When A Helicopter Heralded The Arrival Of Raja Raja Cholan

For the then 13-year-old Vasudevan, it was the first sighting of a helicopter.  

It was the year 1973 when sighting airplanes, leave alone helicopters, was not easy in the small town of Trichy in Tamil Nadu . "It was a Saturday, and there was no school for us. We were thrilled and happy to talk about it with friends for long."

But Vasudevan,  who is a retired Village Administrative Officer now and lives in Chennai,  and many of his friends had no idea what the helicopter was doing on the last day of March, 1973 in the Trichy sky. 

Well, the story goes that it was hired by the fans of late actor Sivaji Ganesan to shower rose petals from above as the box with the film roll of his film Raja Raja Cholan was taken to the theater. 

In those days, taking the film roll to the theatre on the day of release of a much-expected film was in itself a grand celebratory event. But raining petals down from a helicopter for a film's release was beyond anyone's dreams. 

Just a week before that Sivaji had had another release Bhartha Vilas and it was running successfully all over the State. But the buzz around Raja Raja Cholan, a film on the life and times of that famous Hindu king, directed by the veteran of historicals, A P Nagarajan, was unprecedented. 

For, it was Tamil cinema's first ever cinemascope movie.  

Produced by Umapathy Movies (run by G Umapathy who famously owned the now defunct Anand Theatre in Chennai, and he also played the villain in Mani Ratnam's 1988 flick Agni Nakshatram), Raja Raja Cholan was mounted on a lavish scale. 

And the publicity for the film was unprecedented. A few weeks after the film's release, the producer carried full-page advertisements in Tamil publications with adulatory cuttings from reviews published in various magazines and newspapers. It was an unheard of marketing technique.

Raja Raja Cholan was an adaptation of a play written by Aru Ramanathan and staged by the famous TKS Brothers Group. They had staged the play for over 2,000 times since the late 1950s, and before Umapathy bankrolled it, several others had tried to make it into a film. But none succeeded.

Umapathy, apart from fielding the top director and hero of the day, also roped in plenty of big names to play the different characters. In the cast were, Lakshmi, Sivakumar, Muthuraman, Nambiar, Vijayakumari, R S Manohar, Manorama, Pushpalatha, TR Mahalingam, S Varalakshmi and Sirkazhi Govindarajan.

The producer also officially got the cinemascope technology from Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation and sent the film's cameraman WR Subba Rao to Mumbai for training and also brought down from there expensive camera equipment for shooting.

As the government of the day did not allow shooting at the famed Brihadeeswara Temple at Tanjore, the production team got up a real life-like replica of the temple at the Vasu Studios in Chennai. Reports from then say that the set looked so real that the public thronged it and prayed at the temple set as if it was a real one.     

Sivaji-APN combo, a bulwark against Dravidian onslaught

Raja Raja Cholan could have been a historical that made history in its own right. But, despite pulling out all stops in its production, the film was considered a box-office failure. It was such a colossal disappointment that it brought to an end one of the iconic collaborations in Tamil cinema  --- Sivaji Ganesan and AP Nagarajan. 

This was the last of the 12 films that the celebrated duo did together. 

AP Nagarajan had started his journey as a director with the 1962 Sivaji starrer Vadivukku Valai Kaappu. Till the fiasco of Raja Raja Cholan, the duo did many sentimental dramas that were typical to those times, including the ever popular Thillana Mohanambal and Sivaji's 9-role tour de force Navarathri.

But the two will be remembered in the annals of Tamil film history for some of the most remarkable historical and mythological movies, including Thiruvilaiyadal, Saraswati Sabatham, Thiruvarutchelvar, Thirumal Perumai, Kandan Karunai and of course Raja Raja Cholan.

These historicals and movies based in Hindu traditions were important and socially relevant at a time when Tamil cinema was being threatened to be taken over by the godless Dravidian movement. 

