Deiva Magan

Deiva Magan (1969)

தெய்வமகன்

A lawyer leads a happy life until his wife delivers twins and one of them has a scarred face just like him. Dejected, he deserts the child and lies to his wife that their baby was stillborn.

Date of release
1969-09-05
TMDB
7.0 / 10 (3)
Runtime
2h 46m
Genres
Drama
Director
A. C. Tirulokchandar

Casting

Interesting facts

  • Awards: 0 · Nominations: 1

Deiva Magan is a 1969 Indian Tamil-language drama film written and directed by A. C. Tirulokchander. An adaptation of the Bengali novel Ulka by Nihar Ranjan Gupta, it stars Sivaji Ganesan in three roles and Jayalalithaa, with Sundarrajan, M. N. Nambiar, Nagesh, V. Nagayya and Pandari Bai in supporting roles. The film is about a scarred man who attempts to reconnect with his estranged family.

Production

The Bengali novel Ulka by Nihar Ranjan Gupta had been adapted for the screen four times; a 1957 Bengali film by the same name, a Kannada film Thayi Karulu (1962), a Hindi film Meri Surat Teri Ankhen (1963), and a Tamil film Thayin Karunai (1965). Despite the poor commercial performances of Ulka, Meri Surat Teri Ankhen and Thayin Karunai, director A. C.

Sivaji Ganesan portrayed three roles; Shankar and his twin sons Kannan and Vijay. This was the second time Ganesan has portrayed three roles in one film; the first occasion was Bale Pandiya (1962). For the characterisation of Kannan, he drew inspiration from Quasimodo, the protagonist of Victor Hugo's novel The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), making Kannan aggressive with "roughness and brute strength", while Vijay's body language was taken from…

Periyanna initially wanted to make the film to be made in colour but it was filmed in black and white at Ganesan's suggestion. The makeup for the scarred characters portrayed by Ganesan was done by R. Rangasamy and his son Jayanth Kumar. Rangasamy gave Ganesan's characters different looks; Shankar's look is sophisticated while Kannan was given a slightly darker skin tone than Vijay's.

There were difficulties in filming the scene in which Kannan is hiding in a cupboard and gestures to Shankar to give a cheque to Vijay; the scene required Ganesan to change his look between takes because the camera could not be moved, meaning he had to stand in one spot, mouth his lines, quickly change his attire and makeup to play the second character, stand in the same place and act.

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