The first big budget silent film

Cinema is essentially an ensemble extravaganza of various art forms and its grandeur has been attracting patrons from the very beginning. The silent film era can be regarded as one of the golden eras commercially as every film that was produced and directed in-house was revered and watched multiple times. The critical and commercial success of the silent films particularly down south set a foundation for years to come.

The efforts of Rangaswamy Nataraja Mudaliar have to be lauded for making the first silent film in the south, ‘Keechaka Vadham’. A wealthy land owner, who was renowned for setting up companies that sold bicycles at Rs 25 and imported American cars and sold them at Rs 1,000 was smitten by the works of Dadasaheb Phalke and decided to dabble in cinema himself. Film historians also claim that Mudaliar had an interest in photography and his interest in cinema was a natural development.

Mudaliar met Stewart Smith, the man who shot coronation of Lord Curzon in Delhi and learnt basics of cinematography from him. He set up the India Film Company in 1917 and persuaded his partners to invest in south India’s first studio which was set up at Miller’s Road, Pulsarwakam, Chennai.

Shot in the span of five weeks, ‘Keechaka Vadham’ was based on a short story in Mahabharata and upon its release, became a critical and commercial success. The movie minted a profit of Rs 15,000 which was considered more than tidy at those times but historian Randor Guy pointsout that if the movie wasn’t made on an extraordinary budget of Rs 35,000 (a huge amount in those times), it would have made more profit. “The huge budget for the film serves as a reminder of Mudaliar’s inexperience in film making, particularly when he managed to source the equipment under Rs 2,000,” writes Randor Guy.

It was reportedly PammalSambandhamMudaliar, one of the fathers of Tamil theatre renaissance who suggested the story to Mudaliar. C Rangavadivelu, an advocate helped in writing the script, and the inter titles in Tamil were contributed by Pammal Sambandham Mudaliar. Incidentally the inter titles in Hindi were penned by Devdas Gandhi, son of Mahatma Gandhi. Stage actors Raju Mudaliar and Jevaratnam donned the roles of Ghatotkacha and Draupadi. Sadly, no print of this first silent film of Tamil and south India presently exist. Riding high on the success of the film, Mudaliar made few more silent films like ‘DraupadiVastrapaharanam’ (1918), ‘Lava Kusa’ (1919), ‘Rukmini Satyabhama’ and ‘Mayil Ravana’. However, death of his son forced him to retire early in 1923.