Andha Naal — A masterpiece that broke the norm in Tamil cinema

Chennai

In World War II, Singapore had fallen. And the British moved lock, stock and barrel to Madras to defend Asia from the Japanese. In fact, their Avadi camp was the largest of its kind in the allied territories. They even had Catalina seaplanes landing in the Red Hills Lake nearby. All this was unknown to the local population, but of course, the enemy knew. So, a Japanese bombing spree seemed imminent.

With blackouts and fire drills daily, the population was on the end of its wits. There were many speculations that some locals were guiding the Japanese on bombing targets in the city. Plans were being sent to the enemy and the planes were guided by radio engineers, the rumour mills persisted.

The belief lingered for years even after peace was restored, and a decade later a Tamil movie Andha Naal (That Day) would be made on a fictional engineer who secretly sends guidance to the Japanese on a clandestine radio and gets shot dead next to his broken radio.

The police identify that somebody close to Rajan, the engineer must have shot him (including his mistress) and everyone is asked for a version of the story. And suddenly all of them point an accusatory finger at another with a grander motive to pull the trigger.

So the film had several flashbacks, at the end of each the hero Sivaji Ganesan would drop on the floor dead. In fact, a part of the audience that was not used to this type of storytelling wondered why the hero Sivaji died seven times in the movie.

In 1952, Madras cinema audiences were in for a treat. For the first time, a film festival was held with a screening of foreign films from 23 countries playing 40 features and 100 short films. The one who caught everyone’s attention was Akira Kurosawa. Few Japanese directors have been as widely applauded by international audiences as Kurosawa. His historical spectacle Rashomon was about an ancient saying ‘Don’t believe your eyes’. A Samurai is killed and many people have to give their versions as evidence. And each one leads the investigators further from the truth. It had a deep effect on most of the viewers.

Andha Naal is clearly based on Rashomon. S Balachander, a musical prodigy who watched it, was inspired to write a radio play. He combined factors of the long-prevailing rumour of treason and the style of the Japanese movie to weave an audio play for All India Radio which promptly rejected it.

After some hesitation, he approached AVM who liked the theme of the story but was shocked at the director’s wish that no songs or stunts that could distract the flow of the tale should be included. Andha Naal thus became the first Tamil film that did not have any songs or dance sequences when 20-30 songs were common in a talkie. Since the music was simple it was done by the orchestra of the gramophone company owned by the producer — Saraswathi Stores.

Two heroes, Sahasranamam and Calcutta Vishwanathan, were engaged one after another as the hero but their shots were shelved. In Vishwanathan’s case, it was almost half the movie. When Balachander objected to a third hero being sought, he nearly got fired too. A hesitant Balachander would approach Shivaji for a negative role in which he dies in the first scene. Shivaji coincidentally had been nearly been dropped halfway in his debut film Parasakthi by Meiyappan.

But he was no longer the scrawny drama actor who was seeking a break. Shivaji had grown in stature and so had his fees. When AVM and he could not agree on his fee, AVM offered a handsome daily fee for the days they were shooting and the smart businessman short-changed Shivaji by finishing the movie in a record 17 days.