A Tale Of Epic Proportions: Cinema And Ramayan In The Last Century

Beginning its journey on the peak of the mountain called Valmiki, it flows onto the mighty ocean called Rama and in its path, the river called Ramayana cleanses everything on its way.

Those who know the soul of this epic know that it has existed beyond the realms of time. Several tributaries have flown into this mighty river through the centuries.

It is said that Ram Katha predates Valmiki as well, for even Valmiki is set to have heard the story from Narada in a summarised form. 

It is said that every cycle of creation and destruction saw a different Ramayana and for this very reason it is believed that the first narrator of the Ramayana was Shiva himself who narrated it to Parvati. The fourth sarga of the Bala Kanda of the Valmiki Ramayana states how Lava Kusa narrated this epic before the people of Ayodhya, in the presence of their father Rama himself.

The Silent Era 

When the 20th century art form of cinema began spreading across the world, Ram Katha found a new medium. 

As we all know, cinema was silent in its early years and filmmakers chose to bring familiar stories to the audience, which could be appreciated even in the absence of dialogues. 

So when Dhundiraj Govind Phalke made India's first feature film, he chose to make it on an ancestor of Rama, whose story was equally popular. Thus, in 1913, India had its first feature film in Raja Harishchandra. 

In 1917, Phalke made Lanka Dahan, starring Anna Salunke and Tryambak Telang. 

Anna Salunke was a male artiste who had donned the female role of Taramati in Raja Harishchandra, since women were not open to acting in films then. 

But in Lanka Dahan, he played both Ram and Sita, thus making Lanka Dahan the first film to feature a double role. Lanka Dahan was also the first film where people saw special effects on a massive scale on the big screen.

People prostrated themselves before the screen on seeing Ram and Sita on the big screen. The impact was huge and Phalke followed up with other mythologicals. 

In 1922, Ramayan was made by Eugenio de Liguoro with the silent era star Patience Cooper.

Talking Of Rama

The era of talkies began with Ardeshir Irani's Alam Ara in 1931. The story of Harishchandra was brought out on bigger scale in 1932 by V Shantaram in the Marathi classic Ayodhyecha Raja. This was also the big launch of the legendary Durga Khote. 

The first significant presentation of the Ramayana as a talkie came with Debaki Kumar Bose's Seeta (1934), produced by East India Film Company, with Prithviraj Kapoor playing Ram and Durga Khote playing the title role. 

Seeta won an honorary diploma in the second Venice International Film Festival that year and was perhaps the first Hindi film to be screened at an international film festival.

Unfortunately, the reels of Seeta have not survived but the film lived on by inspiring other films in later years. 

In the same year, C Pullaih made Lava Kusa in Telugu. He would go on to make history years later with a remake of his own film. Many believe the classic of Debaki Bose also inspired Lava Kusa. 

In 1936, Sampurna Ramayanam was released in Telugu, starring Kadaru Raju and Pushpavalli.

A filmmaker who made serious efforts to bring the Ramayana to the silver screen was Vijay Bhatt. 

Having found Prakash Pictures, he made Bharat Milap (1942), starring Prem Adib, Shobana Samarth (mother of Nutan and Tanuja and the grandmother of Kajol) and Shahu Modak. Interestingly, Durga Khote, who played Sita a decade back for the Debaki Bose classic, played Kaikeyi in this movie! 

The film was a huge success. The next year, Vijay Bhatt followed it up with his super hit Ram Rajya, retelling the Uttara Kanda of the Ramayana, with the focus being on the kingdom being a place where people's will reigned supreme. 

It also helped that the phrase Ram Rajya was in currency with Mahatma Gandhi using it to describe a welfare state.

Recasting Prem Adib and Shobana Samarth in the roles of Ram and Sita, Bhatt created a frenzy among moviegoers with his Marathi-Hindi bilingual Ram Rajya (1943). It became the third highest grosser in a year that saw the release of blockbusters like Kismet and Tansen. 

Soon, the nation began worshiping Prem Adib and Shobana as Ram and Sita wherever they went. It was dubbed in Tamil and even had a US premiere. 

In an interview Shobana once related an anecdote from a visit to Kashmir with her husband in the late 1940s. 

The owner of the hotel where Shobana was put up requested her to visit his home for his mother wanted to meet her. 

Shobana was surprised to see the Ram Panchayatan photo from Bharat Milap (the closing shot of the movie) hung in the puja room of the family. She felt a tad guilty on seeing this and asked the old lady why she had kept her photo at the altar. 

The lady said, "For me this is not Shobana, but Sita." 

Shobana realised that her portrayal matched with the mental image people carried of Sita. The respect she was showered with belonged to Sita and not her. 

Ram Rajya had another distinction. In his lifetime, Mahatma Gandhi is said to have watched only two movies. The first was Mission to Moscow (1943). The second was Ram Rajya, which he saw upon the insistence of the film's art director Kanu Desai. 

It was later remade in 1967 by Bhatt with Bina Rai and Kumar Sen in the lead roles.

After independence, A-grade actors and filmmakers in Bombay avoided mythologicals and focused mostly on social dramas. But in the southern film industry, a new wave of mythologicals was waiting to gush in after the blockbuster success of Nagi Reddy's Maya Bazaar (1957).

Southern Whirlwind

In the Tamil film industry, AP Nagarajan created an empire of successful mythologicals, the starting point of which was Sampoorna Ramayanam (1958), for which he had written the screenplay. The film was directed by K Somu. 

It was the Tamil New Year release of 1958 and hence many eyes were on it. NT Rama Rao was cast as Rama, Padmini as Sita and Sivaji Ganesan as Bharata. 

NTR had won rave reviews the previous year for his portrayal of Krishna in Maya Bazaar. 

