Be It Taj or Silent Films, ‘Shiraz’ Screening Teaches Us to Care

What does the screening of a silent film from 1928 tell us about our attitude towards cultural heritage?

Less than a couple of months ago, the cinema lovers of India heaved a collective anguished sigh. As per a news report, the National Film Archive of India, Pune, had misplaced, or disposed off, the prints of hundreds of films, both national and international. Amongst the works lost, there were many titles of immense cultural and historical importance, including prints of films by stalwarts like Satyajit Ray, Mehboob Khan, Raj Kapoor, Mrinal Sen and Guru Dutt. More than a hundred silent films are also missing as per the report on the NFAI inventory. Not only this, rare footage from pre-Independence era are also reported lost.

Now, in this context let us imagine a balmy evening in New Delhi celebrating the restoration of a silent film made in 1928. Watching Franz Osten’s Shiraz: A Romance of India, with a live background score by Anoushka Shankar, was nothing short of a layer of soothing salve on a freshly scraped wound.

As per the British Council brochures,

Shiraz tells the love story of the 17th century princess who inspired the construction of the Taj Mahal. For the modern viewer the appeal of Shiraz is the extreme rarity of a sophisticated silent feature film made outside the major producing nations of the West, the gorgeous settings and costumes and the glories of the spectacular fort at Agra and of course the iconic Taj Mahal, a central character here in its own right. Two infamous kisses that take place in the film will definitely surprise modern audiences and are really quite extraordinary for Indian Cinema of the period. Shiraz was adapted from Niranjan Pal’s play, the first Indian playwright to have his work performed in the West End.

This story, however, is about how to love right. It is as much a story about the love of an emperor for his wife as it is about the camaraderie and love between the said wife and her playmate from childhood. The screening of Shiraz in India makes a meta statement: The memory of what is valuable needs to be preserved, either as one of the wonders of the world or a painstakingly restored silent film.

The film was produced through a collaborative effort involving India, UK and Germany in 1928. Himanshu Rai, one of the founding fathers of the Indian cinema, played the eponymous protagonist. The film claimed to have been entirely shot at real locations and without any artificial lighting. This must have upped its exotic quotient in the West then. Sitting in a New Delhi auditorium in 2017, however, the focus remains on the art of filmmaking and, of course, restoration.

These gala performances of Shiraz are the culmination of the thousands of hours it has taken the BFI National Archive to restore and transform a silent film classic, ensuring that it is safely preserved for future generations. Very few Indian silent films survive, which makes Shiraz all the more important and precious.

Robin Baker, Head Curator, BFI

Robin Baker, the Head Curator of British Film Institute, demonstrated the ‘before and after’ of the print as a prologue to the New Delhi screening. As he explained the process, the pain of losing our vast cinematic treasure to neglect grew more acute.

Anoushka Shankar’s live performance accompanied the screening and the notes encapsulated the essence of this 1928 production: Present a story with the minimum loss in translation. Shankar’s composition was, predictably, a mix of East and West and was in sync with the film. Notwithstanding the virtuosity of the sound design, the experience was slightly marred by the bad acoustics of Siri Fort Auditorium. The notes were sometimes too loud for comfort and distracted from the on-screen ordeals of Selima, who’d later become Mumtaz Mahal.

The aftertaste of Shiraz is similar to that of the wine it shares a name with: Exuberant. After the initial gulp, the details, or the plot, recede in the background while the sommelier’s senses are awakened in unison by this burst of experience.