Nam Iruvar (1947)

Political melodrama establishing the famed AVM Prod. and the debut of Neelakantan, its scenarist and assistant director. The original play had been a stage success produced by S.V. Sahasranamam for the comedian N.S. Krishnan’s theatre troupe. The film is replete with nationalist symbols, which proliferated in Tamil films following the installation of a popular government (1945) and the lifting of WW2 censorship. It begins with a Subramanya Bharati anniversary and ends with Gandhi’s 77th-birthday celebrations, characters greeting each other with the ‘Jai Hind’ salute. The story, adapted from the earlier film Iru Sahodarargal (1936), features a blackmarketeer and his two sons Jayakumar (Panthulu, who also played two other roles in the film) and Sukumar (Mahalingam). The latter is a wastrel who loves Kannamma (Jayalakshmi), the daughter of his father’s partner. The partner is a rapacious movie producer. The stagey, studio-bound film spoken in chaste (literary) Tamil used Bharati’s nationalist songs and love poems. The younger sister of the heroine (Kumari Kamala) dances on a decorated drum with national flags draped behind her to Bharati’s famous Kottu murase (‘Let the drum sound’), prefiguring the climactic scenes of Chandralekha (1948). Other famous songs incl. Aaduvome pallu aaduvome, Mahaan Gandhi mahaan