Chandralekha (1948 film)

This article is about the 1948 film. For other uses, see Chandralekha (disambiguation).

Chandralekha
File:Chandralekha 1948.jpg
Directed by	S. S. Vasan
Written by	Gemini's Story Department
Produced by	S. S. Vasan
Starring	M. K. Radha Ranjan T. R. Rajakumari
Music by	S. Rajeswara Rao
Distributed by	Gemini Studios
Release date	9 April 1948
Running time	210 mins
Languages	Tamil Hindi
Budget	₹30 lakh

Chandralekha is a 1948 Indian bilingual historical fiction film directed and produced by S. S. Vasan under the banner of Gemini Studios. The film stars T. R. Rajakumari in the title role and M.K.Radha and Ranjan as the male leads, while N. S. Krishnan and T. A. Madhuram appear in supporting roles. The music was composed by S. Rajeswara Rao and M. D. Parthasarathy, and the screenplay was written by Veppathur Kittoo. Chandralekha tells the story of a prince (Radha) who falls in love with a village girl (Rajakumari), and both team up to stop the former's younger brother (Ranjan) from illegally conquering the kingdom.

Development for Chandralekha began in 1943, when Vasan wanted to produce a colossal celluloid extravaganza and asked his story department to come up with a screenplay. Wri­ters like Kotha­man­galam Subbu and Veppa­thur Kit­too told him the story of a tough woman who outwits a vicious bandit and ultimately slashes off his nose. Vasan rejected it, but one thing stuck in his mind: the name of the woman, Chandra­lekha. With elements from the novel Robert McCaire the Male Bandit being added, the script was finally complete. The original director of Chandralekha was TG Raghavachari, who left the project due to differences between him and Vasan, who took over the film, making his directorial debut.

Over five years, from 1943 to 1948, Chandralekha was made, re-made, re-re-made, scrapped, re-shot, scrapped and re-re-shot, with the film ultimately costing over Rs. 3 million. It was the most expensive movie made in India till then; to the extent that filming a single sequence cost more than the entire budget of any typical film of that time. Chandralekha, after massive publicity, released on April 9 1948, created a sensation and smashed box-office records all over the country. Its Hindi version opened the doors for South Indian producers to sell their Hindi-wares in the North.

Plot

Veerasimhan (M. K. Radha) and Sasankan (Ranjan) are the sons of a king. Veerasimhan meets a beautiful woman Chandralekha (T. R. Rajakumari) while returning to his palace on a horse. Both fall in love instantly. Sasankan, the younger brother, demands that his father should make him the next king, but the king refuses. To teach his father a lesson, Sasankan gets out of the palace, forms a gang of thieves and creates confusion in the country by robbing and killing people. In one such incident at a village, Chandralekha's father also gets killed. She is orphaned and leaves the village to live with her aunt in another village but is captured en route by Sasankan's men.

Sasankan falls in love with Chandralekha but she escapes capture and runs away. Veerasimhan learns that Sasankan is the man behind the mayhem in the country and comes with his army to capture him. However in a sudden attack, Sasankan captures Veerasimhan, dumps him in a cave and closes it with a huge rock. Chandralekha notices this act; with the help of a circus elephant and men passing through the village, she rescues Veerasimhan. In the meanwhile, Sasankan reaches the kingdom, captures and arrests his father and declares himself king. He remembers Chandralekha and asks his men to find and bring her to him. Both Veerasimhan and Chandralekha join the circus troupe and live in hiding. Veerasimhan and his friends plan to rescue the kingdom.

Chandralekha becomes a circus artiste and performs daredevil acts. Sasankan's man notices her during one such act and tries to nab her, but she escapes from them and joins a gypsy group. Veerasimhan reaches that palace and tries to get a vehicle to rescue her. In the meanwhile, Sasankan's men capture her and take her to the palace. Sasankan demands that she marry him, which she refuses. She pretends to be unconscious whenever he tries to approach her. Veerasimhan sends a message to Chandralekha to organise a huge drum dance in order to rescue her.

Chandralekha agrees to marry Sasankan if he agrees for a drum dance to celebrate their engagement. Sasankan agrees, and a mammoth drum dance is organised at the palace. Chandralekha dances on the drums. Towards the end of the song, Veerasimhan and his men, who were hiding inside the huge drums come out to attack Sasankan's forces and defeat them. Veerasimhan and Sasankan fight and finally Sasankan is captured. Veerasimhan releases his parents and marries Chandralekha.

