Dice of fate
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Schicksalswürfel (German) / Prapancha Pash (Hindi) / A Throw of Dice (English) |
| Country of production | Germany , India , Great Britain |
| original language | German / English |
| Publishing year | 1929 |
| length | restored English version 2006: 75 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Franz east |
| script | Max Jungk and WA Burton based on a story by Niranjan Pal |
| production |
Franz Osten , Himansu Rai |
| music | Willy Schmidt-Gentner (original cinema music) , Nitin Sawhney (restored version 2006) |
| camera | Emil Schünemann |
| occupation | |
| |
Cube of Fate is a German-Indian-British fictional film by Franz Osten from 1929.
action
King Sohat is hunting tigers in the jungle with his cousin and neighbor King Ranjit . However, both are addicted to games and use every break to play dice . Sohat wants to incorporate Ranjit's realm and therefore has him carried out an assassination attempt that should look like a hunting accident - Sohat's confidante Kirtikar shoots Ranjit with a poisoned arrow in the back. The injured Ranjit is brought to the hut of the healer Kanwa. Kanwa and his daughter Sunita take care of Ranjit. Ranjit and Sunita fall in love, but Sohat also makes advances. She rejects his precious gifts.
Ranjit wants to make Sunita his queen, but her father objects that he is a gambler and that his horoscope reveals that this passion will bring him bad luck. The following night they both flee to go to the capital of Ranjit's empire and get married.
Sohat also wants the beautiful one for herself and plans a plot against Ranjit. First he has Kirtikar steal Ranjit's dagger and amulet, then Kirtikar Sunita's father Kanwa insidiously stabbed while collecting herbs and lays Ranjit's weapon and amulet next to the dead. Ranjit and Sunita were a happy couple for seven days when a messenger brought her the news of her father's death and the objects found next to him were handed over to her. As planned by Sohat, she believes that her future husband Ranjit is the murderer and flees from Ranjit's royal court.
King Sohat gives Sunita refuge and seeks her love. He's throwing a party for her. Ranjit's Chancellor Raghunath has followed Sunita, sneaks into Sohat's palace with a group of jesters and explains to them Ranjit's innocence. Meanwhile, Kirtikar demands a promised province from Sohat's realm as a reward for his services. But Sohat has a poisonous snake brought to Kirtikar's camp, which inflicts a fatal bite on him at night. Dying, Kirtikar confesses to Kanwa's murder. Sunita then returns to Ranjit with Raghunath and he forgives her for alleging the murder.
Wedding preparations are being made. Sohat brings a particularly nice dice game as a wedding present. He immediately persuades Ranjit to play a game and lets him win until kingdom against kingdom is bet. Sohat wins Ranjit's kingdom by playing wrong with the manipulated dice. Desperate to regain his empire, Ranjit offers himself as a mission. He is taken to Sohat's slave and in shackles and slave clothes before his own wedding. Sunita follows him in Sohat's capital.
Raghunath's son Birbal accidentally discovers the mechanism of the dice while playing. Raghunath clears up the people about the deception and calls them to arms and to attack Sohat's capital. In the meantime, Sohat tries to win Sunita's affection again without success. Finally, he has Ranjit whipped in front of her eyes so that she may release her lover from the torments by turning to Sohat. As Ranjit's warriors and people approach, he - an honorable loser in the game and a loyal slave - promises Sohat to stop them and turn them back. However, he puts himself at the head of the army after being informed about the gambling fraud.
Sohat throws himself off a rock to avoid the shame of the exposed fraud. Ranjit swears to Sunita not to play anymore and throws the dice into the abyss.
background
Prapancha Pash is a co-production by Universum Film AG (Berlin), Himansu Rai Films (Delhi) and British Instructional Films Ltd. (London). Promode Nath worked as a production designer . The film was shot on location in India with more than 10,000 extras, 1,000 horses and 50 elephants; the rulers of Jaipur , Udaipur and Mysore supported the production.
The Berlin Film Inspectorate approved the film on August 12, 1929 with a length of 2523 meters, but imposed a youth ban on it. The film premiered on August 16, 1929. The youth ban was lifted on August 30, 1929 in a decision by the Berlin Film Board.
In contrast to the two previous Osten-Rai productions The Lamp of Asia (1925) and The Tomb of a Great Love (1928), Schicksalswürfel does not use an existing legend , but develops its own. However, the story of Niranjan Pal is inspired by an episode from the Mahabharata . In a game of dice, the Pandava Yudhishthira loses all his wealth against the Kaurava Shakuni . After losing the Kingdom of the Pandavas, he sets himself up as a stake, loses and thereby makes the Pandavas slaves of the Kauravas. To win everything back, he places Draupadi , the common wife of the five Pandava brothers. He loses again and Draupadi challenges the game on the grounds that Yudhishthira as a slave can no longer have any property and was therefore not legitimized to use her as a bet. The story of the film adopts this line of reasoning. Sohat's offer to play again with Sunita as a stake is discarded when the slave status is determined. In addition, she was not yet Ranjit's wife.
The film contains three passionate kissing scenes. It was aimed at a western audience whose viewing habits at least knew how to “seal” the happy ending with a kiss from the couple. For Indian mainstream films, such scenes were unthinkable until the 1990s and were considered obscene.
Others
The film, like the two other German-Indian silent films, was shown again in India in the 1990s following the suggestion of the National Film Archive of India under Suresh Chabria with funds from the Goethe Institute (operating under the name "Max Mueller Bhavan" in India) . The accompanying music was composed by Pierre Oser .
An extensive restoration was carried out in 2006 by the British Film Institute with music by Nitin Sawhney , recorded by the London Symphony Orchestra .
Prapancha Pash is one of the few Indian silent films of which a copy still exists in the National Film Archive of India .
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Paul Willemen: Encyclopaedia of Indian Cinema, New Delhi 1994, p. 252
- ↑ cf. athrowofdice ( Memento of the original from September 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (engl.)
- ↑ cf. pierreoser.de ( Page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ A winning throw of dice in Business Standard, September 4, 1996
- ↑ Archived copy ( memento of the original from March 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
