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Journalism of Courage
Around 1929, a travelling German filmmaker, Franz Osten, stumbled into Bombay. In the city that was yet to be tinsel town, a man called Himansu Rai had set the first camera rolling. They met and began a friendship that would span three silent movies, A Throw of Dice, The Light of Asia and Shiraz, and give birth in 1934 to India’s first motion picture company, Bombay Talkies. Today, its compound is in ruins—memories of Ashok Kumar and Saadat Hussain Manto mingle with the cry of barbers and children. But last month, in Trafalgar Square, away from the musty tug of nostalgia, a new beginning was made: London got to see Prapancha Pash (A Throw of Dice).
As part of the ongoing India Now festival in London, The British Film Institute screened the restored reel of the film to a score written by Nitin Sawhney. Lost to the world after the Bombay Talkies studio closed down, the film has received a theatrical release in cinema houses across England and is being circulated in DVD format. Made in Rajasthan in 1929, it tells the story of two Indian kings, both gamblers, in love with a beautiful woman played by Sita Devi. When Satyajit Ray watched the movie in 1980 with Amrit Gangar, film historian and author of Franz Osten: A Journey from Munich to Malad, he had remarked that the work was a cross between A Thousand and One Nights and the Mahabharata. Despite an epic frame of reference, the ravishing black-and-white film is strikingly modern. It has Sita Devi and Charu Roy locked in some of the most passionate kisses Indian cinema has seen (despite the fact that the school-marmish Indian Cinematograph Act of 1918 was in force).
Back home in India, the real news lies beyond the screening, which is the first step to the revival of Bombay Talkies Limited. It signifies the coming together of Himansu Rai’s grandson Peter Dietze and Charu, great-grandniece of Rai’s partner-director Charu Roy. “It is a company that gave Indian cinema its first collaborative talking movie. The Germans, the British and Indians worked together for around 20 movies. Ashok Kumar and Devika Rani made Acchut Kanya under the banner and Ashok Kumar became a constant name in Bollywood with Bombay Talkies. It only makes sense to re-open the scripts and restore the movies that created the legacy of Bollywood,” says Charu.
Rai’s second co-production with a German crew, Shiraz, was recently restored by the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra and starting next month, Peter will be travelling the world exhibiting Rai’s wealth of cinema—his silent narratives, his talkies, his scripts, his work with Ashok Kumar—in a hope to get them interested in the resurrection of Bombay Talkies.
Around four years ago, in his house in Sydney, Drieze discovered his roots in a bundle of scripts. When he asked mother Nilima about them, out came the truth: he was half-Indian and grandson of legendary Indian filmmaker Himansu Rai. “My mother was only five when Himanshu Rai left my grandmother for Devika Rani. My parents came here from Germany during the White Australia policy, which meant that all people of colour would be denied Australian immigration, and so my mother didn’t reveal her Indian origin,” says Dietze. Later, while visiting a gallery in New York, he met a curator, who was a friend of Devika, and had her personal items. “He told me, ‘these belong to you’, and sent me a box full of documents,” says Dietze, who runs a visual merchandising company.
Drieze says he now has a wealth of information about Bombay Talkies, including film scripts in Hindi, documents relating to fundraising and technical support that Bombay Talkies received from the German film production company, UFA. When Osten returned to Germany after the outbreak of the Second World War, Devika Rani and Himansu Rai became the prime movers of Bombay Talkies, churning out masterpieces even after Himansu’s demise in 1940. Devika Rani died later in 1994, but production withered away a few years after Rai’s death.
“These documents show the great effort that Himanshu Rai and Devika Rani went through to bring a German crew to Malad. I hope to resurrect the interest in my grandfather’s iconic films,” says Dietze. “I think the best way to bring Bombay Talkies back to life is by taking these movies abroad and arousing interest in Germany, England and Australia. I plan to restore the artefacts, the movies and start a film club. I am hoping the movie-makers come back and reopen the studio. It would be a dream come true,” says Drieze.
In the next few months, BFI hopes to screen multitude of Bombay Talkies productions and restore some of the lost reels. “Charu and I are looking for people to pitch in. The first thing is to rebuild the studio in Malad,” says Drieze. A visual we are waiting to be treated to.
