Romantic Comedies are a rarity in Tamil Cinema. I believe a perfect Romantic Comedy should have the right proportions of both. How many Tamil movies you have seen with both of these coming in right proportions. I have decided to showcase two romantic comedies in the 40s-70s era which were trend setters for the future. Theses two movies have been diligently (shamelessly) reproduced by some of the later directors with some changes and still became superhits.

Rom Coms can be made in two different ways – one which will have only two lead characters, the story traverses through them and the situations they encounter. And the other type of story, depict more than one couple, their problems and the inter twining of situations etc. The first movie which I am going to show case is of the first genre.

Anbe Vaa (1966)

Anbe Vaa was the start of all those romantic movies where the boy meets girl. They start fighting. Fall in love but never want to express. Relationship ends with a rift. Atlast they reconcile and love triumphs.

I am not kidding but i think 99% of the love stories in Tamil Cinema followed this trend and most of them succeeded. The latest one being Siva Manasula Sakthi, which was a hit too.

Anbe Vaa was loosely based on 1961 Hollywood Comedy “Come September”. JB (MGR) is a very successful businessman fed up and stressed out with his monotonous life wants to take a break in his summer bungalow in Shimla. When he arrives, he finds that his manager’s brother in law (Nagesh) had made the place in to a summer resort and making Money from tourists. He meets Latha (Saroja Devi) and finds her attractive so he joins the band of tourists for a rent in his house. Only his manager’s daughter (Manorama) knows that he is the owner but he silences her to have fun. JB acts as a Balu, a normal salaried guy.

JB and Latha gets in to small cat fights each trying to pull others leg with practical jokes. They eventually fall in love but never want to express each other. Latha thinks even JB’s love is a practical joke. Enters Asokan, a Pilot, Maternal uncle of Latha and a long time friend of JB. He alsi joins the bandwagon of JB’s acting. Tired of JBs practical jokes, Latha decides to marry her uncle. But he finds the love between her and JB, unites them. When JB reveals his true identity before the marriage, Latha thinks it’s yet another practical joke from JB but all end’s well in the climax.

The cast includes MG Ramachandran, Saroja Devi, Asokan, Nagesh, Manorama, TR Ramachandran and so on. The movie was directed by AC Thirulogachander, produced by AVM and music by MS Viswanathan.

What’s so special about the Movie?

1. The story in itself. Nobody even thought of having a 3 Hr movie with only two lead characters fighting at each other would make a good screen play. The screen play was so wonderful that it never lagged a bit.

2. The music – I think this movie’s album was one of the best ever to come in Tamil Cinema. The dream combo of MS Viswanathan – Vaali was nothing short of greatness. Pudhiya Vaanam Pudhiya Bhoomi, Rajavin Paarvai, Love Birds Love Birds, Anbe Vaa, a western based Nadodi (was it a copy?), Once a papa met a Mama (Baila) and above all Naan Parthathile Aval Oruthiyaithan Were memorable hits. (Actually once when I sang Naan Parthathile in my college, I had a roaring applause at the start of the song – that’s the level it had reached even in the hearts of younger generation)

3. MGR was a action hero and he was known for his complete masala entertainers. He was courageous enough to take such a role and the producers were brave enough to cast him.

Why it is in the list?

1. Simply because it was a trend setter. Nobody can count the number of movies inspired by Anbe Vaa. It gave the directors and producers the confidence that rom coms can make money too (Not just money but big money)

2. For the music, screen play and MGRs acting. Anyways the producers did compromise something for MGR, they had to add a fight sequence as they didn’t want to take MGR movie without a fight. They were prudent enough because few producers had lost quite some money by not compromising for MGRs star power.

Trivia

1. AVM had this wonderful team of in house script writers who can turn any language movie in to a Tamil script. As Anbe Vaa was a rehash of Come September, the other movies from their production house were mostly based on other language movies. Jaavert Seetharaman was considered to be a expert in converting scripts to suit the Tamil audiences.

2. Anbe Vaa was the first script made by AVM to suit a star actor. They usually choose the actor based on the script made.

3. Although the story takes place in Shimla, 95% of the movie was shot in Ooty. Only the introductory song of MGR was shot in Shimla to authenticate that the movie takes place in Shimla.

4.Anbe Vaa was the first complete color movie produced by AVM

5.Naan Parthathile was one of the few songs shot in outdoor with MGR as he avoids the public shooting due to the huge fan following he had and he never used to learn dance in front of the public in order to maintain his image.