"Sivaji-APN movies were important bulwarks against the Dravidian narrative that was dominating Kollywood from the late 50s," says R Rajeshwaran, a retired professor of sociology from Madurai Kamaraj University. 

"Those movies, suffused with the cultural ethos of the land, kept the public in touch with their hoary roots," he adds. "Their partnership has significance for the state of Tamil Nadu beyond films."

Raja Raja Cholan a sequel to Ponniyin Selvan?

But Raja Raja Cholan perhaps failed because it seemed less on the saga of one of the greatest kings of India who is remembered for reinstating the Chola influence and ensuring its supremacy across the Indian Ocean. 

As one critic said, the film came across as a sentimental drama within the Raja Raja Cholan family. The grandeur of the Chola empire and its most famous king did not come through. The wars, the larger than life palace intrigue were all reduced to footnotes in the narrative. 

The screenplay was jointly credited to APN and the story writer Aru Ramanathan. But the latter's touch is seen more in the film and APN's famed skill in mounting historicals rarely came across. Also, it was also said that the theatres were not technically equipped to ideally render the cinemascope effect. The standard screen dimension then, it was claimed, did not do justice to cinemascope prints.  

Another thing that came in for criticism was the film's music. All of Sivaji-APN films had great songs that were filled with Carnatic riffs and were set to tune by the great K V Mahadevan. But for Raja Raja Cholan's music, APN chose to go with Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan, who incidentally had his film debut through APN's Vaa Raja Vaa (1969).

APN always had a soft corner for Kunnakudi (as he is known) from his 1967 film Kandan Karunai, which had fetched KV Mahadevan the National Award for best music director. But the film  features a famous song --- Thiruparamkundrathil Nee Sirithal ---  that was composed by Kunnakudi. APN had heard the song, sung by the renowned Sulamangalam Sisters, at some function, and was impressed with it. He requested Mahadevan to try and include the song in Kandan Karunai who accepted the request. From then on, Kunnakudi was in APN's radar and gave him a break in 1969. And APN also utilised him in Thirumalai Thenkumari (1970) and Agathiyar (1971). 

But Raja Raja Cholan was Kunnakudi's first film for a big star of the day (incidentally, Kunnakudi was booked but later dropped from MGR's Ulagam Sutrum Valiban which released on the back of Raja Raja Cholan in May 1973). 

Anyway, Raja Raja Cholan's songs never made it big like, say, the ones from Thiruvilaiyadal or Saraswati Sabatham, even though they enjoy cult cred among the music aficionados. 

The most popular song from the film is Yedu Thanthanadi sung with typical verve by S Varalakshmi and Sirkazhi Govindarajan. The film also features Thendralodu, one of the songs that features Sivaji's voice (along with TR Mahalingam’s).  

The song list also has Maathennal Padaithan, which is known for featuring all the 12 months of Tamil calendar in sequential (written by redoubtable Kannadasan).  

The album also features the Thanjai Periya Kovil, the song that celebrates the architectural marvel of Brihadeeswarar Temple and the magnificence of the king Raja Raja Chola. The song was picturised on TR Mahalingam, Sirkazhi Govindarajan and S Varalakshmi who actually sang the song. 

It remained a unique feature till the Senorita song in Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara arrived. It had Farhan Akhtar, Hrithik Roshan and Abhay Deol acting and singing. 

In a sense,  the Raja Raja Cholan film is a companion story of sorts to the fictional story of Ponniyin Selvan that was written in the 1950s. Raja Raja Cholan takes off from Ponniyin Selvan stops. Apart from the eponymous Raja Raja Cholan, the Kundavai character is seen in both the works. Kundavai, of course, is the sister of Arulmozhivarman, and in the older film she is the daughter of the Chola emperor. 

Next week, the second part of Ponniyin Selvan arrives, exactly fifty years after its nominal sequel released. This may well and truly be a case of turning the clock back. Well, historicals are meant to do that.