Cast

• T. R. Rajakumari as Chandralekha
• M. K. Radha as Veer Singh
• Ranjan as Shashank
• Sundarabai as Sundaribai

The dance director for this movie was Jayshankar H Nayak.

Production

File:Chandralekha drum dance.jpg

The film's iconic drum dance sequence

Film historian Randor Guy wrote an article about the film's background in Madras Musings:

He [S. S.Vasan] wanted to produce a colossal celluloid extravaganza a la Cecil B. DeMille and asked his story department to come up with a screenplay. Gemini wri­ters, like Kotha­man­galam Subbu, Ki. Ra. Sangu Subrama­niam, Veppa­thur Kit­too and others, saw Manga­m­ma Sabatham and Balanagam­ma as heroine-oriented stories and, not surprisingly, looked for another such tale to narrate to Vasan.

When they told him the story of a tough, talented woman – she is so smart, she outwits a vicious bandit, delivers the final insult by slashing off his nose and, as a finishing touch, fills the bloodied gaping hole with hot, red chilli powder! – he thought it too gruesome, crude, even vulgar. But when he threw it out, one thing stuck in his mind: the name of the woman, Chandra­lekha.

He immediately announced his next film as Chandralekha, publicising it with front-page advertisements in all the leading publications. Yet, at the time, Vasan had the title but nothing else.

The frantic search for a story now began. Three months later there was no story in sight. Vasan began to get impatient. One day, he told the writers he was shelving the project and would concentrate on making Avvaiyyar, another dream of his. Veppathur Kittoo, however, pleaded for one last chance and got a week's time.

Kittoo, who was director T.G. Raghavachari's (aka Acharya) assistant and favou­rite disciple, used to call on his guru at his home every morning. That lucky morning, he saw a book on TGR's desk, a novel called Robert McCaire the Male Bandit by G.W.M. Reynolds (of the Mysteries of the Court of London fame). Kittoo began to flip through it and read...

"...it's night in rural England and a mail coach convoy trots its way, when, suddenly, Robert McCaire, the bandit, and his henchmen on horses emerge from the surrounding darkness, hold up the convoy and rob it. Hiding under a seat is a young woman fleeing from a harsh home. She is a dancer and when she refuses to dance, the bandit whips her into submission..."

Vasan was fascinated when he heard Veppathur Kittoo narrate a story based on this episode and he decided to go ahead with the film. He named the heroine 'Chandralekha' and his enthusiasm was so great that he did not unduly bother about the absence of the rest of the story.

Over five years, from 1943 to 1948, Chandralekha was made, re-made, re-re-made, scrapped, re-shot, scrapped and re-re-shot, with the film ultimately costing over Rs. 3 million. It was the most expensive movie made in India till then.

The script called for two major roles, the two sons of a king, the elder being the good prince, his brother a villainous, amoral person. M.K. Radha, tall, handsome and talented, one of the earliest successful heroes of Tamil cinema, was on Vasan's payroll. (Gemini Studio had a 'stable' of actors.) He would be a good choice as the younger prince, Vasan felt. But M.K. Radha, like most South Indian stars, was worried about his 'image' and did not feel happy about being asked to play the villain. He, however, found it a delicate task telling his boss, so he left the unpleasant task to his wife. His wife, a former actress, succeeded in convincing Vasan, who agreed to cast MKR as the soft prince, whose role was more passive.

The role of the younger brother, Sashankan, now presented problems. Vasan chose K.J. Mahadevan to play the role and Acharya, who was named the director, nodded his tufted head. England-educated KJ (as he was familiarly known) was sophisticated, soft-spoken and cultured. He had played the hero in Thyaga Bhoomi, the first film distributed by Vasan. Some scenes were then shot with KJ as the prince who turns bandit to create chaos and confusion, but the 'rushes' proved disappointing. So, Ranjan (R. Ven­ka­taramana Sarma in real life), another college-educated, sophisticated Tamil actor, who had played the father and son in Gemini's Mangamma Saba­tham, was chosen and proved an apt foil.

