Duet !
It was a destined-to-be combination.
The duo ruled the roost for almost a decade, stealing the hearts and souls of all the movie goers in South India.
This is how it all started.
After producing super hits like Sankarabharanam and Sagarasangamam, Poornodaya brought in a not-so-popular young man, whose artistic debut feature was a commercial dud, to direct their next movie, his second movie.
The grateful young auteur shed his sweat and blood, and spared no effort in directing the movie. The movie got made, pending re-recording. Double positive arrived. Preview theater was booked. Producer, director, financiers – all arrived and watched the movie. The post-preview feedback was lukewarm, and almost hostile.
“What the EFFF did we just watch?”
“Where are the dialogs?”
“Yeah whatever! Weirdo.”
“What’s with all the eyes, hands, feet, shadows, boats, and the prolonged silences?”
“Looks like the fame and the fortunes Poornodaya made off the earlier movies is down the drain. Thank you.”
Whupped, the director went into a depression.
Having spent time, effort and money – the post production work continued on the movie.
Re-recording was scheduled.
The music director is a pint sized big name in the South India. He is known to be strict, outspoken, and fearless.
And immensely creative!
The music director arrived, sat and watched the soundless movie in silence, stood up and walked slowly towards the director.
Director was speechless, already being scared of this tiny man’s giant persona, and the earlier feedback on the movie.
The melody maker shook his hand, and said –
“Wow! You have given me a beautiful canvas. Thank you! I am going to love every minute of my time I spend on making it colorful. Let’s get started”
This is from the man who has never said anything like that to anyone in the past.
Re-recording started.
Bit after bit – scene after scene – reel after reel – their synergistic symbiosis created symphony after symphony.
The first para of a new chapter in the annuls of Indian Cinema was written that day!
The progeny of their combined effort Sitara was an overnight sensation.
The name Ilaiyaraja was already a direct ticket to box office paradise, but thanks to the alchemy in the union of their genius, Vamsy became a synonym for new wave creativity.
And the duet has just began!
LEXICON
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
Well, at one point of time, there was actually a Vamsi style of film making, like today we talk about RGV style of film making…
The readers might misunderstand, all the movies named above are not directed by Vamsi.
Coming back to Vamsi…He later on lost it and started coming out with b-grade stuff.
The last good movie I saw of Vamsi was April 1st Vidudhala.
Shankarabharanam, directed by K.Vishwanath is one milestone in Telugu film history. I wish everyone here at PFC could see that movie, with sub-titles…
How about if I organize a Great Telugu Classics Film Festival in LA? I can source all the prints…
WB,
Vamsi-IR was one of the most memorable combo i had ever seen.
Anveshana to date remains one of the best whodunits ever made. The tension was nerve wracking, as also the tracking camera angles,which follow the heroine into the jungle, as well as in the scenes when she is chased. And IR’s BGM is just chilling.
Of course Ladies Tailor, SKML Recording Dance Troupe and April 1 Vidudala would be evergreen classics. No one could capture, the ethos of the Godavari delta area better than Vamsi. People speak of Vishwanath and Bapu, in relation to the Godavari area. Now with due respect to them, they would generally capture the life of the more educated and elite people, and the slow pacing of their movies reflected it.
Vamsi captured the raw dynamism and earthy humour of the more plebian folk. Ladies Tailors, recording dance troupe artistes, video shop owners people whom we meet in our day to day life on a regular basis.
Unfortunately like RGV, Vamsi has let his ego get the better of him. It started with Detective Narada, and from then on it was progressively worse. I really have no clue why he tried to replace IR with himself. His strength is direction, and he should have stuck to that.
Macchar // RGV himself has said that he is a great fan of Vamsy’s style. He has in fact produced a movie for Vamsy, which was a dud – but the movie (Wife of Varaprasad) could have inspired Humraaz (Abbas-Mustan’s) though.
Ratnakar // Indeed! Godavari never looked so beautiful on screen, until Vamsy’s camera rediscovered it in Sitara. “vennello gOdAri andaM” is perhaps the career best for S.Janaki, Bhanupriya and M.V.Raghu. Besides Bagley, Yandamoori and Chase, Ilaiyaraja and Vamsy were my gods. I intend to write a series on Vamsy-Ilaiyaraja’s career graph, the peaks and valleys, and my memories of growing up with them.
Macchar why are you hiding your real name?:)
Good one WB, Vamsy’s cinema is more closer to real life, No dishyum dishyum hero, Protagonist in his movies are simple common man and you can definetly identify with them.
