A Throw of Dice
1929A throw of dice
This is the first Indian production on RetroClips, a lavish silent super-production shot entirely on Indian locations for a British studio, with a German director, Franz Osten, working alongside Indian producer and star Himansu Rai. Contemporary accounts describe roughly ten thousand extras, a thousand horses, and dozens of decorated elephants across the production, a scale rarely attempted outside Hollywood at the time. The dice game at its center is not just a plot device but the whole reason for the English title: a rigged wager between two rival kings that decides a kingdom.