A Throw of Dice (Prapancha Pash), German-born Franz Osten’s third Indian film, is considered to be his greatest achievement.
Shot on location in Rajasthan, in black and white on 35mm, it contains thousands of cast members, extras, and thousands of animals (horses, elephants, and tigers).
Based on an episode from the Indian epic “Mahabharata,” the tale concerned two kings vying for the love of a hermit’s daughter, the beautiful Sunita. The two kings, Ranjit and Sohan, share a passion for gambling and decide to play a game of craps to determine who will marry her.
Sunita wishes to marry Ranjit, but Ranjit loses the game to the nefarious Sohan. As a forfeit, Ranjit becomes his slave. Sunita soon uncovers the truth about Sohan’s evil deeds, and to escape punishment, he hurls himself from a cliff into the rapids. Ranjit and Sunita are theb reunited and married.
Osten made 19 films in India from 1926 to 1939, and A Throw of Dice formed the final part of a trilogy of Indo-German productions by Osten and Indian actor-producer Himanshu Rai. The other two films in the trilogy are Prem Sanyas (1925) and Shiraz (1928).
After a gap, Osten returned to India and worked on Bombay Talkies with Rai. During the production of Kangan (The Bangle) in 1939, Osten, a member of the Nazi Party, was arrested by British colonial officials, and was incarcerated until the end of the Second World War.
In 2006, in honor of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, the film was digitally restored, then re-released at the Luminato Festival in Toronto in 2008, with a new orchestral score by British-Indian composer Nitin Sawhney
The U.S. release, on July 30, 2008, was during the Grant Park Music Fest at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago.
Nitin Sawhney, the composer of the new 2006 score, describes the film as “A cross between Chaplin, DeMille (in its extravanda) and early Bollywood movie.”
Nishat Khan composed an orchestral score, which premiered in 2013, as part of the 100 Years of Indian Film festival in New Delhi. The composer played sitar and sang, accompanied by the Bollywood Orchestra.
This Sitar composition by Ustad Khan was updated and performed with the Philharmonie Luxembourg in 2025 under the direction of Ellie Slorach and arranged by David Clymer.
Cast
Seeta Devi as Sunita Himansu Rai as Sohan
Charu Roy as Ranjit
Modhu Bose
Sarada Gupta as The Hermit
