I’ve played this half a dozen times in the past 36 hours or so. I’ve also listened to the whole album a couple of times. I’m ready to call this the best soundtrack ever! I fell alseep with it going into my earbuds yesterday morning, and I felt as though i was drifting off into some sweet dreams. I don’t specifically remember any dreams with a young Vyjayanthimala dancing around (too bad), but it was still all very nice. Also very soothing for troubled times.
2. “Dil Ne Phir Yaad Kiya” from Mahal (1949)
I played this song about four times in a row while riding the subways late Friday night into Saturday morning. (And I didn’t even know that Lata Mangeshkar’s birthday was coming up – a rather spooky coincidence. :) I’ve also played this soundtrack recently for people who have no inclination to listen to filmi music, and everybody seems to like it. I think it’s timeless. It’s almost hard to believe it came out in 1949… In many ways it would fit right in with a lot of “dark wave”/goth kind of music, or at least goth-associated rock. (I can easily see Kate Bush singing this.) It looks like such a goth movie, too. Especially with that cute young goth girl in the film clip (I believe her name is Madhubala)…
Visually, it’s a delightful black-and-white Helen number, one of my favorites, although it is also (I would assume) kind of obscure. I was pleased, after I mentioned this in comments to Memsaab’s now-famous ten favorite Helen songs post, to find a number of people coming over to my blog to check out this song – not only because I always want to lure people over to my blog, but also because it is such a good song, I want to share it with people who might not know about it.
I didn’t arrive at this one looking for a Helen number. In fact, I landed here on a search for more Geeta Dutt. And Geeta here does a duet with Mohammed Rafi, which is always good. The song borders on a rock and roll piece, and you know both these singers can get really good when the music rocks. (Although they’re really good in other kinds of music also.) Altogether, I find this one hard to resist, or to get out of my head.
Aside from the fact that I can associate this song with a Jayshree T. dance, I think the song is very pleasurable all by itself. Every time I encounter it (and you know that I play that clip pretty often), it gets stuck in my head. It’s hard to describe what about the song appeals to me so much; you can’t classify it, really (except, well, it’s melodic, a little poppy, kind of with some more traditional Indian folk influences?). Let’s just say that there’s great singing by Asha Bhosle, and great music S.D. Burman. That should tell you most of the reason why it turned out so good.
5. Perhaps the strangest of the bunch (especially to get stuck in your head)…
That, of course, is “Tadbeer Se Bigadi Huee Taqdeer Bana Le” from Baazi (1951). It is a catchy and laid back kind of number that might naturally get stuck in your mind even if you just hear it, especially with that singing by Geeta Dutt . However, in my mind, I can’t separate it from the visuals and from the context. Geeta Bali and Dev Anand both look great in this. And the context around it make this song pretty funny, in a strange way. Right before she started singing, we saw some character getting slapped around in this rather unpleasant gambling gangster’s den. And the lyrics that she is singing here are about how you should take a chance in life, gamble a little, have a little faith… Meanwhile, the character herself meets a rather unfortunate fate further down the road. So, as I was saying, kind of funny, and ironic, and dark.
Yes, I finally got to see Nagin (1954), in its entirety… In terms of plot and character, the best way to describe this, as a lot of people know already, is “Romeo and Juliet in the jungle with snakes.” The snakes are there because the two tribes at the center of the story are engaged in a feud due to economic competition in the sale of snake poison – that part, granted, is a bit different. There’s also a very unwanted arranged marriage that’s going to take place soon (since this is an old Indian movie, after all), and the ending is somewhat different, too (at least the very ending is)… Plus, the execution of this plot, as it progresses, is rather strange. However, I wouldn’t call Nagin exceptional overall in its basic story and plot developments, etc.
Not that the plot and characters are bad, but these aspects of the film don’t inspire me to write a whole lot. If you’d like to see a good review that sums it all up very well, see The Illuminated Lantern; this person says everything I might have said if I wanted to take the time to go into so much detail.
On the other hand, there are a few things about this film that do inspire me to write something, because they made Nagin a very delightful experience for me.
First, there’s the music. The soundtrack, composed by Hemant Kumar (aka Hemanta Mukherjee) is quite amazing. The famous snake-charming song, “Been Music” (which is also the intro to “Man Dole Mera Tan Dole”), actually features the first use in HIndi films of a synthesizer – i.e., the claviolin. (And anyone who’s seen this blog in its earlier stages knows that I can be very fond of synthesizers, strangely enough – I even once promised that they would be a big ingredient here.) Of course, this song is not classic simply because of that claviolin usage; it’s the melody, too. That melody is composed by another music director, Ravi, and the musician Kalyanji Virji Shah has a signficant role in this. (You may recognize Shah from another song that I posted recently…) Together, they produce something that will entrance you and hook you in.
