Tag Archives: Galatta Kalyanam

Filmy Ripples – Rise & fall of vamps (Part 2)

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By P.V. Gopalakrishnan

Then the villis transformed into what were known as ‘vamps’. The dictionary definition of a vamp is “a woman who is conscious of and makes use of being attractive to men in order to get what she wants”, akin to a honey trap. In films, vamps somewhat resembled this description.

The vicious vamps curated by Hindi cinema were all repulsively seductive, and in short vamps were vain, symbolizing everything an ideal Indian woman was not. Instead, they profiled what dangerous women were like, in a country where women of virtue were revered equated to Almighty.

In Hindi we had vamps played by Bindu, Helen, Vaishali, Padma Khanna, Jaishree.T, Aruna Irani & Kalpana Iyer, wearing coloured wigs, contact lenses & skimpy dresses.

Talking of Helen who was a pioneer in this tribe, she was born in Burma to an Anglo Indian father & a Burmese mother, but migrated to India 1n 1942 on the invasion of Japanese army of Burma. She became a hit in Hindi screen with her item number “mera naam chin chin choo’ in ‘Howrah Bridge’ (1958). Immediately, the same year, the Tamil movie ‘Uthama Puthiran’ imported her into Kodambakkam, as she danced in the famed hit number ‘Yaradi nee mohini’, along with Sivaji Ganesan. She has since appeared in nearly seven hundred films with her item numbers in vamp roles. Her song & dance sequence in ‘Piya thu ab tho aaja’ song in Caravan (1971) is evergreen.

Here is a ‘club dance’ number from “Deiva Piravi” (1960).

The film ‘Karuppu Panam’ (1964) produced by Kannadasan had an ‘club dance’ sequence in the song ‘Aada varalaam’ filmed on Sheela, in tight (and perhaps even ill fitting) western outfits, though she already was a busy main heroine then in Malayalam. This song, set in western genre became an immortal hit.

Here is another instance of ‘club dance’ in the song ‘Uravinil fifty fifty’ where Rajeswari lays a honey trap for AVM Rajan in the film ‘Galatta Kalyanam’ (1968).

In our own Tamil screen we had an array of vamps, to name the prominent ones Jothilakshmy, Vijayalalitha, Jayamalini, Anuradha, CID Sakunthala, Disco Santhi, Silk Smitha.

Pattanathu Rajakkal

A still from the Film Pattanathu Rajakkal of SILK SMITH with Vijayakanth.
PC: From the Archives of TCRC

The vamps started donning wigs & minis as they danced, seducing the Hero in our films too, a departure from the run-of-the-mill villis with their rolling eyes & a vicious tongues, as seen in this video from the film “Sorgam” (1970) with Vijayalalitha & Sivaji Ganesan.

These vamps were either ‘one dance’ item number girls or some parallel running characters in the storyline.

Then Silk Smitha, introduced to Tamil screen by Vinu Chakravarthi, became the perennial item number girl and never came out of her image as femme fatale. Disco Shanti, Smitha’s contemporary also settled for the “item girl” tag. Here is a visual of the song ‘Nethu rathiri yamma’ song featuring the most popular vamp character playing Silk Smitha with Kamal Hassan in ‘Sakalakala Vallavan’ (1982).

But in due course, these specialist dancers meant for such vamp roles were slowly losing their relevance, partly owing to the subjects as well as the way films were made, as even new generation of actors took the center stage.

And a stage came when the heroines themselves started doing such dance numbers, sending home the breed of club dancing actors homeward, in retirement.

There was this slow acceptance that lewd lyrics & suggestive movements were no more in the exclusive realm of those who were once labeled as vamps and that the respected heroine could do it all.

This mindset of cine goers perhaps stemmed from the overall changes the current generation has witnessed & accepted arising out of education, liberated mindset, globalization etc.

