Chemparathi

1972 142’ b&w Malayalam d P.N. Menon p S.K. Nair pc New India Films s Malayattoor Ramakrishnan lyr Vyalar Rama Varma c Ashok Kumar m P. Devarajan lp Madhu, Raghavan, Sudhir, Balan K. Nair, Bharathan, Adoor Bhasi, Bahadur, Kottarakkara Sridharan Nair, Shobhana, Adoor Bhawani, Rani Chandra, Radhamani

Menon followed up his critically acclaimed realist drama Olavum Theeravum (1969) with this love tragedy and murder mystery. The beautiful teenager Shantha (Shobhana), daughter of a gatekeeper, loves the student Dinesh who lives in the main lodge along with Prof. Balachandran. However, the rich villain Rajappan rapes and then kills Shantha. Dinesh, who witnesses the murder and is haunted by Shantha’s ghost, kills the villain in turn. Shot largely in close-up and mid-shot, the film includes several suspense-inducing sequences like Shantha’s corpse floating in a well, or Dinesh being haunted by what he saw, to shift an otherwise conventional Malayalam storyline into a new genre.

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