The rest of the soundtrack is very fine also. In fact, even though “Been Music/Man Dole Mera Tan Dole” is obviously the biggest hit in this movie, I don’t even think it’s my favorite. My favorite has to be “Jadugar Saiyan,” with such catchy and sweet instrumentation combined with that great singing by Lata Mangeshkar…
Plus there are many more songs worth listening to. Most contain fine singing by Lata, though there are a couple in which Hemant Kumar does a good job singing his own tunes (picturized on the lead actor, Pradeep Kumar). And by the way, to hear it all for yourself (if you don’t see the movie first), you can download that soundtrack at Music from the Third Floor. (Just note, though, that you won’t know how to download music from this site until you start looking at the comments. It took me a while to figure that one out.)
Now for the second reason that this film is so delightful… I might have already made that obvious. In case I haven’t, here’s another hint, in the clip for the song “Sun Re Sakhi More Sajana Bulaye”:
I understand that this was a big breakthrough movie for Vyjayanthimala. Not that she hadn’t done great stuff before… For instance, I love some of her dancing that I’ve seen in clips from Bahar, made in1951. But Nagin was a much greater hit than anything she’d been in earlier. Additionally, I think she’s more beautiful in this than in her earlier movies. In Bahar, she still looks like a bit too much of a teenage kid, and I’d say the same thing about a scenes I’ve seen from Lakdi. Even in Nagin, she’s barely 18, if that old, but she is more impressive here.
The third reason to be simply delighted by this movie is those crazy color scenes, with those wild sets, near the end. They are so fantastic – simply, totally out-there… And, while they’re very dramatic sometimes, they can also be very funny.
By the way, I think there are two songs in the color excerpt above, “Teri Yaad Mein Jal Kar Dehk Liya” and “Unchi Unchi Duniya Ki Deewarien.” There’s a third song in the color part of the film that’s not included above, “Sun Rasiya Man Basia”:
There also seems to be a lot of instrumental music in between songs that doesn’t belong to any song, or else it’s just hard to tell which song we’re in (even while selecting the songs through the DVD). It’s really all just one long song and dance through delerium.
In a way, this whole great color sequence fits right in with a few dream sequences that appeared in Bollywood movies in the mid ’50s … The Awara dream sequence comes to mind; so does the dream in Pyaasa, as do the great fantasy scenes in Navrang. (I also can’t help thinking of a scene from the 1965 movie, Gumnaam, though I guess that was more of a spoof on the earlier films.) But I wonder if the sequence in Nagin isn’t just the craziest of them all, and the most fun to watch as well.
For this part alone, I should probably not neglect giving lots of credit to the director, Nandlal Jaswantlal, and should probably name the whole art department, too. I won’t do that, but if anybody is curious about more of the personnel involved, IMbD seems to have a pretty good listing this time. I’m sure everyone in this long list added a little something to turn this movie based on an old drama into something unique. And by the end, it does turn out to be quite spectacular.
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P.S. I know I posted some of these clips a while back, when I was talking about different snake movies made over the years. But as far as I know, this one doesn’t really belong with the others, because it’s not a fantasy with people doing snake dances and/or turning into human snakes. There are old-style magical rituals being practiced here and there and, at one point, there’s even a curse created that’s meant to be carried out by snakes, but the supernatural aspect is understated compared what we see in later films.
P.P.S. By the way, this seems like as appropriate a movie as any to have reviewed on Lata’s 80th.
I have had the opportunity to watch Baazi with subtitles, because it briefly appeared on YouTube (before another account got suspended). Right from the first shot, this Guru Dutt-directed movie is visually compelling, just a pleasure to watch. It’s also great to listen to, with music by S.D. Burman and irresistible vocals from Geeta Dutt. The song above is “Sharmaye Kahe Ghabharaye Kahe.”
I think the last movie with Dev Anand that I wrote up was Tere Mere Sapne, in which he played an affluent doctor. In Baazi, made 20 years earlier, the character is not an affluent doctor, but he does fall for one (and she for him). That character is played by Kalpana Kartik. (Unfortunately, there is the matter of a disapproving father, who turns out to be a very bad man…) There is also a vamp who courts him from within the gambling underworld – played most intriguingly, as you can see above, by Geeta Bali.
