Ambikapathy

Ambikapathy (1937)

அம்பிகாபதி

The film is based on a story set in the Chola Empire in year 1083 AD. The titular character in the story is Ambikapathy (M K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar), the son of the Tamil poet Kambar (Serugulathur Sama) who is in love with the Chola princess and daughter of Kulothunga Chola, Amaravati (played by M. R. Santhanalakshmi). The king objects to their love and insists on testing Ambikapathy's literary mettle before judging his worth. The test given to Ambikapathi is that he should write and sing a hundred poems in the field of Puram (dealing with war and politics). The poems should not have any reference to the field of Aram (dealing of love and romance). Ambikapathi begins the test in the King's court with a Kadavul Vaazhthu (invocation to God). Amaravathi who is keeping the count, mistakes the invocation as a poem and counts it as poem number one.

Date of release
1937-12-11
TMDB
8.0 / 10 (1)
Runtime
3h 30m
Genres
Drama, Music
Director
Ellis R. Dungan

Casting

Interesting facts

Ambikapathy is a 1937 Indian Tamil musical period film directed by American film director Ellis R. Dungan. It starred M. K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar, M. R. Santhanalakshmi, Serugulathur Sama, T. S. Balaiya, N. S. Krishnan, T. A. Madhuram and P. G. Venkatesan. Ambikapathy is regarded as one of the greatest hits of pre-independence Tamil cinema. Ambikapathy and Chintamani were the greatest hits of 1937 and made critics regard Bhagavathar as the "first superstar of Tamil cinema". This was the first Tamil film to name a music director in its credits.

Production

The film highlighted the Romeo-Juliet type romance between Bhagavathar and Santhanalakshmi. Dungan who did not know Tamil, used Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet as an inspiration and incorporated some of its scenes in the script. The writer for the film was the Tamil scholar Thanigachalam working under the pen name Elangovan. He translated the scenes Dungan had marked out from Shakespeare into Tamil. One of them was the balcony scene.

Initially, the producer M. S. Thottana Chettiar, wanted Y. V. Rao to direct the film, but buoyed by the success ofChintamani, Rao demanded a huge amount of money as payment which the producers could not afford. Instead they hired the up-and-coming American film director Ellis R Gungan. Dungan, on hearing the story agreed to direct the film. A devadasi had earlier been chosen to form the lead pair with M.K. Thyagaraja Bhagavathar in the movie.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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