I Like ladies tailor, April 1st vidudala and ofcourse anveshana. IR has been whom i admire a lot for his music and the way he approaches it. IR is god.
waiting for more……
^:)^^:)^^:)^^:)^^:)^
Whenever I go to Hyderabad, I manage to watch one or two movies in the hall and sometimes on Gemini on Sundays, but I don’t see the same spark anymore in Telugu movies. Every Telugu movies these days is about Hero’s pourusham and pogaru! HAHA!!
By the way,Some of my memorable Telugu movies:
1. MayaBazar: Vivaha Bhojanambu, viyyala vari vindu, aha ha ha naake mundu!!
2. Akali Rajyam: Saapatu etu leedu pataina paadu brother!!
3. Gulibakavalikatha: Can never forget this classic! Thanks to Doordarshan, we used to watch all the golden oldies in those “one-channel only” days!
4. Malleswari: NTR Zindabad!!
5. Pathala Bhairavi: SV Rangarao as Nepala Mantrikudu!!
6. Siri Siri Muvva
7. Sruthilayalu
8. Muthyala Muggu
9. Keelugurram: ANR in the “Flying Horse”!! DAMN, I want to see it again!!!
10.Bhokailas: Doordarshan used to show this on every Siva ratri!
11. Appu Chesi Pappu Koodu: (Title in English: Taking Loan, eating Dalrice!!)HAHA! If you ain’t seen this movie, you not a Telugu!!
12. Gundamma Katha
13. Yamagola: The mother of all Yama movies!!
14. Tene Manasulu: Superstar Krishna!!
15. Devudu Chesina Manushulu: Idigooo..Devudu chesina manashullara….Wha!!!! Is there a time machine? I wanna go back!!!
16. Alluri Seetharama Raju: Watch the finesse of movie making in Telugu at that time.
17. Intlo Ramayya Veedilo Krishnayya: Our lovable Chiru, before Allu Arvind’s influence!!
18. Subhalekha: One more Chiru classic!
19. Missiamma: How can I NOT mention this movie!!
20. Kalasivunte Kaladu Sukham
P.S: This is MY list of some of my classic movies, there are hundreds of others too…especially those starring SV Ranga rao, NTR, ANR etc…I don’t think any other film industry including Hindi produced such classics.
Suchita, you know my real name ;)
Personally I feel Vamsi is one of the few directors who really understands what a comic timing means.
As Varun already mentioned above, he goes more closer to real life which gives a ‘i’ve met this kind of character’ feel. Most of his plots are set in villages with some soothing soundtracks from maestro Ilayaraja to get 100% rural effect.
With no weird camera positions, extermly low budget, perfect execution, Anveshana proved that he is best at suspense genre too. I have never come across such a movie where you suspect almost every character and keeps you guessing till the end.
Nueve Reinas(Nine Queens) Argentine film, also falls into that category. Would love to see if some one can write this one.
When one of my friend did not turn up for school for couple of days, I went to his house to find out why. Well, I found out that he’s got high fever after watching “Anveshana”! haha!!
I’m happy to see Telugu classics are also being discussed here…
@Machchar, well said and what a list….btw Shankarabharanam K. Vishawath is a relative of mine (grandfather), albeit a distant one….and I’m proud of that fact
That’s great to know maruramu, he is a great film maker, a nice human being and a little bit romantic flirt..hehe! You can see that spark in some of his movies! You must be really lucky to be related to him.
So are you into film making too? Where are you now?
Thanks for ur words Machchar….yeah he is a great filmmaker and a great human being too…never had the chance to interact with him, met only twice….
I was an aspiring (don’t want to call a struggler) actor once, but due to familial circumstances (now, how many times have we heard that!!!! ;) forced to do a 9-5 job….and i’m put up in Hyd’bad….
Well, You should have persisted…That’s what I tell everyone when sometimes I feel myself that I should give it up! haha!
I ran away from home, worked as an office boy to a producer, became a roadside hawker…all in my effort to join films, in spite of my whole family being in the film industry…
Well, I still haven’t made it yet…but still hanging out there! HAHA!
well, well I’m curious to know more….can u pls tell me more abt u? what ru doing now and where r now?…
Well, I am in Mumbai and writing stories! HAHA! Don’t ever want to work in Telugu Industry though, hate the people over there…
I know, too much of casteism prevailing….and the place is rotten…although few of them r trying to exist people like Sekhar Kammula…
ya, There is definitely casteism and Camp culture in telugu industry now.