Dev Anand’s character in Baazi lives in poverty…at first. In the first of probably many roles like this, Dev plays a poor man who can’t find a job, who finally manages to acquire some money (which helps him to get treatment for his ailing sister) in a questionable manner…through gambling.
So there is a lot of that good old social relevance in this picture, with plenty of discussion about rich versus poor, and no holding back in the moral incrimination of at least some among the rich – a tendency that I will always welcome. (In this movie, there are some real crooked gamblers among the the rich. Imagine that…) Of course, we get treated to some murder and suspense along the way, as well an attempted frameup of the (anti) hero… But keep in mind that this film was made before all those other films you might be thinking of now, and there are a few things that are different, including some nice surprises regarding some of the characters.
Baazi was also made before a couple of other old films that I’ve seen with Dev Anand, which, like this one, were produced by him too – i.e., Kalapani (1958) and Kala Bazar (1960). And these three films have some striking things in common – not just in terms of the main character and those now-familiar plot devices, but even in certain littler elements, such as: the dramatic scenes in court, when the (anti) here must be proven (mostly) innocent; the time in jail spent for any real crimes committed; the renewal of a once troubled love affair, which always grows stronger and more stable when one of the partners is in jail… These are similarities that I could really take or leave; I guess I wouldn’t have noticed the elements of formula so much if I’d seen the three movies over the course of a decade, rather than a few weeks apart…
On the other hand, there are a couple of bigger, thematic things that these films have in common which I do appreciate: As I mentioned earlier with regard to Kala Bazar, they all convey a very strong sense of ethics, and – dark though the world might seem from scene to scene – some kind of justice usually prevails.
These films could qualify as ultimate examples of what we’ve all come to know and love as “Indian film noir.” But that name might be a little misleading, because they aren’t really that dark, especially by the end – they actually lift your spirits, at least a little.
I have wanted to get this movie for close to a year, ever since I saw it mentioned in 2007, along with its many remakes, over at Bollywood Food Club. I’ve also posted the most famous scene from this sometime back (but will not hesitate to post it again, of course). Now, finally, thanks to the same person who sent me that great movie starring the aunt of the star of this movie, I have had a chance to watch Manichitrathazhu in full, with subtitles. And it does make a difference to know the context of the literal insanity that you might see in the clips.
This is a sort of horror film, but it has a lot of comedy to it, and inentionally so. Sometimes, therefore, the humor is a bit dark – or the horror is a bit funny – and thus requires someone who can walk that sort of line, with an over-the-top but still convincing psycho act. Shobana is able to do that and much more. Her acting is impressive in ths film, and her dancing is fantastic. I imagine that this must have made her aunt Padmini proud.
Manichitrathazhu isn’t going to give you any deep thoughts or revelations about the world, but it does provide an interesting combination of two different horror/thriller themes, split personality and possesson. And while those themes have certainly been combined before, this plot adds a new angle by including a solution to the problem that also combines the scientific with the supernatural. The scientific explanation may win out over the supernatural, but the remedy for the psychological ailment requires the help of men versed in old magic. That might be the most interesting aspect of the plot; it is certainly a refreshing twist.
On the other hand, I couldn’t help noticing a very familiar scenario too, one which would probably grate against anyone with a feminist viewpoint: Here we have a woman gone out of control who needs to be cured by a few expert men. The most famous scene, surrounding the song “Oru Murai Vanthe,” also might look strangely sexist if taken out of context, because these men seem to be acting like voyeurs of her mandness, running like crazy up to those little windows to have a peek.
Taken in context, though, it doesn’t seem quite as perverted, because it’s all part of a bigger plan. But it’s still pretty funny in a way. This is a suspenseful time during the film, and they are supposed to be studying her with great anxiety as well as determination to cure her of her terrible illness. But who would not also want run down the hall like crazy and climb up to those little windows just to catch her doing this terrific dance?
(“Oru Murai Vanthe”)
It’s also kind of funny how the men are sometimes all terrified of her, as many of the men were terrified earlier when they thought they saw the ghost whom she has metaphorically absorbed into her psychosis…
To make this all a little clearer to anyone who hasn’t heard about this movie (and its many remakes), the main character, Ganga, played by Shobana, has developed a psychotic empathy with the legacy of a woman who once lived in the house where she now lives. This woman (who suffered a terrible fate long ago) happened to be a dancer. So, there is an explanation for why Ganga’s madness causes her to break out into bharatanatyam…which does coincidentally make this a wonderful madness to watch.
