Shiraz is not an epic in storytelling. It’s narrative doesn’t take twists-and-turns and include subplots only tangentially related to the main story. This is reflected in the film’s runtime, only one hour and forty-five minutes long, small compared to other epics made around the world at the time, like Metropolis or Napoleon. Shiraz is an epic in a technical sense with grand art design, costume design and choreography.
The story as I said is simple enough. A daughter of a princess is taken up by a potter after her mother is killed in a raid while they are travelling to North India. The princess is given the name Selima (Enakshi Rama Rau) and she grows up with the potter’s son Shiraz (producer Himansu Rai). Shiraz loves Selima but one day she is stolen away by slave traders and ends up in the harem of Prince Khurram (Charu Roy), who will later became the fifth Mughal Emperor Shah Jahan. It’s up to Shiraz to rescue her now. The story of course is pure fiction allowing the director to throw forth hugely romantic and tragic characters into the mix of a plot that doesn’t make much narrative sense. Especially in the second act when the action shifts to the prince’s palace and there’s a rival for the prince’s affections, a lot of plot holes emerge in the resolution. But the plot makes sense on an emotional level, manipulating the characters to get them to the necessary positions for them to make emotional development and get in line with the director’s tragi-romantic vision.
The makers here are too intoxicated with the imagery of India (the varied geography, the palaces, the costumes, the elephants) to take any social standing, or at least make commentary on any of the issues of the time. The harem and the slave market are treated as just another part of the Mughal (and in large Muslim) culture of the time. What the film does have in spades though is the aforementioned exotic Indian imagery. The camera takes in the whole of the plain during the opening raid sequence. The costumes appear authentic and radiate on screen. The location shooting enhances the authenticity of the film and at the end the Taj Mahal is shot in wide shot showcasing it for the architectural marvel it is.
This wouldn’t have looked half as much epic if the film hadn’t been painstakingly restored by the British Film Institute. One advantage the team had was they had the original negative to work with which is preferable. The images look pristine, highlighting the incredible original camera work. The actors’ faces too are given a clarity that allow them to emote fully.
And then there’s the retroactive score, composes by Anoushka Shankar (daughter of Pandit Ravi Shankar) which becomes an integral part of the experience and is as much an important component as the camera work in this restored version. The music starts off traditionally with the tabla and the sitar playing a big part and I was afraid it would lead to a stereotypical score but the score evolves still using native Indian instruments for the most part but also using modern instruments to increase the tension in certain scenes. When the film starts losing a bit of steam in the second act, the score keeps us engaged.
German director Franz Osten directed a few more films in India before being extradited back to Germany by the British. I don’t know if his films influenced the later Bollywood epics or Bollywood’s obsession with Mughal royalty as a means of romantic storytelling but you can find various tropes in his films that still exist in Bollywood’s historical films.
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