But, as maruamu rightly said, Sekhar kammula is one good example of how no one can suppress the talented people. He started with a very small movie with group of friends financing it. rest is history.. though he made only 3 movies, all of them are from the heart without pretentions or succumbing to market.
Good to see Vamsy being discussed… Apart from being a director, he is a good writer. His series in Swathi(a telugu weekly) continued for almost about an year and half. It was a journey into the godavari delta as seen by Vamsi… Maa pasalapudi kathalu(stories of our pasalapudi) and sri seetharama launchi service are two good peices of literature in the past 2 years in telugu.
His strength had always been the charecterization. His charecters were very close to reality and I still do not think he has lost it completely. Just like I wish RGV to spring back one day I still wish Vamsi to make a grand re-entry. In the same hope I still keep watching all the crap he is making now a days. But avunu vallidaru istapaddaru(Yes, they liked each other) had glimpses of what we call vintage vamsi. His movie that followed next Konchem touch lo unte cheptanu(will tell you if u keep in tuch) had some exciting moments to its share. His latest anumanaspadam(someting fishy) had a very good story point…but fails in converting it into a full length movie.
@ Machchar…”18. Subhalekha: One more Chiru classic!” one very good movie… But it was more a KV classic:) But being a self proclaimed chiru fanatic cant agree more with you;)
Maruramu,
we do disuss about telugu films here on PFC, So that people know that telugu industry is not about heroes and fans. If you want to write something about it you are most welcome, You can email Oz through project Ivew
http://passionforcinema.com/about/#iview
@Mind tentative I completely agree with you, I dont think there are any heroes in his films there are only characters. I love april 1st vidudala and Ladies tailor, anveshana is a classic.
Varun, thanks for the invite…I have already written a post abt something else which is not connected to telugu film industry..just sent it to Oz three days back…waiting for it to come out if ever it comes out!!!…i’ll certainly try to post something on this topic soon…
Of course, Subhalekha was a KV baby but I see that film more as a Chiru experience.
Of all the Vennkatesh’s films, the only one loved is Swarnakamalam, again a KV’s film. I can watch that movie another 100 times and not get bored.
KV has this talent of making actors out of stars but the sad thing is, once they finish the KV movie, the actors become stars again and forget about the whole experience.
Only Nagarjuna did not work in any KV film though….KV made some absolutely idiotic movies too…but his classics stand out totally!
Varun // you said it
. the secret of Vamsy’s cinema is its simplistic set up, irrespective of the underlying thematic complexities. anveshana is a pretty complex movie, story-wise. and how did Vamsy go about it? did he deploy expensive props, and use complicated set up to take you on that travel? NO sir! he goes ahead with a low budget cast and location, depending on his good old story telling skills, ably supported by a fantastic music score (Ilaiyaraaja, yes, the God), an extremely restless camera (M.V.Raghu at his back-breaking best) and his trademark quick cuts (i think it was Anil Malnad).
Madhu // the nature of Vamsy’s comic is that it always works at a grassroots level, but it, unfortunately, cannot scale up to be catered to non-native (read non-Telugu, or non-Godavari) audience. [btw, Nine Queens is more of a Mamet style movie. more on it, some other time.]
maruramu, machchar, Raghav, mindtentative // thanks for your comments.
mindtentative // haven’t heard about the launchi service series in swathi, but i have read maa pasalapudi kathalu. Vamsy used to be a prolific writer, and most of his writings are not as famous as the ones you’ve mentioned. his debut feature manchu pallaki (a palanquin of ice – a Telugu metaphor for death) is based on his own novel of the same name, his mahallo kokila (lark in the palace) was later moviefied as sitaara. gokulam lo seetha (the movie namesake was not based on this novel), gaalikonda puram railway gate, aa naati vaana chinukulu (yester years’ rain drops), are a few more works he’s penned. i’ll discuss more about this facet of Vamsy in a future post.
@WB: Thanks for introducing me to Vamsy the writer..Would try to get my hands on the works u have mentioned.
mindtentative // glad you stopped by. please begin with the story collection *aa naati vaana chinukulu* if possible, to know the real Vamsy and his inner turmoil.
Vamsy gave us a Maharshi as well , if all of you can remember,,/:) The best ever thing to happen to rAGHAVA whose surname incidentally became MAHARSHI.. And nothing could help kickstart a spate of movies which made Bhanupriya ,the uncrowned queen of Beauty and Grace…..I have always liked Ma pasalapudi kathalu,,, used 2 snatch swathi evry week frm my mom’s hands and read it first..heard the entire series was printed but never got to get the book..Was actually looking if any of you could direct me to a store(online store would also do) where i can find his books..