Amara Deepam

aka The Eternal Lamp 1956 162’ b&w Tamil d T. Prakash Rao pc Venus Pics p Venus Krishnamurthy s C.V. Sridhar lyr K.P. Kamakshi, A. Marudakasi, K.S. Gopalakrishnan c A. Vincent m T. Chalapathi Rao lp Sivaji Ganesan, M.N. Nambiar, K.A. Thangavelu, Savitri, Padmini, Chittor V. Nagaiah, E.V. Saroja

While rescuing Aruna (Savitri) from kidnappers, Ashok (Ganesan) is hit by a car and loses his memory. Having joined a group of nomads, the gypsy singer Rupa (Padmini) falls for him and her love eventually helps cure his amnesia. He returns to Aruna and Rupa, who turns out to be Aruna’s sister, kidnapped as a child, is shot trying to save him from the villains. Scenarist Sridhar later wrote and directed several triangular love stories. The Carnatic music maestro G.N. Balasubramanyam and G. Ramanathan each contributed one composition. One of the songs refers to the landowner-peasant conflict at Thanjavur and the hero, employed for a while in a factory there, is allowed to express some dissatisfaction with the capitalist ethos. An adaptation of Mervyn LeRoy?’s Random Harvest (1942), which was much more faithfully translated into Bengali the following year (Harano Sur, 1957). The director remade this Tamil hit into Hindi, Amar Deep (1958) with Dev Anand and Vyjayanthimala, produced by the Tamil version’s star Ganesan.

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