STILL FRESH: Whether it was the Albert, where it was originally performed, or a shabby theatre desperate for an audience, Basha would arrive with style and audacity.
It has been the season of re-releases. Gilli, Indian, Lakshya, to name a few, and the list is going to get longer. Movies are linked to pop culture memories and it is fun to speak dialogues with a character on screen, sing a song with its opening notes and think back to a particular time and era.
However, this is not a new trend. In the 1980s and 1990s, there were certain theatres in Madras that screened old films. Classic films of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan were re-screened in Chitra and the audience flocked in, the box-office was a hit and old films were considered gold.
a woman dressed in white
Chitra also screened Vithalacharya’s films and the horror genre made people imagine a woman in white walking along the banks of the Cooum. The buzz was that at any given time, at least one movie hall in Tamil Nadu would screen MGR’s Ulagam Suttrum Valiban.
This was a fact that was reignited many years later by Rajinikanth’s 1995 hit film Baasha, as the blockbuster was re-released every year for a week, coinciding with its release anniversary. Be it the Albert, where it was originally screened or the old theatres desperate for an audience, Baasha would win over the crowd with style and witticisms.
In neighbouring Karnataka, Bengaluru too was not untouched by the charm of Rajinikanth, who as a bus conductor earlier knew every street of the Garden City. And Baashha was often re-released at Ravi in ​​Ejipura and people would come running in imitating the dialogues and the pomp and show.
Closer to home in Chennai, kids, who often listened to the senior generation’s praise for Mackenna’s Gold and other western films, also had access to these great action films. Occasionally, Devi screened these films and the large audience pulled the teenagers along with her for some knowledge-transfer about celluloid magic.
Laurel and Hardy are back
Casino and Gaiety would sometimes forget their main programme of Pretty Woman and The Gods Must Be Crazy and go into black-and-white mode and call in Laurel and Hardy. The halls erupted in laughter, a sentiment that even reached the Buhari Hotel on Mount Road, where tea, bun-butter-jam and mutton samosas were enjoyed.
And fathers and uncles would start with their ‘Andhakalaathile (in those old days)’ monologue and the movies would be remembered. Even consulates were not untouched by the charm of nostalgia and literature students would be coaxed to attend private screenings of movies like To Kill a Mockingbird, based on Harper Lee’s novel of the same title. In 2024, the charm of the old movie still remains on top as another generation is coming up in that ‘our days’ territory!
