The Chess Player

In 1776, Polish nobleman Boleslas Vorowski heads a secret movement to free his country from Russian control. When Vorowski is wounded in battle, his mentor, inventor Baron von Kempelen, constructs a chess-playing automaton named Turk that conceals Vorowski in order to smuggle him to safety. When Catherine the Great learns of Turk's chess prowess, she commands the automaton be brought to Russia for a royal match. From the novel by Henri Dupuy-Mazuel, which is based on the real 18th-century machine.