I actually wish there were more bharatanatyam madness here. More often in the movie, she just does the regular split-personality/possession kind of scene. Though she is awfully good at it.
(Subtitles in balloons from YouTube poster Raju0101012008… Not identical to the subtitles I got, but the gist is the same. )
I should add, by the way, that Shobana is not the only good actor here. Ganga’s husband, Nakulan, is played by Suresh Gopi, who does more than a decent job. The actor who plays Dr. Sunny Joseph, the shrink, is great; that’s Mohanlal, who I know I’ve seen in a few film clips, at least. And then there’s Vinaya Prasad, who plays the character Sreedevi… There’s a sort of false direction taken in the plot for a while, which puts more of a focus on Sreedevi and Dr. Joseph and some antics between them. I thought it went on for a bit too long, maybe because I already knew too much about the great scenes involving Shobana that would follow sometime soon. (And maybe also because that part of the movie just takes too long, compared to the really important part.) However, I found it easier to get through than I might have otherwise because it was a lot of fun watching Vinaya Prasad. Shobana might be the dancing beauty in this movie, but I found Vinaya Prasad to be adorably cute.
(By the way, sorry about lack of subtitles, but it’s not hard to figure out what’s going on here…)
The music, admittedly, did not interest me much, especially during those middle parts. The soundtrack, composed by M. G. Radhakrishnan, consists of a soft kind of music that I’ve heard in a few contemporary Malayalam film clips. (That singing sounds especially Malayalam to me – which just goes to show, I might not love absolutely everything from Kerala, though I do love most things from there…) I like “Oru Murai Vanthu,” but mostly because the softer elements are balanced by those wonderful bharatanatyam beats. (And the lyrics are kind of touching, and I do like that pretty duet at the end.) I think I much preferred the bharatanatyam music that Padmini often danced to, where the Tamil percussion came out stronger and everything just seemed to rock more. But that’s just a matter of personal taste; I know that some of this music has been praised a lot, and I’ll understand if people say that they love it. Conversely, I probably won’t understand it if someone claims not to love Shobana’s dance.
Several remakes of this movie came out in different Indian languages, and a few were hits. But I can’t imagine a remake of this movie being adequate without Shobana in it. I said close to a year ago, when I saw a few different versions of that “Oru Murai Vanthu” scene, that I thought Shobana’s was by far the best. I feel even more that way now.
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P.S. It was nice to see that one of the characters was played by KPAC Lalitha. KPAC Lalitha has an interesting story behind her. According to what I read, she couldn’t just call herself Lalitha because there was another famous actress in Kerala named Lalitha (perhaps Lalitha of the Travancore sisters?). So, she added the acronym KPAC to her name, since she happened to have gotten her start in the Kerala People’s Arts Club.
The song is “Neelakadampin Poovo.” This very pretty scene comes from the film adaptation of the 1952 play Ningalenne Communistakki, which translates as “You Made Me A Communist”; it was the most famous play from the Kerala People’s Arts Club.
A bold experiment in political theater in Kerala, KPAC (Kerala People’s Arts Club) was founded in 1950. It was the brainchild of a group of youngsters – G Janardhana Kurup, N Rajagopalan Nair and K S Rajamani – who had close ties with the undivided Communist Party of India (CPI).
‘Ente Makananu Sari’ (My Son is Right), in 1951, was the first drama performed by KPAC. But it was the second drama, ‘Ningalenne Communistakki’ (You Made Me a Communist) that launched KPAC in Kerala’s cultural scene. Soon, KPAC spearheaded a powerful people’s theater movement in Kerala. The play was banned by the authorities on the ground that it encouraged the people to ‘rebel against the government.’ Communist Party of India led a mass movement against the ban and these incidents heightened the play’s popularity. After the ban, the play made history in Malayalam Theater by becoming the first play to be staged more than 10,000 times. It was staged in several cities across the country.
Soon KPAC caught the imagination of public and it started churning out plays at regular intervals mainly based on social themes. The plays especially reflected the aspirations of the downtrodden for a society free of exploitation and oppression. Along with criticizing the existing society, the plays often looked for an alternative form of society and explored the possibilities of achieving it…
And some more interesting info, with news of a sequel, from Movie Dost:
KPAC’s second drama ‘Ningalenne Communistakki’ (You Made Me a Communist), was a path-breaking play in the history of communism in Kerala. It was first staged in Chavara Thattassery Sudarsana theatre in Kollam district on December 6, 1952. Thoppil Bhasi wrote the play which portrayed the transition of an elderly man from a conservative upper-caste Hindu into a Communist. Later, the drama was made as a film in 1970 with evergreen hero Prem Nazir in the lead.