As such the vamp has died a natural death in our cinemas, as the perception of them as a hugely negative clan and holding them in a water tight genre has changed along with the emergence of realizing a ‘vamp’ character is generally engrained in every ordinary living individual. That is why we see, in the soap operas on TV, normal woman characters being over dramatized as mega ‘villi’s with their ever scheming negative plans. This has becoming the major sell out of today’s TV serials!

Filmy Ripples – Fifty Shades of Lullaby

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By P V Gopalakrishnan

A Lullaby, as per Cambridge dictionary, is “a quiet song that is sung to children to help them go to sleep”. Indeed, a down-to-earth meaning, as we commonly perceive them to be. It is said that when babies are disturbed by sudden movements or noises, their blood pressure and heartbeats shoot up instantly when a Lullaby could draw the disturbed child back to normalcy by calming them, in a jiffy. So, it is music therapy that is engrained in lullaby.

Ancient literatures have lullabies in them. Sages and ascetics have sung what are known as ‘PiLLai Thamizh’ in Tamil literature on Celestial Entities. Bhakthi has found its apt expression in the lullaby composition, ‘Mannu pugazh Kosalai thum mani vayiru vaaythavane’ on Lord Rama, by Kula Sekara Azwar.

The poignant lullaby “Omanathingal Kidavo”, had been composed by the famous Malayalam poet Iravi Varman Thampi as lullaby for the young Swathi Thirunal, strikes a tender chord as its soothing notes have lulled generations of children asleep.

Rhythmic usage of words like ‘Aararo’ and ‘thalelo’ are used in ancient Tamil lullabies, typically. Grannies used to twirl their tongue making phonetics to sound like ‘loLa loLa loLa aayeee’ to calm the child.

Lullabies are a part of the cultural legacy of humanity and they have always found a place, rightfully, in films.

The filmy lullaby has had even the proud history of being nominated to Oscar, with the Tamil lullaby, composed and sung by the popular Carnatic vocalist Bombay Jayashri in the Hollywood film ‘Life of Pi’ going for Oscar nomination!

 

 

Traditionally, Raga Neelambari is associated with lullabies. However, movie lullabies follow a freelance pattern and do not restrict only to Neelambari. The movie lullabies are set to soft music using music instruments such as pipo-fone, piano, flutes, sitar, bells, vibrafone etc. that produce baby friendly sounds, attributable to sleep mode. Listen to this beautiful Hindi lullaby, based on a Bengali tune, from ‘Sujata’.

 

Our own cinemas have featured many a lullaby, with various underlying emotions of the character that renders the lullaby song on screen. But the situations in which these lullabies were included in films had their own unique connotations, some sorrowful, some wishful about posterity, some tickling funny bones, some inspirational and some comical.

There have been innumerable lullabies on our Tamil screen & this writer could enlist about thirty of them in this write up, discussing some of them.

It is commonplace for a mother to sing a lullaby to her offspring, which is full of positive things as the child grows. She packs her natural love & affection into it that it is a form of maternal blessing, so to say, to the child, as it tries to catch forty winks.

The memorable songs in this ‘love & affection’ category include ‘Anbil malarntha nal roja’ (Kanavane Kan Kanda Deivam), ‘Kanne vanna pasunkiliye’ (Yanai valartha vanampadi), ‘Kannin maniye vaa’ (Valliyin Selvan), ‘Poonchittu kannangal’ (Thulabaram), ‘Thenral vandhu veesadho’ (Sivagangai Seemai), ‘Velli nila mutrathile’ (Vettaikaran) featuring either of the parents of the child, in the filmed sequence as rendering the lullaby.

The below video is of a beautiful lullaby from ‘Kanavane Kan Kanda Deivam’ (1955), filmed on Anjali Devi, was in the music score of Hemant Kumar & the singer was P.Suseela. The music arrangement is simple with violins & guitar as main instruments.

 

 

Another beautiful lullaby of classical base, whose video is below, ‘Kannin maniye vaa’ rendered by M.L.Vasanthakumari in ‘Valliyin Kanavan’ (1955) in the music of P.S.Anantharaman, has been filmed on a lactating mother, enacted by M.S.Sundari Bai.

