In a smiling salute to his master Lev Kuleshov, V. I. Pudovkin employed the Kuleshov cutting method to turn an international chess tournament, being held during November 1925 at Moscow's Hotel Metropol, into the stuff of hilarious satire. Just as Mary and Doug were to be captured unawares in Komarov's The Kiss of Mary Pickford (1927), here chess champion Jose Capablanca became the unwitting and unknowing star of a comedy about a neurotic chess player and his exasperated wife.