Written by V. Vijaysree
It is said that a donkey who chose to eat only movie posters would not have starved to death in this city. Madurai, my father’s hometown, was dotted with a great many cinemas. It also housed the Tangam Theater, Asia’s largest cinema with a capacity of over 2,500 people.
Every summer we went to Madurai to spend school holidays with my grandparents. We lived in Bombay, where else in India would be boring by comparison? But my brother and I had something to look forward to in this ancient city of temples. . Our father, Appa, loved listening to old Tamil movie songs, but he seemed to despise movies. Lucky for us, his father’s younger brother, Perippa, was one of Madurai’s film-obsessed residents.
During the hot summer months, Perippa took us to the cinema to watch a Hollywood movie. For the rest of the year he watched films in other languages, namely Tamil, Hindi and Chinese martial arts films dubbed in English. short video on youtubeI realized that when Perippa was a teenager, she missed the groundbreaking Tamil films that were playing in her backyard.
The year is 1952. Rajagoparachari, ‘Rajaji’ was the Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu. By all accounts, he didn’t think much about the new medium of cinema. At the time, many conservatives thought movies corrupted the minds of young people. My grandparents, who lived on Kakkahop Road in Madurai, had much the same idea about cinema.
Nevertheless, it was undeniable that the Thangam Theater had become a hot topic since it was built in our neighborhood. Construction lasted him two years. Even in a city with many theaters, first-class presentation is important. Thangam opened for business on his 17th October, the day of Deepavali that year. Tickets for the best seats in the hall were printed in fancy gold leaf. “Thangam” literally means gold in Tamil.
No one expected this on opening night, but Shivaji Ganesan, who made his debut on Parasakti, skyrocketed to fame overnight and would enjoy a long career in movies.To this day he teeth The screenwriter of the film, M. Karunanidhi, would go on to be elected Chief Minister of Tamil Nadu five times.plot of Parasakti was the ideological vehicle of the Dravida Mnetra Kazagam (DMK), a political party formed in 1949.
Set in the turbulent era just before India’s independence, ParasaktiIt tells the story of a chaste young Tamil widow who encounters lustful men at every turn. She finds it difficult to earn her living. But when she tried to kill herself and her young son, she was soon arrested and told that their lives belonged to her state. In the customary happy ending, she is reunited with her three brothers and her young son in Burma – she never stands on her own, nor does her widow remarry – in short, nothing progressive. After going through a series of hardships, a privileged family decides to serve the underprivileged in their native land.
Sivaji, who plays the widow’s youngest brother, conveys people’s resentment against the upper classes in sharp dialogue. In 1947 Britain left India, and to many it was as if one set of ruthless rulers had been replaced by another. Parasakti called for social reform. (Besides, the film says that in the city of Madras there are no homeless families sleeping on the sidewalks, no rickshaws, and yes, there are taps for drinking water for the common people that never run out…. ) The film ran at the Thangam Theater where he sold out for over 100 days.
So, Parasakti It was also a dream debut for a cavernous new theater. The Tangam Theater was not completely soundproof, so people living nearby could hear the Tangam Theater singing. ParashaktiThe most incendiary conversations, though, are said to have been drowned out by the sound of applause. My father still sings that song in honor of the crow’s sharing. Kaakaakaa.Also swirl Oh Rasikum Zemananefeaturing dance house Kamala Lakshman in Proto Item No.
There are other things worth noting. Two songs talk about what experts in the field of development economics are trying to tackle these days. Rosary PolktilieAdapted from a poem by revolutionary poet Subramania Bharati, the poem says the poor cannot understand why they are perpetually starving. another song, Polle Irak It asks whether the have-nots can lead an abundant life. So someone has to help the poor find a way out of poverty. who is that? The film ends with a song that translates to “Everybody Should Prosper” featuring stock footage of Dravidian ideological leaders.
Indeed, at that time the state was rocked by drought and Rajaji called on people to pray for rain. Such sentiments were parodied in the film, which conservatives viewed as anti-establishment and anti-god. They asked the Central Film Certification Commission for re-evaluation. Rumors were circulating that the film would be pulled from theaters at any moment. The feared ban never happened. Instead, rumors flooded the theater with the public.
Pelipa must have begged her grandparents for money to go see this controversial movie, too. I can see my good-natured grandfather yelling, “No, no,” and her grandmother beating his eldest son hard with a fan. They didn’t give him money for the cheapest ticket. Around the time he started making his money, Perippa was a “first day, premiere” sort of guy, but eventually became a movie buff.
In the 1990s, the rise of cheap video players and dedicated movie TV channels wiped out many theaters around the world. The cinema city of Madurai was no exception. The time has come for the famous Thangam to be demolished.
One August day in 2011, long-time moviegoers gathered in the Kakkahop neighborhood to pay their last respects to a theater that had been closed for nearly two decades. Some adults even cried openly. Again, I can think of Perippa in them. Like a scene from a melodramatic movie, the clouds seemed to gather and drizzle in unison.
Perippa died in Madurai in his seventies. Most people would say he lived a long and fulfilling life. He died young and I would say he died just before his days on Netflix, Amazon and other streaming video services. Old age must have loved watching subtitled movies on demand from every continent in the comfort of his home. After all, it was our turn, his brother and I, to talk to him about new releases and discuss the finer points of his favorite films with him. Oh, it wasn’t supposed to be!