After fifty-six years, the drama is now coming back with a sequel by Soman, son of Thoppil Bhasi. The sequel, titled ‘Enum Ente Thampranum’ (Me and My Lord), is all set to be staged in August. The drama will have a few characters from the original.
That item was written July 9. August has passed, and so far I haven’t been able to find news of the staging of the sequel. Maybe it’s been delayed. But I think it will be interesting to find out more about it, whenever it happens.
Further words are in order now that I finally got the chance to see Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai. This movie has been referred to so often in this blog already, and a certain scene has been discussed and promoted here so thoroughly (hint: Padmini under water…), that it might seem as though I already saw this film and wrote it up. But in truth, I didn’t have a chance to see it until a certain generous individual who initially corresponded with me through this blog sent me this movie along with a few others for my perusal. Now I can say that I have really seen it, and it turned out to be even better than I expected. (I know, I often say that about Indian movies – but in order for this one to be even better than I expected, it had to be really, really good!)
Philip of Philip’s Fil-ums, who strongly encouraged me to see this a couple of months ago, was very much on-the-mark at the beginning of his review when he wrote, “This lavish dacoit fantasy—as visually sumptuous as it is ideologically ingenuous…,” although I’d add that it was aurally sumptuous too, with great thanks to Shankar Jaikishan. The soundtrack here is on par with the classic scores that Shankar Jaikishan did for the Raj Kapoor films of the 1950s – i.e., Awara, Shree 420, and Chori Chori.
The dancing in this film is far better than what I saw in Shree 420, much as I loved that film. And how could it not be, especially in my eyes? Everyone knows that Padmini is the greatest in my opinion, and she does some her best dancing here. (Although the comparison might get a bit close if we talk about Chori Chori, beause of that Kamala Lakshman number – but no need to get into that here.)
Padmini does some of her very best acting in this film as well. She plays the role of the young dacoit woman named Kammo beautifully, with some small touches that are truly unique. For instance, it’s unforgettable (and has been to many, so I understand) when she punctuates the majority of her sentences with that little exclamation, “Hoi, hoi, hoi.” (It could be that this phrase was written into the script a lot also, but Padmini utters it in a way that makes it distinctly hers.) She also brilliantly depicts a certain transformation that Kammo undergoes, from being that tough and quirky dacoit girl to the beautiful heroine in love. (Though I should add that she never was a dacoit in the real sense; that is, she wasn’t actively committing robberies and other crimes. In this movie, a lot of people are dacoits by assocation because they are part of a small village led by the real dacoits, who are all men. Kammo is the daughter of someone who’s the chief of the dacoits when the film begins.)
Raj Kapoor does a great job here too, though I think that his character, Raju, is a little less well fleshed out than, say, the similar character named Raj that he played in Shree 420 (which, though one of several similar characters that he played in different films, is the one who kept popping up in my mind)… For instance, while the Raju here is just as much an enigma as Raj is (at least at first) in Shree 420, and while he performs a similar act of seeming like a simpleton while actually turning out to be smarter than everyone else (at least at times), in Shree 420, it becomes clear that this act/disguise is often deliberate, and the reasons are explained. In Jis Desh…, I think, Raju still remains something of an enigma right up to the end. It’s obvious that people are being wrong when they assume that Raju always knows less than they do – those people including Kammo, who seems to regard him as something of an idiot at times, especially in the first half or so, though she seems also to adore him for it. But by the end of Jis Desh…, it’s still hard to figure out if or when he’s been consciously faking it, or not. Is he brilliant in some ways, but still a simpleton in others? Or is he being brilliant by being simple, i.e., steering clear of thoughts that plauge so many people? I found myself asking a few questions, but I don’t think the answers are to be found anywhere.
What is clear by the end is that he has some consistent philosophies – merely disguised sometimes as being simple – which, as Philip pointed out, bear a lot of resemblance to Gandhi’s. (Although he was far from the only hero with Gandhian philosophy portrayed in Indian films around 1960. For instance, check out the character whom Dev Anand portrays in Kala Bazar, especially in the final scenes of that film.)
It was interesting seeing Raj Kapoor paired with Padmini. Padmini does a wonderful job here at portraying the giddiness of someone in love, and I personally love the scene in which she starts giggling at almost everything that Raju says, just because he is delighting her. I don’t think the chemistry between them is nearly as convincing as the pairing of Raj and Nargis in the mid ‘50s, but then, where was the chemistry of any couple in any movie that good? That having been said, it is still a hell of a lot of fun watching Raj and Padmini going through so much drama together, and so many song-and-dance sequences, too.
