Still fresh:Be it Albert, where it was originally screened or worn-down theatres desperate for footfalls, Baasha would saunter in with style and chutzpah.
This has been the season of re-releases. Ghilli, Indian, Lakshya, to name a few, and the list is bound to get longer. Movies are intrinsic to pop culture nostalgia and there is fun in mouthing a dialogue along with a character on screen, belting out a song just as its opening notes waft in and to also wonder about a particular time and age.
However, this is not a new trend. In the Madras of the 1980s and 1990s, there were specific theatres that screened old films. There was Chitra that did re-runs of MGR and Sivaji Ganesan classics and the faithful thronged, the box-office boomed, and old was deemed gold.
A lady in white
Chitra also screened Vittalacharya films and the horror genre made people imagine about a lady in white walking along the Cooum’s banks. There was this talk back then about how at any given point in Tamil Nadu, at least one movie hall would be featuring MGR’s Ulagam Suttrum Valiban.
It was a fact that found a second wind years later through Rajinikanth’s 1995 cult-hit Baasha, as this blockbuster used to be re-released for a week every year, coinciding with its release-anniversary. Be it Albert, where it was originally screened or worn-down theatres desperate for footfalls, Baasha would saunter in with style and chutzpah.
In neighbouring Karnataka, Bengaluru wasn’t immune to the charms of Rajinikanth, who earlier as a bus conductor knew every road of the garden city. And Baasha would be re-released, often at Ejipura’s Ravi and the masses would hustle in, imitating dialogues and the swagger.
Closer home in Chennai, children, often hearing the senior generation’s ode to Mackenna’s Gold and other westerns, also found access to these great action flicks. At times, Devi screened these films and an older audience pulled along the teenyboppers in a bid at some knowledge-transfer about celluloid magic.
Laurel and Hardy back
Casino and Gaiety would at times forget their staple of Pretty Woman and The Gods must be Crazy, and lapse into black-and-white mode and usher in Laurel and Hardy. The halls rippled with laughter, an emotion that was carried all along to Buhari Hotel on Mount Road where chai, bun-butter-jam, and mutton samosas were indulged in.
And fathers and uncles would start with their ‘andhakalathile (In those olden days)’ monologue and movies would be remembered. Even consulates weren’t immune to the charms of nostalgia and literature students would be egged on to attend private screenings of films like To Kill a Mockingbird based on Harper Lee’s novel of the same title. Cut to 2024, the lure of the old film still remains a top-draw as another generation gets into that ‘in-our-days’ zone!
