer explains that this is not always the case.

He was right, of course. On the evidence of this film, Garry Kasparov is still as sane and articulate as ever. Perhaps Deep Blue – suspiciously unavailable for interview – was the one who went bonkers.