6. During those days, the release of the lyrics as a book was popular. AVM released the Anbe Vaa lyric book like a LB Record, which was even sold in black for higher prices.

7. Anbe Vaa ran for 23 weeks and it’s one of the biggest blockbusters for AVM. MGR demanded a salary of 3.25 Lakhs for the movie ( do your inflation calculations)

PS: All the trivia about AVM are credited to the book by M.Saravanan, “AVM 60 Cinema”

– Post From My iPhone

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The definition of Anti-Heroism has been misinterpreted in many places referring it to those lead characters which have some Grey shades too. But according to me and even movie analysts, anti-hero is the one differs from the normal notions of an hero. A hero in Tamil movies is usually physically smart, has sharp features, strong, intelligent, suave, stylish, compassionate, girls fall for him naturally and he never does a mistake. The norms were never broken and actors like MGR were very successful proponents of this model.

But every one of these norms were broken in to pieces when a great actor entered this movie world. His name was Nagesh and the movie was Server Sundaram.

Server Sundaram (1964)

Server Sundaram was only the 5th movie of Nagesh. He was just a budding actor with only one hit in Nenjil Oru Aalayam and that too as a comedian. Server Sundaram is an adaptation of the play by the same name written by K.Balachander ( he is going to come again and again in this list), produced by AVM Pictures with music by MS Viswanathan – Ramamoorthy and directed by Krishnan – Panju.

The story is about a young wanna be actor (Sundaram) who comes to Madras to make it big in movies and ends up in a restaurant as a waiter. He meets his friend in the same hotel and his friend paves a way for him to get a big break in movies. In between Sundaram falls in love with the daughter of the restaurant owner, he works for without knowing that she is the bride to be of his friend. Sundaram becomes a star believing that making himself rich and famous will help him to get her. But eventually comes to know about his friend’s love and sacrifices his love for his friend’s sake. Finally, his mother’s demise teaches him the reality of life.

The movie is said to be semi-autobiographical of Nagesh as it traces the life of an actor, his rise and fall.

What’s so special about it?

1. If there are 100 reasons for this movie to be special, all the 100 reasons would be Nagesh. He makes you to laugh, cry, sad, think, retrospect and share the character’s emotions. I have not known any other movie which can make a normal person to relate to a character so much. In one scene where he goes to the heroine to express his love with a bouquet and she rejects his proposal. He asks for a gift from her. She asks “what you want?” He says ” Nothing much, I just want the dust bin you have. Because my heart would pain if you throw my bouquet in to the dust bin”… Nagesh gives an helpless expression at that moment which no actor would have matched. He was special…

2. The perfect supporting cast with Muthuraman as his friend Raghavan and KR Vijaya. Major Sunder Rajan as his restaurant owner and above all SN Lakshmi as Nagesh’ mother made to look the mother-son relationship so believable.

3. The witty one line dialogues which were KB’s trademark made it’s way to the big screen. I think Krishnan-Panju would have made a record being the only directors to be part of a film which had longest monologues and also be a part of movie which had short oneliners ( I can’t say shortest because later came Mani Ratnam, whose dialogues were mostly single words)

4. The movie has scenes which gave the inside view of the cinema world. How do they make sets, rain sequences etc. It was said that few producers showed their concerns for showing the cinema secrets to AVM. But AVM went on to make these sequences, which gave great impetus to the success of the movie.

5. The songs and music composition were at it’s best. Kannadasan and MSV were at their peak form. Songs like Avalukku Yenna (it even shows the live recording of the song) are still considered to be classics.. People never knew Nagesh could dance so well.

Why it makes to the list?

1. The critics, some directors and movie buffs are talking about movies which depict the reality of life. But I think Server Sundaram started it all. It broke the norms of Tamil Movies. I bet there would be no producer to take such a movie at this moment and that too with a 4 movie old comedian in the lead.

2. It also paved the way for demise of long monologues (it made a comeback with actors like Vijayakanth !!). Short, witty, powerful one -liners became the order of the day.

3. It brought two of the greats in Tamil Cinema in forefront, KB & Nagesh. They went to make a lot of meaningful movies together. Nagesh was casted in almost all the movies after 1964. He became a must have in a movie. There were times were directors were forced to include characters which will suit Nagesh. KB of course became one of the prolific film makers of Tamil and introduced the 2 Superstars – Rajini & Kamal.

4. It gave the concept of Anti -Heroism to Tamil Cinema. It changed the way people look at heroes. They started to relate to Sundaram like characters more because he was like just another person on the road.

