Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.
With the revamped version of The List, new films were inserted pretty much into every decade. I had been done with the silent films for some time, and with a viewing of Prapancha Pash (A Throw of Dice), I’m again done with silents, at least for a bit. While this is a film obviously made in India with Indian actors, but it’s really a German production. And “production” is the operative word here. In fact, that would be my guess as to why it’s shown up on The List now. This is a production that allegedly involved 10,000 extras and 1,000 horses plus elephants and tigers. This is opulence on the scale of De Mille or Erich von Stroheim.
The story relies in part on ancient film conventions that, while still used sometimes today, are the kind of thing routinely looked at as bad filmmaking. I’d argue that the particular twist that drives the middle of the film never works unless it’s better written than what we have to work with here.