Gemini Studio, right in the heart of the city, thereafter ­became a ­veritable hive of film-making activity. Kothamanglam Subbu recalled years later, "During the making (of Chan­dra­lekha), our studio looked like a small kingdom...horses, elephants, lions, tigers in one corner, palaces here and there, over there a German lady training nearly a hundred dancers on one studio floor, a shapely Sinhalese lady teaching another group of dancers on real marble steps adjoining a palace, a ­studio worker making weapons, another making period furniture using expensive rosewood, set props, headgear, and costumes, Ranjan undergoing fencing practice with our fight composer 'Stunt Somu', our music directors composing and rehearsing songs in a building... there were so many activities going on simultaneously round the clock."

Beautiful, buxom, with lovely eyes and sensuous lips, T.R. Rajakumari, a talented actress, dancer and singer, the first 'dream girl' of the Tamil cinema, was cast as Chandralekha. (An early 'house ad' for Chan­dra­­lekha on the inside cover of the Nandanar song-book print­ed in September 1942 carried the name of K.L.V. Vasan­tha as Chandralekha. Why did Vasan give up KLV and choose T.R. Rajakumari? A possible reason was that Vasantha was moving to Modern Theatres, Salem unit, as a permanent artiste. She later became the wife of T.R. Sundaram who owned Modern Theatres.)

There was a minor role, the hero's bodyguard, which, a talented stage-actor, who had been on stage from boyhood and graduated to female roles – he had even grown his hair long for this purpose – coveted. He called on Veppathur Kittoo several times asking for a break, even an also-ran role. Eventually Kittoo took this slim, struggling stage actor to the 'Boss' who had seen him perform on stage. To the astonishment of Kittoo – and the poor actor – Vasan told the aspirant bluntly that he was totally unsuited for films and warned him not to be lured by the honey-coated words of film people and give up the stage. Vasan later told Kittoo that the actor had a squint eye and chided his assistant for wasting his precious time! The actor whom Vasan turned down was Villupuram Chinniah Pillai Ganesha­murthy, later known as Sivaji Ganesan! The rift between the two that began then never quite ended.

TGR began shooting the film and for the next five years. Vasan thought of nothing else. According to Veppathur Kit­too, TGR directed more than half of Chandralekha. Then, Vasan and Acharya had some misunderstanding over the shooting of some sequences at the Governor's Estate (now, Raj Bhavan, Guindy), and Acharya walked out of the film. Vasan took over, making his debut as director.

At one stage, Vasan decided to add a circus as part of the film and the screen story was re-woven accordingly. In her attempts to save her lover imprisoned in a mountain cave, Chandralekha seeks the help of a passing circus company. The famous comedy pair N.S. Krishnan-T.A. Mathu­ram were roped in as the circus performers who helped the hero to rescue Chandra­lekha from the clutches of the villain. Later, to repay her debt of gratitude, she joins the circus and works as a trapeze artiste. Kittoo travelled all over South India and Ceylon and he watched over fifty circus companies perform before he found the right unit.

The shooting of the circus scenes was entrusted to K. Ramnoth. A brilliant technician and a camera-wizard, he captured flying trapeze acts high above the ground... wild animals fighting... and a shot that is breathtaking even by today's standards... To quote Kittoo, "In those days, we had no zoom lenses and yet Ramnoth did it. One night, while Chandralekha is performing on the flying trapeze, she notices the villain's henchman in the front row. She is on her perch high up and he is seated in a ringside chair. Shock hits her and to convey the shock the camera zooms fast from her to the man. Today, with a fast zoom shot it can be done very easily, but there was no such lens forty years ago. Ramnoth did it using the crane. He planned it well and rehearsed the shot for long. He took the shot 20 times and selected the best 'take'. It was amazing!"

Then there was artistic and brilliantly choreographed drum dance, the highlight of the film and the first of its kind in Indian cinema.

Chandralekha arranges a spectacular dance in which many dancers, including herself, dance on a number of tall drums, inside which her lover's men are hiding, waiting to come out and fight the villain. Vasan had nearly 400 dancers on monthly salary and they had daily rehearsals for six months; that single sequence cost Vasan Rs. 5 lakh (half a million) in the 1940s, it was said. The man who designed all this was Chief Art Director A.K. Sekhar, whose contribution was palatial splen­dour. The two music composers, M.D. Partha­sarathy and S. Rajeswara Rao, created a fine blend of lilting music of many schools, Carnatic, Hindustani and even Western – waltzes, jazz, etc. – and many of the songs became hits.

