I saw “A Throw of Dice” in the open air of Trafalgar Square last night, accompanied by a live soundtrack composed and performed by Nitin Sawhney and the London Symphony Orchestra.
Always a deceptive space, the crowd was 10,000 strong for this showing of the 1929 film made in Rajasthan. The story originated as an episode from the Mahabarata, an ancient Indian Sanskrit epic, and tells the tale of two gambling kings who fall in love with the same woman. The sound was crystal clear, although the fountains occasionaly spritzed those seated near them, and the screen occasionally billowed in the wind, sending the perspective disconcertingly awry.
The film looks great for something over 75 years old. It’s a new print, obviously, but the mechanics of the production are also a step ahead of their time. Several times the camera tracks towards a group of gambling men, or follows Sunita down a hallway, the movement magically powerful in an era when the vast majority of shots were from a static tripod.
The score also does a great job of bringing the film right up to date. It feels current. Sawhney’s integration of Eastern and Western musical genres is so seamless it’s almost impossible to pick out which individual elements belong to which tradtion. Stand outs include the low, reedy flute which imbues the whole with melancholy, and the alternately breathy and traditionally high-pitched female vocalist.
The film is on tour now, with the recorded score. And at 75 minutes it’s considerably more manageable than your average Bollywood pic.