And, by the way, one actor who is really outstanding in this film is Pran. I’d been told by a couple of big Pran fans out there how great Pran is, etc., but this was the first film during which I said to myself, wow, this is a great villain, and Pran is so great in this role! It could be because this villain, Raka, is just a complete outlaw, while the Pran character I’d seen in a few other movies was actually a rich society kind of villain, possibly not quite as compelling (which is not to say that I don’t appreciate it when the rich society guy is the villain, certainly). Also, I have to say, that I love Pran’s hair in this movie; I haven’t seen other male actors in Bollywood films, especially ones this old, with a hairstyle that was anything like this…
The plot of the movie might be a little more problematical. Philip was right to point out certain contradictions, since the dacoits are romanticized but also often depicted as villains or, at best, people who are very misguided. But I found that the police were also treated in somewhat contradictory ways.
Philip points out some historical reasons why it is a little unsettling at the end to see the dacoits do what is supposedly the right thing, not only giving up their evil ways but also completely putting themselves in the hands of the police. (By the way, I hope that’s not a “spoiler,” but so many other people have spoiled that part already, I figured it’s almost as inocuous as revealing the end to Mother India.) Philip says that the state had come to be seen as less benevolent since the time that this movie was made. But the state and the police don’t seem as benevolent during the movie either, and that might be another major source of that “unsettling” feeling. For instance, it’s made clear a couple of times that the state won’t hesitate to unleash a barrage of bullets on the dacoits as an entire group (if they deem it necessary), even if it means killing innocent women and children. The police superintendent even makes it clear at one point that he believes in a sort of collective retaliation – that if this group goes around murdering children (and there was at least one robbery in which a child was shot), the state certainly can’t worry too much about the dacoits’ children being put at risk as well. (Which idea Raju, of course, counters with some words about rising above the violence altogether.) In this final scene, there is also a lot of concern about the women and children getting massacred if the dacoit men initiate a battle. We are assured at the very end that the state will be “merciful,” but even given the events within the movie, can we have total faith that this will be the case?
Clearly, Jis Desh is a socially complicated film – but that works a lot in its favor, too. For instance, I like the explanation that Kammo gives about the dacoits helping to redistribute the wealth a little, about their countering the discrepancy between rich and poor. That obviously isn’t a full or entirely sincere explanation of their actions and motives and is certainly not a justification for them. Nonetheless, this dialogue offers up a thoughtful (albeit brief) contemplation of economic inequality as a root cause of violence and crime. And a follow-up dialogue between Kammo and Raju even brings up the question of whether socialism or equality can be achieved with violence or must be sought in other ways – a really universal, timeless sort debate about tactics that appears in a very brief form in the middle of so much adventure and drama.
Jis Desh Mein Ganga Behti Hai may not be perfect, but it can provoke a lot of thought in addition to providing so much compelling adventure and some of the best song-and-dance numbers that you’re going to find anywhere.
(Finally starting to play around with screen caps… So, I thought I’d post this snippet of dialogue from Jis Desh…which is turning out to be even greater than I thought it would be! Though I’m still watching it, of course.)
Aslo featured in this clip – for the song “Andelaravamidi Padamulada” – are co-star Venkatesh and Sharon Lowen, who plays herself (i.e., a woman who graduated from the University of Michigan in 1973, went to India, and became one of the world’s foremost artists in several styles of Indian classical dance). Sharon Lowen’s part in this film is the most unusual feature as well as the most amusing. The rest of the movie, at least in terms of plot and substance, is pretty conventional and predictable. However, it is still a charming movie, and I did like the very end of the scene here, where Bhanupriya’s character, Meenakshi, says something about the power of art, and being devoted to an art, that we just don’t hear much these days, anywhere. This is the best scene, and Bhanupriya’s dancing is a joy to watch. (That’s probably the best thing about this movie – and there is plenty of it, since she plays a young classical dancer facing a few challenges in life. The second best thing is the music by Ilaiyaraaja. I believe the impressive male playback singer here is Balasubramaniam S.P. There are three female playback singers in this movie, K.S. Chitra, Vani Jairam, and S. Janaki; as far as I know, any of them might be singing here.)
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P.S. Directed by K. Vishwanath, who also wrote the story and screenplay; dialogue by Sainath.
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Dances on the Footpath 
