Phool aur Patthar (1966) and Puthiya Velicham (1979)

Puthiya Velicham (1979), produced by Subramaniam Kumar and directed by Sreekumaran Thampi was a remake of the Dharmendra starrer Phool aur Patthar (1966), the movie that ‘made’ Dharmendra the action star of Bollywood.

Puthiya Velicham (1979)

Puthiya Velicham (1979) told the story of this career criminal Venu (Jayan), the love of his life, a club dancer called Lily ( Jaya Bharathi), and the entry of a widowed, beautiful woman (Srividya) whom Venu gets acquainted with, in one of his midnight robberies. He stumbles upon her, ailing, bedridden  and sinking, in a mansion he breaks into, and takes care of her, and in a peculiar turn of events, ends up taking her and offering her refuge in his bachelor quarters. Lily, desperate to leave the crime-ridden life,  wants Venu to leave it all and walk away. But Venu is planning for that final one, the biggest heist of his career, the one that would never even make him want to do another ‘job’, but things take an interesting turn with the new ‘arrival’ at his house.

After 32 years, Padmarajan’s Rathinirvedam (1978) gets remade (Sigh)

I never thought it would come to this. The Malayalam Film Processor Machine has now decided to serve Padmarajan’s Rathinirvedam (1978) in bubble wrap and tinsel wrappings, to be directed by T.K.Rajeev Kumar.

All I can say is ughhh..and a heave a deep-drawn out sigh. Why exactly do they do this? Why? Rathinirvedam was our answer to lady Chatterley’s Lover and Lolita, in a way only a genius conceive and translate it on the big screen, treading the fine ground between pornography and sexual awakening that was brilliant, beautiful, at places corny but a cinematic experience, so much like Padmarajan’s other creations.

Padmarajan’s Nakshathrangale Kaaval (1978)

A week down the line, I realize it is difficult to get out of the vice-grip that a literary work by Padmarajan has on your soul. It was on a whim that I dusted off the old, dog-eared collection ( from my school days) of the Celestial Storyteller, and dived straight in, starting with Nakshathrangale Kaaval (1978). It might have been a coincidence that the recent news report about his son, Ananthapadmanabhan starting off on preliminary scripting in remaking the 1978 film version of this fantastic story of three souls bound together in deep friendship, love, immorality, lust and celestial love.

I remember watching the movie in one of the late-night sessions of Doordarshan Kerala, thanks to probably a very bored program executive trying to bring some life into the otherwise staid proceedings of DD’s program chart. But try as I might, now, I just cannot  recollect the main protagonists of the movie, I know there was MG Soman as Prabhu and Adoor Bhasi as Varmaji (Uncle). Recently I got hold of an old movie-still  from the film which had MG Soman and Jaya Bharathi which brings me to the next question