5. It’s a complete package of a movie with the right doses of romance, comedy, sentiments with excellent music and classic acting.

Trivia

1. Although the play was directed by KB, the producers AVM opted for their successful director duo Krishnan-Panju. KB later made couple of successful movies for AVM.

2. The sequences were Nagesh does mono acting with a coin on the road and pining for his lady love were influenced by Chaplin’s City Lights.

3. Krishnan – Panju the ever successful director duo made 55 Movies together which include blockbuster hits like Rattha Kaneer, Parasakthi, Kuzhandhiyum Deivamum, Uyarntha Manithan and of course Server Sundaram.

4. Server Sundaram was remade in Hindi with Mehmood in the lead by the same directors and AVM as Main Sundar Hoon in 1970. Although it was not a blockbuster hit, it was a decent hit in Hindi.

5. The first picture in this article was taken originally as a promo pic but there was no such scene in the original movie. After seeing the first copy, AV Meyyappa Chettiar insisted on such a scene to make the promo shots authentic. He was vehemently against making fake promo shots without having it in the movie. But this picture eventually became a classic  photo for Nagesh

PS 2: I wrote a Tribute to Nagesh on his demise earlier this year.. Someone who i admired, loved and shared few coincidents..

PS3: In final moment of the scene which i have posted above, Sundaram says  “Love is a game of chance, I lost it in the finals” ( Hail KB for the Dialogue) – I lost one in finals too…

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I am travelling 10 years back to talk about a legend. I am reading some books on Tamil Movies in order to give some good triviae. One of them which I read recently was AVM – 60 years by M.Saravanan. Avichi Meyyappa Chettiar is a pioneer when it comes to movies in India. In fact, his family is the oldest movie making family in India. He started making movies in 1935 and established AVM studios in 1945. The truth is this is the third movie produced or co-produced by AVM in the list.

Comedy has always been successful when it comes to Tamil Movies but if you make it bad, you will become a comedy in front of the audience. One of the earliest full length comedy movie is the 6th movie in our list.

Sabapathy (1941)

Sabapathy is a comedy character developed by Pammal Sambanda Mudaliar based on Handy Andy comic character created by Samuel Lover in English literature. Sabapathy is innocent stupid servant of a not so intelligent boss of the same name. AT Krishnaswamy was a writer-producer who worked in the drama troupe and he gave an idea to AV Meyyappa Chettiar to create a moviec around this character. AVM had already given two consecutive flops and was brooding about whether to make a movie. He wanted to give a try to comedy movie and they both started working on the script.

The story is simple and ran around the boss-servant characters. The boss is a young man who has failed in the pre-university exams and his father is worried about his future. So he decides to do a marriage of his son and after marriage the husband-wife are kept separated. The movie continues with comic extravagances of the boss servant ending up in a happy climax.

AVM roped in TR Ramachandran, who was at a high salary bracket of Rs.35 with Pragati Pictures that time. Kali N.Ratnam did the role of servant Sabapathy. Padma and Rajakantham did the lady loves respectively. Sarangapani, one of the most sought after comedians of those times, did a important role of a Tamil Teacher, constantly ragged by his students.

Why it’s so special?

1. Most probably the first full length comedy of Tamil Cinema and definitely the first comedy to become a hit.

2.The hilarious pair of Kali N.Ratnam and TR Ramachandram was awesome. There are some comic scenes which are unforgettable – especially the scenes where he asks to bring soda, coffee etc.

3.The pitiest part is that these movie scenes have been repeated enormously in many other movies in different forms and ways. The ragging of the Tamil teacher and the boss-servant swap sequences while seeing the bride have been often repeated in many movies. It actually shows the versatility of the comedy scenes.

Why it makes to the list?

1. It proved that comedy can be a genre and eventually paved the way for lot other comic movies in Tamil Cinema.

2. TR Ramachandran and Kali N.Ratnam. I think they gave the red carpet to duo comedies of later years.

Trivia

1. The whole movie was made with a budget of Rs.40,000. It was a resounding success and made AVM to get in to regular movie making and eventually movie mogul.

2. TR Ramachandran became a super star and MGR (then in initial times) was calling himself MG Ramachandar to avoid confusion.

3. AVM’s name made it to the title card as a director along with AT Krishnaswamy for the first time.

PS: Although the movie is very old, it is still played in Tamil Channels sometimes. May be the current movie goers will find it little bit hard to comprehend with the slow pace and editing. But the movie is absolutely enjoyable.

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