Andha Naal – Thamizh (1954)
Andha Naal (that day) was a different movie attempt by S.Balachander(Trivia: He played the part of a person in hiding in the Sivaji movie – Maragadham – now available in Moser Baer VCD), who followed it up with a much interesting Bommai(the doll) and “Edhirpaaradhadhu”(Unexpected). S.Balachander must have been an international movie follower and must have caught the glory behind the script of Kurosowa’s “Roshomon” much earlier. Here he weaves a similar murder mystery involving the murer of Rajan played by a Suave and stylish Sivaji Ganesan. There are obvious suspects like enemies in business and house servants. There is also a demure and coy housewife Usha played excellently by the Kannada star Pandari Bhai.
Balachander(not to be confused with K.Balachander who came much later) was known to be an uncompromising film maker and that was evident (markedly) for avoiding songs in this movie to keep the plot tension strong and audience always on the edge of their seat. Contrast this with a much modern movie on similar lines “Raam” by Ameer who had to make compromises to add songs so as to sell the movie. This is clearly indicative of how thin a line of freedom is there for an innovative director in Indian movie scenario. Coming back to Andha Naal, the lack of songs was more revolutionary those days because it was a norm to have a minimum of 25 songs in 1950s in a movie.
The success of the director in this movie has to be credited on three major counts. Firstly for taking a recent historic setting as a backdrop to generate the much needed plot tension, namely that of World War 2 and an imminent fear that lay over Madras(Chennai as it was called then) – possibility of Japanese bombing. Secondly, the conscious decision to place the story withing the four walls of the crime scene. Third and most important aspect being the controlled performance offered on screen to audiences that were fed prominently on either non stop song train or non stop dialogue train ( sivaji himself notorious for continuous flowing and thundering dialogue delivery in earler movies like Parasakthi and Manohara). There was no over emoting and the lighting and cinematography(I dont know much about this, however this film was much different from its contemporaries) was done to accentuate slight twitches in the face of the actor so that the tension of running thought in the character’s mind could be aptly conveyed to the audience.
Music too was used in a minimal way. I guess the music was by Balachander himself for this movie. In later movies he used the genius M.B.Srinivasan. (Trivia: Legendary K.J.Yesudas sang his first thamizh song for the title track of Bommai (the doll))
Coming to performances, the movie was known far and wide for Sivaji’s foray into a different style of acting, more modelled on Hollywood. The urban city slicker with negative shades was brought alive to legendary proportions by this actor who is rightly hailed as the “Varsity of Acting”. The same actor would have played the same character in a totally different manner had it been a stage play. In the movie and that too helmed by Balachander, Sivaji knew exactly how to present himself in the frame. Be it a menacing glance or total arrogant carelessness and casual attitude to his wife, he presented a new way to me frigthening without straining too much. His performance in this movie would be perfected further by him in his later movie “Pudhiya Paravai” , which incidentally was a murder mystery too.
Pandari Bhai had almost nothing to do in Sivaji’s first movie “Parasakthi”. she was more familiar to audience as a Hari katha artiste from Mysore. In this movie she had the major bulk of the acting and emoting to do as the grieving widow of Rajan (as mentioned earlier played by Sivaji). She too being a stage artiste knew what to do and how much. The result was one of the earliest restrained performances by a leading lady in south indian screen those days who had to shed bucketful of glycerines regularly.
In short this was one movie that wasn’t aimed at any particular audience and still was successful in winning over all. the success was unexpected as many thought that the director was a crazy guy to do movie without songs and the actors stupid to put their career on the line by opting for the movie. 53 years later, still everyone in Thamizh nadu remember this movie as one of the earliest murder mysteries (and one of the very few) shot and told in a way that would have made a hitchcock proud. Did I mention Roshomon in the start of my post? Yes, this movie was very much similar in the way the character of the dead man and the events of the day in which he died were gradually pieced together by an Inspector by interviewing various characters. There were many twists and turns in the plot and I don’t want to reveal the surprising climax(It was for me). Go ahead grab a VCD or a VHS tape from Raj Video Vision (I donno if there was a DVD of this one) or wait for Sun TV to telecast this movie and enjoy the fun of seeing a vintage story recreated by one of the most underrated genius of Indian movie industry, the great S.Balachander.
Anurag Kashyap
Abhay Deol
Dibakar Banerjee
Hansal Mehta
Khalid Mohamed
Kundan Shah
Anish Kuruvilla
Jaideep Verma
Manish Gupta
Navdeep Singh
Bhavani Iyer
D. Santosh
Onir
Ashvin Kumar
Ramu Ramanathan
Sudhir Mishra
Pankaj Advani
Revathy
Saurabh Shukla
Shilpa Shukla
Sujoy Ghosh
Suparn Verma
Santosh Sivan
Shashank Ghosh
Shivajee
Pavan Kaul
Partho Sen-Gupta
Prroshant Naryannan
Sam Langoria
Satish Kasetty
andha naal nyabagam nenjile vandade…nanbane…nanbane…nanbane……
Not to forget, its inspiration from Citizen Kane. For its time, I think the movie is pretty good. I think it’s one of those less-naive effort from that time. Nice post!
looks exciting/intresting… hope to catch it on SUN TV if is showed…i guess have never seen the better performances of Sivaji Ganeshan…have always seen him over-the-top so am repelled by him… but this looks to be pretty different from his usual self…always used to(still do) wonder why Kamal used to take his name in great respect… as a great actor/performer…
Kamal praises sivaji becoz Sivaji is behemoth of an actor, who can cater to the audiences soaked in theater and stage effect with loud non-stop dialogues, with stylish underplayed mannerisms, with slapstick comedy, with very subtle pathos, with dollops of understated romance, with loads of menacing villainy or for the matter stuff of art house acting. His “loud” performances were in the days where subtlety had no space. He introduced subtle acting in movies like Andha naal, pudhiya paravai, annayin aanai so on and so forth. Sivaji’s mythological movie acting is something unequalled and unparalleled in Indian movie history. For his subtle and not so subtle acting glimpse, please watch “Thiruvarutchelvar” a devotional movie of Saivism saints. That is why Kamal thought that the role of Periya Thevar must be done by none other than Sivaji in Thevar Magan. The same reason why Rajinikanth wanted Sivaji for his padayappa. If SIvaji didn’t work on art movie kinds, there were his own personal reasons. Had he done couple of offbeat roles, he would have bagged couple of golden lions atleast. Trivia: The intial cast of Bala’s Nandha was Ajith and Sivaji Ganeshan. When I saw Nandhaa, I wished how it would have been to see Sivaji for Raj Kiran (not to say that Raj Kiran did a bad job). Sivaji unfortunately couldn’t act due to health reasons and passed away subsequently.
Very good description of a rare gem!
Trivia: S.Balachander was more popular as a Veena vidwan, even within Tamil Nadu.
Its really an awesome piece of art by Sundaram Balachandar. Very fast moving and thrilling and entertaining movie from golden days is really a task that deserves appreciation.
Well does anybody know where we can download this movie from.