Director: K. Subramanyam; Producer: K. Subramanyam; Cinematographer: Sailen Bose; Editor: R. Rajagopal; Cast: Papanasam Sivan, K.J. Mahadevan, Jolly Kittu Iyer, Salem Sundara Sastry, P.R. Rajagopala Iyer, S. Ramachandra Iyer, C.V.R. Chandran, Thanjavur Mani Iyer, W.S. Srinivasan, M.R.S. Mani, T.V. Neelakantan, S.A. Iyer, Komali Shambu, Baby Saroja, S.D. Subbalakshmi, K.S. Lalitha, Meenakshi Ammal, K.N. Kamalam, D. Chellammal, Leelabai, B. Haal, R.S. Rajalakshmi, K.N. Rajam, Baby Ramana, Baby Radha, S.S. Mani Bagavathar
Duration: 03:10:52; Aspect Ratio: 1.222:1; Hue: 225.000; Saturation: 0.016; Lightness: 0.126; Volume: 0.244; Cuts per Minute: 6.690
Summary: Subramanyam’s best-known film and Tamil cinema’s biggest 30s hit is a spirited contribution to the Independence movement, deploying Gandhian themes. Sambhu Sastry (Sivan) is portrayed as the Gandhi of Tamil Nadu, sitting on a dais spinning with a charkha. The film includes inserts from documentary footage of Gandhi. The story, published in the journal Ananda Vikatan and illustrated with stills from the film, tells of Sastry the Brahmin priest and his daughter Savithri (Subbulakshmi). It opens with Harijans waiting in front of a closed temple during a cyclone. Sastry is punished for sheltering them and he goes to Madras. The main plot focuses on daughter Savithri, married to the evil Sridharan (Mahadevan) who prefers to live in ‘Western’ luxury in Calcutta and mistreats his wife. Sastry, who sells his property to pay for the dowry, finds himself on the streets while his abandoned daughter, who returns to find her ancestral home gone, gives birth to a daughter Charu (Saroja) in a free hospital. She abandons her child at the feet of her father. He thereafter, together with the Harijan Nallan, embarks on Gandhian social uplift programmes including picketing liquor shops. Savithri becomes the wealthy Uma Rani, devoting herself to charity. In her new guise she rejects her husband who sues for the restoration of his ‘marital rights’. She loses the case, but her husband sees the light and becomes a nationalist. In the end, Savithri and her husband are imprisoned for disregarding the court’s verdict. In the slum, the Congress Party’s flag is raised. Pioneering the integration of melodrama with a symbol-laden political idiom later adopted by the DMK film, it has many scenes that resonate with local political meanings: the shot of Harijans standing outside the temple relates to the Temple Entry movement in the state; and footage of the Congress volunteers’s march (which briefly caused the film to be banned) is presented as the will of the goddess Ambikai, repeatedly invoked in the film by the religious Sastry. The precocious child Saroja, playing Sastry’s granddaughter, had been launched in
Balayogini (1936).
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