C Rajagopalachari, who had himself written a successful abridged version of the epic in Tamil and English, profusely praised Sampoorna Ramayanam, despite his aversion to movies in general. The film was a silver jubilee hit and further reinforced NTR's godly image at the box office.

Babubhai Mistry was adept at making mythologicals in the Bombay film industry. He was known for his mastery over special effects and this gave him an advantage while making historicals and mythologicals.

He created a box office success with his Sampoorna Ramayan (1961), casting Mahipal and Anita Guha as Ram and Sita. For years, Mahipal and Anita became a huge draw in mythologicals in Hindi cinema and they also reprised the role in Manibhai Vyas' Shri Ram Bharat Milan (1965). 

Anita Guha later became a divine sensation with Jai Santoshi Maa (1975) and Mistry worked right into the 1990s, having handled the special effects of BR Chopra's Mahabharat (1988).

Debaki Bose's Seeta inspired many filmmakers in the 1960s, starting with Kunchako's Malayalam hit Seetha (1960), which had Prem Nazir play Ram and Kusalakumari play Sita. It also had one of P Susheela's earliest Malayalam hits Paatu paadi urakkam njan, which became a household lullaby for many decades to come.

But the biggest box office hurricane was still waiting to be made. 

In 1963, C Pulliah and CS Rao made the bilingual classic Lava Kusa (1963) in Tamil and Telugu, starring NT Rama Rao as Rama and Anjali Devi as Sita. 

Two versions were made, in Telugu and Tamil. Pullaya had made one version in the 1930s as well. The Telugu version was released on 29 March, 1963 as the year's big Ugadi release and the Tamil version was released a few weeks later for the Tamil New Year and became a milestone of Tamil cinema. 

It had a dream run of 75 weeks in several centres and became an all-time blockbuster of the industry. It was also Telugu cinema's first full length colour film.

Through The Decades

Since the epic was vast, filmmakers often focused on a part of the story rather than packing the entire itihasa into a three-hour capsule. Bapu's Seetha Kalyanam (1976) is notable for its portrayal of the Bala Kanda, with Jaya Prada playing Sita. The film was dubbed in Hindi and Malayalam.

A less known story from the epic that found great resonance among filmmakers was of the battle between Rama and Hanuman. 

In 1957, SN Tripathi made Ram Hanuman Yudh in Hindi. In 1963, M Nageshwara Rao and M S Nayak explored the same story in their Kannada hit Sri Ramanjaneya Yuddha, which was also actor Rajkumar's 50th film. The film was remade in Telugu in 1975, by Bapu with NT Rama Rao.

Today, Dara Singh is the face of Hanuman but he first played the character in Chandrakant's Bajrangbali (1976), which had Biswajeet play Ram and Moushami Chatterjee play Sita. 

In 1980, Ardhendu Chatterjee brought out the Bangali retelling of the Uttara Kanda with Sita, where Sandhya Roy played the title role.

While the number of mythologicals might have reduced in Hindi cinema in the 1950s and 60s, Ramayan was a direct point of reference for filmmakers to show the model citizen. Sometimes, Ram would emerge as the protagonist of Purab aur Pashchim (1970) and sometimes, films like Ram Lakhan (1989) paid a direct ode to the story. 

Sometimes the misfortune of Sita was a direct source of inspiration as seen in Julam Sahe Bhaari Janak Dulari (Awara) and sometimes, it was used to express undying love as seen in Mere rom rom mein basne wale Ram in Neelkamal (1968). 

It inspired the values of family dramas of the 1990s like Hum Apke Hain Koun (1994) and Hum Saath Saath Hain (1999), so much so that chaupais of the Ramcharitmanas were used in the background in some crucial scenes of these movies.

Ramayana Fever On Television

In the 1980s, television became the new attraction in town, with video piracy gaining ground and cinema halls getting deserted. Many top filmmakers made a beeline for television. 

On 26 January, 1987, Ramanand Sagar's Ramayan began airing on Doordarshan and popular culture was never the same since. 

Primarily based on Ramcharitmanas and Valmiki Ramayan, Sagar's Ramayan packed a tsunami in a TV set. 

Streets wore a deserted look on Sunday mornings and critics were left wondering at the miracle of television. 

One of the biggest factor behind its success was the faithful adherence by Sagar to the chaupais of Tulsidas, which he used liberally through the episodes to create a wave of devotional fervour. 

If homes turned into temples, Arun Govil and Dipika Chikhalia, playing Ram and Sita, became the presiding deities of those drawing rooms. 

The serial had a successful re-run during the lockdown in 2020 on Doordarshan and a new generation got introduced to the magic of the epic. 

Ram Katha Beyond Boundaries

A lasting memory of several millennials with respect to the Ramayana surprisingly came not from India but from the anime Indo-Japanese film Ramayana: The legend of Prince Rama (1992), which was produced and directed by Yugo Sako.

Released at the peak of the dispute at Ayodhya, the film ran into a few controversies while being made but became a huge success later, with over 450 artistes contributing to this huge venture from both India and Japan. 

The series retained Arun Govil as the voice of Ram in Hindi and had the narration done by Shatrughan Sinha. The film was feted at several festivals worldwide and the music composed by Vanraj Bhatia continues to remain popular. 

Many consider Yugo Sako's film to be the gold standard of the retelling of the epic for children till date.

A generation that grew up on Prem Adib is largely gone. Those who saw Rama or Krishna in NTR will stick to the claim that nobody did it better than him. And those who saw Ram in Arun Govil or Krishna in Nitish Bharadwaj might not want to know another Ram for he was also a part of their childhood memories. 

But there is a new generation today that is yet to have its communion with the Ram of today's age. The story will not end here for every generation will come with its own interpretation of the divine epic of Valmiki and this author thinks they all deserve to get their fair chance.