The Songs of Kanyakumari (1974)

Kamal Haasan and Rita Bhaduri in Kanyakumari (1974)

KS Sethumadhavan’s Kanyakumari (1974) had 2 songs in Malayalam written by Vayalar, set to music by MB Sreenivasan. There is an English song credited for its lyrics and music to MB Srinivasan but I strongly contest that and feel a collaborator on the lyrics have been left out. There are two instrumental pieces, catering to two disparate forms of dance as it were, a Shiv Parvati Lasya piece, and a music montage of Jayan’s memories of his Bohemian life, of a life-time of drugs, sex and rock-n-roll.

Kanyakumari (1974) | Weird dialects, a strange lucky mascot and melody time-travels

After watching Kanyakumari (1974) by the KS Sethumadhavan – MT Vasudevan Nair duo, there are places your eyebrows go, at times in puzzlement, at times in amusement and at times with sheer curiosity. These are what I felt had to be put down in a separate, yet related note. Who knows, you would find more, once you have watched the movie, or recall it from the times you watched it four decades back.

Classic Picks | KS Sethumadhavan | Kanyakumari (1974)

This is fondly dedicated to a “Kanyakumari Evangelist ”

Credit : MSI

Kanyakumari (1974), directed by KS Sethumadhavan based on MT Vasudevan Nair’s screenplay also had a unique pairing onscreen that was never repeated ever – Kamal Haasan with Rita Bhaduri   ( NOT to be confused with the younger sister of Jaya Bhaduri), that too in a Malayalam film production! It was her second movie in her career having graduated from the Pune Film Institute in 1973. Zarina Wahab, her batch-mate, however decided to stick with Malayalam films along with her work in Hindi, and even started off paired opposite, guess whom – Kamal Haasan in Malayalam, in Madanolsavam (1978).

This was also Kamal Haasan’s first film in Malayalam in a leading (?) role, after his debut in Kannum Karalum (1961), which again was by KS Sethumadhavan. Kanyakumari (1974) portrays a brief increment in time, centred around the three focii – Kanyakaumari and its enduring myths, the main Rest House of the tourist destination and the vistors to the coastal town who stay there, the squalid tenement of the leading protagonist, Parvati and the events that bind them, riding on sheer chances and coincidences. In a way, as I see it, Kanyakumari is an interesting study of helplessness, sexual and spiritual – of the leading members of the cast pitted against unbridled virility without any morality, and the how destiny addresses each in its own celestial logic.

The Old Malayalam Cinema Blog turns Three.

And, We are three years old.

The operative word is we, and that was exactly the objective when this initiative began, on my own terms, to contribute and put on record online , on whatever I could on the sepia years of Malayalam cinema , solely because, there weren’t any for me to immerse myself in, you see.

Remembering Jose Prakash, the once-bard, a better actor and the best baddie of Malayalam Cinema

Once again, thank you Jay for the reminder. Today is Jose Prakash’s  birthday ( would have been, if you are the “grammareligious” kind ), and even one year since his passing, his body of work ensures that he is still around, talking, sneering, bellowing, hollering but mostly sending a chill up your spine with the different ways that he conjured up Hate onscreen. As I caught the news of Pran Sikand being chosen for the Dadsaheb Phalke Award the other day, it didn’t fail to cross my mind on he similar aura both held onscreen in two different corners of the great cinema planet of our country, the highest recognition of the land reaching them almost with an apology, and the consummate gentlemen both were, off-screen.

Bhaskarasandhya 2013 | A Tribute in Music and Verse to P Bhaskaran

The P Bhaskaran Foundation, based out of Kodungallur, is paying tribute to arguably the greatest combination of “Poet, Playwright, Lyricist, Actor, Broadcaster, Cine Director, Film Producer, T.V. Producer, Tele-caster, Intellectual and a Humanist” from Kerala on 25th February 2013, 4 pm onwards at the Police Station Grounds, Kodungallur.

Adoor Bhasi | Malayalam cinema’s favorite cross-dresser

Cross-dressing onscreen in Indian cinema isn’t anything new, in fact it has been one of the reliable tools of generating guffaws in an onscreen narrative when the going is tepid or lack-lustre. Same has been the case with Malayalam cinema too, and more so owing to strong, polarised, testosterone-dripping “maleness” that have come to be associated with the onscreen leading personas since the past six decades – ever since we got the “bi-polar successions” of Sathyan – Prem Nazir, Mohanlal – Mammootty and hopefully it would end with the last.

The debate of 1928 vs 1930 | Chelangatt Gopalakrishnan’s meticulous research weighed against a Handbill.

Atleast, for Me !

[ I would like to place on record the inspiring initiative by Adv Narayan, who has been tirelessly following up leads and collecting factual information to set Malayalam Cinema's most debated part of history straight - that of the actual year of release of  The Lost Child / Vigathakumaran, the first film in Malayalam film history, and also to Saju Chelangatt ( son of Chelangatt Gopalakrishnan) who shared invaluable information on the  journalist's quest.  This post, tries to put it all in perspective, so that this also becomes a starting point of further debates, discussions and possibly, as Narayan states, the gateway to laying our hands on actual memorabilia of the film itself - even a reel of it from some corner of the planet would be a possibility. ]

The Kerala government at last wakes up to preserving its movie legacy, plans to start a film archive

Inside the National Film Archives, Pune

83 years after the successful screening of the first Malayalam film, Kerala will at last get a film archive to call its own, if the State government has its way. But it is still in the planning stage According to the press release that I came across, and I believe this was first put across during the recently concluded 17th IFFK in Thiruvananthapuram, the plan is to have “an archive of Malayalam classic films in the wintry environs of Munnar, mobile digital movie theatres, and panchayat-level facilities for mini film festivals”, but it is the “Archive” part that excites and saddens me at the same time.