Silent
cinema is unusual to find in the MVD Visual catalog. And yet the home video company has taken the
leap with the release of the recent British Film Institute restoration of the
long thought-to-be-lost Indian silent epic Shiraz
from 1928. Produced by and starring Indian
film pioneer Himansu Rai as the title character, Shiraz presents in the grand melodramatic fashion of silent cinema
a romantic fable tinged with historical fiction.
The
“true” story of how the world-famous Islamic mausoleum the Taj Mahal came to
be, Shiraz imagines a backstory
involving the emperor Shah Jahan’s (Charu Roy) late wife Mumtaz Mahal (Enakshi
Rama Rau) and her surrogate older brother Shiraz (Rai). As an infant Mahal is kidnapped and sold into
slavery before meeting and falling for Jahan, while mistaken identities
threaten the life of Rai who after going blind designs the famed Taj Mahal.
Though
overtly a fantasy, the film’s real aim is to provide something of a visual
travelogue of India, showcasing the luxuries of wealth contrasted with the
struggles of poverty with the upper and lower classes clashing together at times
for the sake of the camera. In addition
to sporting numerous real world locations, there’s an old fashioned sense of
Hollywood spectacle sweeping through many of the earlier battle sequences and/or
celebratory parades. Visually, this can
be a stunning film to look at thanks to the work of two cinematographers, Henry
Harris and German director of photography Emil Schünemann.
Speaking
of nationalities, Shiraz represented
for the time a unique coproduction between India, Germany and Great Britain. Though director Franz Osten was German, the
working relationship formed between himself and producer/actor Rai ensured the
two would make many more films together over the years. Not to mention the film was being made at a
time of political unrest in India with efforts to wrestle away from the firm
grip of British rule, with the film arguably more or less serving as a visual
example of why India matters.
Over the
years, German and Indian prints of Shiraz
deteriorated past the point of salvageable.
That is, until intact elements carefully preserved at the BFI National
Archive were unearthed. Combined in
parts with the original camera negative as well as some shots that were too
damaged reconstructed from various sources, the elements were restored in 4K
using the delicate wet-gate scanning system to ensure minimal damage to the
film.
Aiding the
film’s luminous, frequently radiant vistas is an original specially
commissioned score by Grammy Award winning musician Anoushka Shankar. Authentic to the world of the picture and an
organic listen in it’s own right, the original score created for Shiraz like the film itself transports
you the viewer into a world never experienced in cinema up to that time. Though a work of pure romantic melodrama with
many of the tropes germane to silent cinema (particular German silent film), Shiraz is an important piece of cultural
history for world cinema and the earliest offerings in modern Indian cinema as
it would come to be known.
--Andrew Kotwicki
