A Throw of Dice

The movie is about 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 reunited and married. ==Cast==

• Seeta Devi as Sunita • Himansu Rai as Sohan • Charu Roy as Ranjit • Modhu Bose • Sarada Gupta as The Hermit • Lala Bijoykishen • Tincory Chakrabarty == Production ==

A Throw of Dice, the third Indian film by Franz Osten, is considered by some to be his greatest achievement. The silent film was shot in black and white on 35mm film. It contains thousands of cast members and animals, including 10,000 extras, 1,000 horses and scores of elephants and tigers. The film was shot on location in Rajasthan. 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 he incarcerated until the end of the Second World War. ==Restoration and re-release==

A Throw of Dice has been in the British Film Institute (BFI)'s archives since 1945, but it rarely has been seen. In 2006, in honour of the 60th anniversary of Indian independence, the film was digitally restored, then re-released at the Luminato Festival in Toronto, Canada on 13 June 2008 with a new orchestral score by British Indian composer Nitin Sawhney. The release in the United States occurred on 30 July 2008 during the Grant Park Music Festival at the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago. Nitin Sawhney, composer of the new 2006 score, describes the film as "A cross between Chaplin, Cecil B. DeMille and an early Bollywood movie." On multiple occasions, it has been compared to a Cecil B. DeMille film for its levels of extravagance. Nishat Khan composed an orchestral score, which premiered on 25 April 2013, as part of the 100 Years of Indian Film festival at Siri Fort Auditorium in New Delhi, and 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 on 15 October 2025 under the direction of Ellie Slorach and arranged/accompanied by David Clymer. ==Reception==

Upon its re-release in 2007, a review in The New York Times stated "There’s hardly a frame in the 1929 film A Throw of Dice that doesn’t provide a surge of visual pleasure", ==References==