The Luzhin Defence is a 2000 romantic drama film directed by Marleen Gorris, starring John Turturro and Emily Watson. The film centres on a mentally tormented chess grandmaster and the young woman he meets while competing at a world-class tournament in Italy. The screenplay was written by Peter Berry, based on the novel The Defense (or The Luzhin Defence) by Vladimir Nabokov. Nabokov based The Defense on the life of German chess master Curt von Bardeleben who seemingly committed suicide by leaping from a window in 1924.

Emily Watson received best actress nominations at the British Independent Film Awards and the London Film Critics Circle Awards.

​It's the early 1920s and Aleksandr Ivanovich 'Sascha' Luzhin (John Turturro), a gifted but tormented chess player, arrives in a Northern Italian city to compete in an international chess competition. Prior to the tournament he meets Natalia Katkov (Emily Watson) and he falls in love with her almost immediately. She in turn finds his manner to be appealing and they begin to see each other in spite of her mother Vera's disapproval.

The competition starts badly for Luzhin who is unsettled by the presence of Leo Valentinov (Stuart Wilson), a Russian, who is Luzhin's former chess tutor from pre-revolutionary Russia. Valentinov even approach Dottore Salvatore Turati (Fabio Sartor), Luzhin's main rival, telling the Italian Luzhin's defect while competing to ensure the loss his former prodigy.

Luzhin struggles through the early rounds but he soon begins to win again as his relationship with Natalia becomes closer and intimate. She then informs her parents that she is going to marry him. Meanwhile, Luzhin goes on to reach the final and face Turati.

In the finals the Russian Émigré loses out to the time clock, forcing the game to adjourn. However, outside the venue, he is whisked away by an accomplice of Valentinov who abandons him in the countryside. His former teacher knows that this will completely unhinge him because of the memory of his parents' abandonment many years ago. Luzhin wanders aimlessly until he collapses and is found by a group of Blackshirts and taken to the hospital.

The doctor informs Natalia that Luzhin will die if he keeps playing chess as he is addicted to the game and it's consuming his very being. Nevertheless, even while recuperating Valentinov comes around with a chess board encouraging Luzhin to finish the match with the Italian Turati. Natalia defends her beloved but urges him to break off with the game. Luzhin seems to agree.

Luzhin leaves the hospital with Natalia and they proceed to marry at the earliest opportunity. However, on the morning of the wedding, Luzhin is put into a car with Valentinov, who tells him that there is the small matter of finishing the competition. In terror, Luzhin leaps from the car. Dazed, cut and mentally confused, he stumbles back to the hotel where he tries to dig up the rest of the glass chess pieces he buried on the grounds years ago, but he does not find them.

He went back to his hotel room and locked himself in his muddied wedding suit. Natalia, in wedding dress, worried and went back to the hotel to find him. But before she can get the hotel staff to open the door, the troubled chess grandmaster jumps out of his bedroom window and dies. 

While arranging Luzhin's staff, Natalia discovers the papers in his wedding suit pocket, with the help of the Count(Christooher Thompson), an experienced chess player himself, Natalia realizes it was Luchin's winning moves for his unfinished game. Natalia decides to play against Turati using her fiancé's notes. 

She wins.

The film was shot entirely in Europe. Budapest, Hungary was used for outdoor scenes as they were set in St Petersburg, these included the Széchenyi Chain Bridge, Hungarian National Museum and Heroes' Square. The chess tournament (although in Italy) was shot inside the main hall of the Museum of Ethnography, Budapest. In Italy, the hotel scenes were filmed at Villa Erba, Cernobbio, on the Lake Como. The scene at the railway station is in Brenna-Alzate, near Como.

In the novel, Valentinov's first name is never mentioned; on the contrary, Luzhin's first name is revealed only in the closing sentences. Another dissimilarity is that the novel ends up by Luzhin's suicide, thereby his game would be never finished.

Emily Watson

• as Natalia

John Turturro

• as Luzhin

To Catch a Thief is a 1955 American romantic thriller film directed by Alfred Hitchcock, from a screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on the 1952 novel of the same name by David Dodge. The film stars Cary Grant as a retired cat burglar who has to save his reformed reputation by catching an impostor preying on the wealthy tourists of the French Riviera. Grace Kelly stars opposite him as his romantic interest in her final film with Hitchcock.

Retired jewel thief John "The Cat" Robie is suspected by the police in a string of burglaries on the French Riviera. When they come to his hilltop villa to question him, he slips their grasp and heads to a restaurant owned by his friend Bertani. When the police arrive at the restaurant looking for Robie, Danielle Foussard, the teenage daughter of a staff working in the restaurant Foussard, who has a crush on him, spirits him to safety.

Robie realizes he can prove his innocence by catching the new Cat in the act. He enlists the aid of an insurance man, H. H. Hughson, who reluctantly discloses a list of the most expensive jewelry owners currently on the Riviera. American tourists Jessie Stevens, a wealthy nouveau riche widow, and her daughter Frances, top the list. Robie strikes up a friendship with them. Frances feigns modesty at first, but kisses Robie at the end of the night before retiring to her room.

The day after, Frances invites Robie to a swim at the beach, where Robie runs into Danielle, who is jealous about his interest in Frances.

When Frances accompanies Robie on a "picnic" to a villa, she reveals that she knows Robie's real identity. He initially denies it, but concedes it that evening when she has invited him to her room to watch a fireworks display. There they kiss passionately.

The next morning, Frances's mother Jessie discovers her jewels are gone. Frances accuses Robie of using her as a distraction so he could steal her mother's jewelry. The police are called, but by the time they reach Jessie's room, Robie has disappeared.
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Later, Robie is staking out an estate at night when he is attacked by an unknown assailant. A second attacker raises a wrench and appears to hit Robie, who falls off the estate's seawall into the water. But when the police reach the body in the water, it turns out to be Foussard, one of the staff at Bertani's restaurant.

The police chief publicly announces that Foussard was the jewel thief, but, as Robie points out privately in the abashed Hughson's presence, this would have been impossible because Foussard had a wooden leg, and could not climb on rooftops.

Foussard's funeral is interrupted by Danielle's loud accusation that Robie is responsible for her father's death. Outside the graveyard, Frances apologizes to Robie and confesses her love. Robie asks Frances to arrange his attendance at a fancy masquerade ball, where he believes the Cat will strike again.

Robie accompanies Frances to the ball dressed as a masked Moor. The police hover nearby. Upstairs, the cat burglar silently cleans out several jewel boxes. When Jessie addresses the Moor as "John" and asks him to go and get her "heart pills", the authorities are tipped off as to his identity. Upon the masked Moor's return, the police wait as he and Frances dance together all night. When the masked Moor and Frances go to her room, the mask is removed: it was Hughson, who switched places with Robie to conceal Robie's exit.

Robie lurks on the rooftop, and his patience is finally rewarded when he spots a figure in black. However, just as his pursuit begins, the police throw a spotlight on him and demand he halt. He flees as they shoot at him, but he nonetheless manages to corner his foe with jewels in hand. Unmasked, his nemesis turns out to be Danielle. She loses her footing on the roof, but Robie grabs her hand before she can fall. While she hangs in his grasp, he forces her to confess to the police and admit that Bertani was the ringleader of this gang.
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Robie speeds back to his villa. Frances follows to convince him that she has a place in his life. He agrees but looks less than thrilled when she says, "Mother will love it up here."