Marketing

Through Chandralekha, Gemini became the first Tamil studio to attempt an "all-India distribution". The film's publicity was the highest ever for a Tamil film till then. Vasan brought out full page advertisements in all leading publications in colour, huge multi coloured wall posters, king size hoardings, glossy handbooks and many other items, creating huge excitement among the public. He spent close to ₹5,00,000 on publicity alone, a huge sum that time. As an innovation in film exhibition, Vasan released the film all over South India in over 40 theatres (which was increased to 50 screens within weeks), another first for a Tamil film. Chandralekha was dubbed in English as Miss Chandra, and was screened in the United States and Scandinavian countries during the 1950's.

Chandralekha was released in Japan in 1952 under the title Shakunetsu-no ketto ([Fight under the red heat] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)), where it was distributed by Nippon Cinema Corporation (NCC). After NCC had collapsed and disappeared, no information has since been made available on how this film was brought to Japan. A source, however, suggested it was a barter item. In the 1950s it was quite common to send commodities made in India to overseas business partners in the form of barter, after receiving imported goods from abroad. Because this exchange method was prevalent when India was dreadfully short of foreign currency, it might have been the case with Chandralekha.

Reception

Chandralekha received largely positive reviews from critics upon release. Among contemporary reviews, The Hindu (9.4.1948) said, "India has not witnessed a film of this magnitude in terms of making and settings so far". The Indian Express (10.4.1948) said, "Chandralekha is an entertaining film for everyone with elements like animals, rope dance, circus and comedy". Leading Tamil newspaper Dinamani (10.4.1948) said, "Chandralekha is not only a first rate Tamil film but also an international film."

Film historian Randor Guy, in a 2010 review of Chandralekha, praised Rajakumari's performance, calling it "her career-best" and Radha as his "usual impressive self" and concluded that the film would be "Remembered for: the excellent onscreen narration, the magnificent sets and the immortal drum dance sequence." Film historian S. Muthiah said, "Given how spectacular it was — and the appreciation lavished on it from 1948 till well into the 1950s, which is when I caught up with it — I’m sure that if re-released, it would do better at the box office then most Tamil films today." Film critic V.A.K. Ranga Rao described the film as "the most complete entertainer ever made."

In an interview with K. Jeshi of The Hindu, director Dhanapal Padmanabhan said, "Chandralekha had grandeur that was at par with Hollywood standards." Entertainment portal IndiaGlitz praised the film for its "opulent songs and sinister plots." Writers Sangita Gopal and Sujata Moorti, in their book Global Bollywood: Travels of Hindi Song and Dance, said: "Chandralekha is a film that translates the aesthetic of Hollywood Orientalism for an indigenous mass audience" and called its drum dance sequence as "perhaps one of the most spectacular sequences in Indian cinema". Rediff praised the film for its "ensemble cast, great production values and a story that ensured it became a blockbuster all over India,"

References

• Banerjee, Shampa (1988). One Hundred Indian Feature Films: An Annotated Filmography. Taylor & Francis. p. 58. ISBN 0-8240-9483-2. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Bhaskaran, Theodore, Sundararaj (1996). Eye of The Serpent: An Introduction to Tamil Cinema. East West Books.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
• Gokulsing, K. (2004). Indian Popular Cinema: A Narrative of Cultural Change. Trentham Books. p. 132. ISBN 1-85856-329-1. {{cite book}}: Unknown parameter |coauthors= ignored (|author= suggested) (help)
• Shohini Chaudhuri (2005). Contemporary World Cinema: Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia. Edinburgh University Press. p. 149. ISBN 0-7486-1799-X.
• Kisselgoff, Anna. "New York Times Review". New York Times. Retrieved 2010-04-28.
• Randor Guy (October 2, 2010). "Blast from the Past: Chandralekha (1948)". The Hindu.
• http://web.archive.org/web/20130524070957/http://madrasmusings.com/Vol%2018%20No%2017/and_thus_he_made_chandralekha_sixty_years_ago.html

External links

• Chandralekha at IMDb
• The drum dance song from Chandralekha (in public domain in India)