 

 

Another very melodious lullaby rendered by twin singers, S.Varalakshmi & T.S.Bhagavathy, is in the following video. The moving music, full of classical flute notes, was by MSV-TKR from the Kannadasan produced ‘Sivagangai Seemai’ (1959).

 

 

A fatherly lullaby can be heard in the following video, filmed MGR. T.M.Sounderrajan has rendered it very movingly in the melodious soft music of K.V.Mahadevan from the film ‘Vettaikaran’.

 

 

Sometimes, the lullaby incorporates situational advice to cajole a crying child as was in the famous film lullaby ‘Chinna pappa enga chella pappa’ (Vanna KiLi), where the mother tries to administer normalcy in an otherwise tense situation.

 

 

Often the lullabies also have an intense reflection of pathos & suffering, as are reflected in Blues genre of Western Music. We may cite such songs in the examples of ‘Konju mozhi sollum kiLiye’ (Parasakthi), ‘Malarnthum malaratha’ (Pasa Malar).

 

 

There are also lullabies incorporating tinges of inspirational messages, as was in ‘Kaala magaL kaN thirappaL’ (Ananda Jothi), as the character played by Devika sang to the then child star Kamal Hassan.

 

 

Even in comedy situations films have featured a lullaby genre of songs, an example of which could be the parody number, ‘Appappa naan appan allada’ (Galatta Kalyanam), where the situation demands Sivaji Ganesan to bring home & tend a baby! The way he dances about the baby, it must have given colic pain to the bay! Then in the same comedy flavor was another lullaby ‘Budhi sigamani petha pullai (Iruvar Ullam), unusually filmed on M.R.Radha.

 

In stark contrast, there could be situations of utter frustration & sadness triggering a lullaby as in the famous  ‘Ean piranthay magane’ (Baga Pirivinai), where the handicapped hero laments about a son being born to him in the unfortunate ambience and ’Poo maalai puzhuthi maN mele’ (Parasakthi).

 

 

 

Of course, utter proudness & exuberance do not deter a parent from singing a lullaby, instances of which are too many in our films. ‘Athai madi methaiyadi’ from Karpagam, ‘Chella Kiligalam’ (Enga Mama) (it was a mass lullaby for a group of children under the hero’s mentorship), ‘Min miniyai kanmaniyay’ (Kannan en kadhalan), ‘Naan petra selvam from the movie of same title, ‘Nee sirithal naan sirippen’ (Pavai ViLakku), ‘Pachai maram onru’ (Ramu) are all classic instances.

 

 

When you listen to ‘Chellakiliye mella pesu’ (Petralthaan pillaiya), off screen, it is a perfect lullaby of melancholic strains. But when you see the visuals MGR has enacted the song totally in a happy situation.

 

 

The other reflectively rendered slow paced Tamil film lullabies are ‘Neela vanna kanna vada’ (Mangayar Thilakam), ‘Chinnanchiru kanmalar’ (Pathi Bakthi), ‘Araaro nee yararo’ (Rajamukthi), ‘Eazhu malai andavane’ (Kalyanam panni paar), ‘Ellorum unnai nallavan enre’ (Bagyavathi), ‘Kalamithu kalamithu kannunurangu’ (Chithi), ‘Kanne Kamala poo’ (Periya Koil), ‘Kannan Varuvan’ (Panchavarnakili), ‘Kanne Raja kavalai vendam’ (Bagyalakshmi), ‘Mannukku maram barama’ (Thai piranthal vazhi pirakkum), ‘Ore oru oorile’ (Padikkatha medhai) & ‘Pillaikku thanthai oruvan’ (Parthal pasi theerum).

 

 

 

The opportunity of watching a lullaby sequence in a film has greatly diminished these days & it could even become extinct some day, as the trend of movies have departed from the film subjects of the bygone days..

But the music directors of different times have gifted us with beautiful lullaby songs that enhance our listening pleasures, even today. We will cherish them forever, for sure!