An unemployed man will get prepared for a possible job interview. He waits in a endless queue in entrance of a board that claims, Temporary Vacancies. Bogged down by restlessness and poverty, he cuts the queue taking someone else’s place, solely to be pushed again to the fag finish of the road. He repeats the identical, when the person takes, quite, steals a rich particular person’s identification and decides to reside a luxurious life he by no means dreamt of.
There is comedy but in addition tragedy.
Thirty-five years in the past, Singeetam Srinivasa Rao dared to dream what no Indian filmmaker may: to make a dialogue-less film in Pushpak (1987) — the primary Indian movie to have come out with none dialogues after the silent period. As most individuals would assume and rightly so, it wasn’t braveness that drove Singeetam. “It was a sort of madness,” he laughs, after we meet on a heat winter morning at his Chennai residence.
“Let’s say you tell a child not to go nearfire. But the child would want to touch and feel it. That thrill was there in me,” says Singeetam. Pushpak [starring Kamal Haasan and Amala Akkineni] was the fireplace.
Singeetam goes again a good distance in cinema, beginning out as a dialogue author to filmmaker KV Reddy having assisted him within the landmark Telugu film, Mayabazar (1957). He grew up on a gradual weight loss program of American and European cinema which have a wealthy historical past of silent period films.
“That became the base for filmmaking for them. Whereas talkies became the base for us. We started making mythologies from stage plays. Those were not films but stage plays photographed on the screen. From then on, the culture of stage plays being photographed has been continuing for a long time,” laughs Singeetam, including, “Only in Indian cinema is there a title called dialogue writer. Nowhere else.”
Singeetam Srinivasa Rao says he couldn’t have made ‘Pushpak’ with out Kamal Haasan
| Photo Credit:
Johan Sathyadas
Singeetam would usually come throughout individuals asking him why he made Pushpak with out dialogues. “I ask them, ‘why should a person climb the Himalayas and hoist the national flag there? They can comfortably sit at home and have breakfast. Why take the trouble?’ Because it’s an achievement.”
The decades-long expertise, now locked in his head as reminiscences, tumble out like pearls, when the filmmaker speaks. Singeetam comes from a college that believed in sustaining silence, thereby reducing out cacophony on the movie units. It was not a selection, for, they used to shoot in Mitchell digicam, which got here with sync-sound.
“Actors would recite their dialogues and the recording was done on the set with a boom mic,” he remembers, including, “We would rehearse before going for the take. This is how Mayabazar was shot. There was no concept of dubbing, except for a few patch works.”
A digicam like Mitchell would have most likely solved most of their logistical challenges in Pushpak. However, the digicam was heavy and now not in vogue. It was the daybreak of Arriflex cameras. “When Arriflex came, movie making became easier. The camera is rolling, actors are speaking their lines, there is noise, and people are always talking on the sets.”
Singeetam shouted silence on Pushpak’s units. “That was the difficult part,” he chuckles, “With that sort of discipline existing in the film industry back then, I came and shouted silence. But nobody was silent.”
For the sake of actual atmosphere sound, the filmmaker determined to shoot the scenes twice. “Let’s say Kamal opens the fridge and chocolates fall out of it, we made Kamal do it another time just to capture the sound. It is difficult to recreate this natural sound,” he says.
The nice tragedy
In the garb of a tragicomedy, Pushpak is in regards to the crushing ironies that scream at you: faeces wrapped in a scented field; an unemployed youth with empty pockets feels jealous wanting at a beggar and the wad of notes he possesses; an ice knife is the chosen weapon in what may very well be a cold-blooded homicide; being a dialogue-less movie, it was launched as Pesum Padam (Talkie Picture) in Tamil.
Of all, the outrageous irony has received to be the romance between Kamal and Amala that blossoms at a memorial service; apparently it even left stalwarts like Satyajit Ray and Raj Kapoor dumbfounded.
“I have seen so many romantic films and have made so many myself. This is the first time I’m seeing a love scene around a dead body, wow,” Kapoor appeared to have remarked, when he as soon as met Singeetam in Bangalore.
Kamal Haasan within the Tamil movie ‘Pesum Padam’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives
There is a touch of the Marx Brothers in Singeetam’s writing, whereas the performances are closely drawn from Charlie Chaplin, “Definitely there is an influence [on Chaplin]. Not just in me but Kamal too. You cannot escape that,” he says.
“Chaplin had to do it in 18 frames in the silent era. It looked a little unnatural because of that. We didn’t want it to be a silent film. The screenplay was worked in such a way that there was no necessity for dialogue. Supposing there was a place for dialogue, like when the drunkard wants to talk, Kamal stuffs his mouth with a piece of cloth. That is why the acting and performances felt real.”
