Gone With The Wind
Victor Fleming
This 1939 classic starring Clark Gable and Vivien Leigh has as its background the American Civil War and the reconstruction era. Besides great acting and dialogue delivery by the lead pair, Fleming also extracted brilliant performances from the rest of the cast. Ernest Haller’s brilliant cinematography won him an Oscar. The close to four hours long film captures the attention of the audience right through and remains ever popular.
Mother India
Mehboob Khan
Mehboob Khan remade his own directorial venture Aurat into Mother India and it turned out to be a landmark movie not only for him and Nargis but also for the Hindi film industry. It is the story of a strong-willed poverty-stricken widowed villager struggling to raise her children against all odds. The gamble of Mehboob Khan in featuring Nargis, who had the reputation of being a romantic queen, in such a deglamorised role paid off as she delivered a sterling performance. So also did Sunil Dutt as the angry dacoit Birju. The theme of sacrificing an erring son found many takers in later Hindi films. There is no match to Kanhai Lal who essayed the role of the money lender and raised the bar for villainy in Indian cinema. Mother India, the flag bearer for women empowerment, still remains a cult classic.
Patala Bhairavi
Kadri Venkata Reddy, Kamalakara Kameswawara Rao
This 1951 classic by Vijaya Pictures,is the filmatic imagination and extension of Kasi Majli Kathalu, a folk story which catapulted N.T. Rama Rao to fame. The son of a gardener falls in love with a princess and on being rejected goes in chase of fortune to return rich and ask for the hand of the princess. He falls into the trap of a black magician, brilliantly played by S.V. Ranga Rao, and the rest of the story is how the hero outwits the villain and wins the hand of princess. The eternal singer Ghantasala has provided music which includes the evergreen ‘Prema Kosame Valalo Padene Papam Pasivadu’ and ‘Kalavaramaye madilo’. The film is the first Telugu film which has been widely acclaimed at the International Film Festival and remains a great crowd puller to this day.
Modern Times
Charlie Chaplin
This 1936 classic written, music-directed, produced, directed and acted by Charlie Chaplin is a satire on the evils of industrialisation and the struggle of the common man to survive in these difficult conditions. It was reported that Charlie Chaplin was inspired after a conversation he had with Mahatma Gandhi in which Gandhi complained about “machinery with only consideration of profit”. Putting so many emotions in a salient movie was remarkable and Chaplin’s character being force fed by a machine, running around tightening screws in the assembly line and the factory owner watching through a close circuit camera have turned out to be a reality in these modern times. This movie is often hailed as one of Chaplin’s greatest achievements, and there are no two opinions about it.
Shankarabharanam
K. Vishwanath
Shankarabharanam was a hugely popular and commercially-successful Telugu film made in 1980. It deals with the declining popularity of Carnatic classical music through the character of Shankara Shastri, played by debutant J. Somayajulu and the master-disciple relationship between Shastri and music lover Tulasi (played by Manju Bhargavi), who is forced into prostitution by her mother. S.P. Balasubramanian went on to win the National Award for rendering many of the classical songs. Those that almost made it
Where Eagles Dare: Brian G. Hutton
Sagara Sangamam: K. Vishwanath
Do Ankhe Barah Haath: V. Shanta Ram
Sholay: Ramesh Sippy
The Great Dictator: Charlie Chaplin and Wheeler Dryden
Indira Sudha is a certified finger print expert from Hyderabad, working with CFPB.
