Unfortunately, no subtitles for this classic. But I’m less interested in the dialogue here than in the amazing dances from Kumari Kamala (or Baby Kamala, as some might have still been calling her, though she had gone beyond her prodigy years at this point, reaching the ripe old age of 12 or 13).
I have to thank Minai for showing me where to find these and, in fact, I’m going to lift the first clip straight from another one of her wonderful Tamil cinema posts, this one on The Freedom Movement Through Tamil Cinema (with a scan of the fine article on the subject from Galatta). I have already warned Minai that I was going to put this on my blog too, because I once had posted this dance here and Moserbaer took it away from me. I still have the famous Gandhi Mahan song up in a post from a little over a year and a half ago, but this one is even better, the dance to the great M.K. Bharathiyar song of liberation, Aduvome Pallu Paduvome.
Of course, since this is not a separate dance clip but the first part of the uploaded movie, there is other stuff in this clip too (including a bicycle ride that Minai mentions being fond of – well, it’s OK, but it’s not a Kamala dance). So, to get right to the Kamala dance, go to 6:34:
And then there is another Kamala dance that I like just as much, if not more. It’s her drum dance(!) plus a few other things. In the final part of the movie, this one starts at almost the same point as the dance in the first part, around 6:31 (though there’s some other fun – if extremely patriotic – theater taking place before it):
And for those who want to watch the whole movie, you can find it all here. Since it is in Tamil without subtitles, a lot of people reading this won’t understand any of the dialogue, but it might be worth it just to see this classic anyway (and I might sit down and watch the whole thing from beginning to end myself sometime soon).
By the way, some people may have noticed that I got these clips from the same source where I got the early Padmini-Lalitha clip (or, rather, I found that one after seeing these clips). I’m going to keep a close eye on Thirishakumaran’s channel and hope it stays with us.
Dances on the Footpath 
Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but it was lots of fun watching both the videos! ;-)
I’m not sure if I get why you shouldn’t say it, but I’m glad you liked them.
The first clip is very interesting from a historical perspective. The map of India includes what is now Pakistan and Bangladesh but not Burma and of course we see the old Indian National Congress flag.
Also the clothes, the salwar kameez, nehru cap and the Jai Hind greeting very “un Tamil” so interesting for me to see. Later that went away–except for the Muslims who continued to wear the salwar kameez.. And now the salwar kameez is back.
The bike song in the beginning looks like a Dev Anand clip and stylistically also something I am used to from Hindi cinema. Except Dev Anand came later.
Sophy, thank you for pointing out the geographic/historical peculiarities, especially the map. I guess this movie was not made late enough in 1947 to take Partition into account? (BTW, looking up the history of Burma – which I admittedly know somewhat less about – I see that it ceased to be part of British India in 1937, though it did not become completely independent from Britain until 1948.)
Watching this scene, I also was reminded of a Vyjayanthimala dance in a film that was made in 1953 (in Hindi, Tamil, and Telugu versions, all the same year – with the same dances in all of them, if I’m not mistaken). This dance also had a scene with a map of India and some patriotic(?) lesson involved, and I thought the map would be different, considering the year. But maybe the map and lesson are historical references(?), because, unless I’m mistaken, at least in the version of the film/dance that I got hold of (i.e., the Telugu version), the map covers basically the same area:
Hello Richard! Thanks for the reference and link. :) I made the same connection to the maps in the Sangham songs that you did, though I had only seen the clips under the film’s Tamil name Penn, so I’m very glad that I’ve now learned of the film’s Hindi name! Such charming, cute dances with great set pieces. I was also charmed by seeing Vyjayanthimala in another Penn song (that’s since been removed from YouTube) in which she wore a retro bikini and sporty athletic gear, which surprised me quite a bit! I took a screencap of it here, if you’re interested :) http://i595.photobucket.com/albums/tt39/MinaiMinai/vyjayanthi_penn_1954_9.jpg
Minai, you are welcome for the reference and link, and I’m glad you didn’t mind my lifting that clip from your blog right after you posted it. :)
And that’s great that you made the same connections I did between the map in Naam Iruvar and the one in Penn/Ladki/Sangham… This is pretty obscure territory, so to speak. :)
That’s also an interesting photo of Vyjayanthimala in the “retro bikini,” not the kind of attire that I would normally associate with an early Vyjayanthimala film.
claim that for some later movie, she didn’t want to photographed swimming in a bikiini or bathing suit? (I seem to recall something like that. And as you say, it’s a retro bathing suit, and not shown the way, say, Raj Kapoor liked to show a bathing suit).