Pushpak was a end result of so many attention-grabbing concepts that couldn’t make the lower within the closing film. For occasion, Singeetam remembers a private reminiscence of the time a burglar tried to swindle his daughter’s purse after they lived in T Nagar.
“My wife had gifted the bag to my daughter. It looked heavy on the outside. This guy put a pole into our room and stole the bag, only to be disappointed. My daughter had put in all the bus tickets, papers and little stones she had collected in the bag. But that purse is still a property for the thief at that point,” laughs Singeetam.
Singeetam had the visuals and general design in thoughts; so much, nonetheless, got here collectively throughout the making. Like within the scene between Kamal and PL Narayana (who performs the beggar), it was the latter’s thought to open the sack crammed with money, in a dramatic method.
“There are certain things I don’t believe in writing because life force won’t be there. If you write everything mechanically, it becomes a stage play. I wanted my actors to own it, only then there will be life force,” he says, “It was a big relief to have people like Kamal, Amala and Gowrishankar [cinematographer].”
For a dialogue-less film, performances of the lead actors wanted to be pure and remained very important in holding the viewers engaged, agrees Singeetam. One of the movie’s now-iconic photographs has Kamal and Amala interacting by means of hand gestures standing on the balcony of their respective suites.
Normally such photographs of the actors are taken individually, the place they think about the opposite actor being current and appearing. That was not the case in Pushpak. All actors have been current on a regular basis, whether or not they had a scene or not.
“When we were taking Kamal’s shot on the balcony, Amala was there on the opposite side doing her part of the acting and vice versa. They were basically acting and reacting,” he says.
Kamal and Amala in ‘Pushpak’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives
Singeetam doesn’t prefer to talk too much about Kamal, the actor. “What more can I say about his acting? It’s like saying fish swim really well.”
But Amala was really a discover.
He first got here to know of her by means of a Telugu movie by which she was requested to recite dialogues in a melodramatic vogue. She will not be that particular person, thought Singeetam.
“She had a sweet face and wonderful skin that when light fell on her cheeks, it would bounce off. I thought she was the best for a no-dialogue film. I wanted someone whose face looked fresh on screen — like Audrey Heburn in Roman Holiday.”
Turns out, Amala is true. She referred to as Singeetam a “riot” in an interview. “Half his sentence would be laughter,” she mentioned and also you now get why.
Singeetam knew it was the efficiency that was going to remain. “I don’t believe in karma. But when so many things come together [for a film like Pushpak], I am forced to believe the karma theory,” he says.
Unusual twins
A younger filmmaker or viewers discovering Pushpak for the primary time may maybe deem it a “daring experiment”. Is that what Singeetam considered it 35 years in the past? “I thought it was the most commercial film,” he says, earlier than breaking into fun.
“What is commercial? When you have a star like Kamal, it automatically becomes a commercial film; it doesn’t matter if it is made in Tamil or Telugu. Whereas a Kamalahasan film like Pushpak runs in all languages. Which is more commercial? A Tamil-language Kamal film or a no-language film with Kamal?”
It was 1987 when Kamal was at the peak of superstardom. Pushpak was doable solely as a result of a star like him was able to again the director, sharing equal enthusiasm and maybe, insanity too. “Is it possible to make a film about Hiranyakashipu without Ranga Rao? Can you make Mayabazar without Gatotkachan? Amitabh Bachchan is a superstar. But can you cast him as Krishna [one can only think of NTR]? Likewise, I couldn’t have made Pushpak or Apoorva Sagodharargal without Kamalahasan.”
A poster of ‘Pushpak’
| Photo Credit:
The Hindu Archives
Among the filmmakers he has labored with, Kamal Haasan deems Singeetam “the youngest”; you can’t assist however agree with him. At 92, Singeetam displays a uncommon ardour for cinema; and a childlike glee when he speaks, not essentially about his films — “The day I talk about myself is the day I will be irrelevant.”
His vitality is contagious and he nonetheless brims with concepts; a 3D animated image on the lifetime of Indian biochemist Yellapragada Subbarow is within the works, informs Singeetam. A man who doesn’t romanticise past glories nor believes in wanting again, the legendary filmmaker needs to make “the first graphic movie” by combining the thought of graphic novels and utilizing cinema as a medium.
“What is this movie, you ask? I’ll tell you later. Let it be a suspense for now,” he chuckles.
Singeetam will not be performed but.
Even when a private tragedy struck him — the filmmaker misplaced his spouse, Lakshmi Kalyani, earlier this yr — Singeetam marched ahead albeit slowly.
“It was a 60-year-long marriage,” he says, “My wife was always filled with positive thoughts. The first three days were difficult after losing her; I wasn’t myself. On the fourth day, it felt like she was telling me, ‘Singeetam, how long will you mourn for me? Go, work… make movies’.”