Sagara Sangamam

aka The Confluence 1983 160’ col Telugu d/st/sc K. Vishwanath p Edida Nageshwara Rao pc Poornodaya Movie Creations dial Jandhyala lyr Veturi Sundara Ramamurthy c P.S. Niwas m Ilaiyaraja lp Kamalahasan, Jayapradha, Sarath Babu, S.P. Sailaja, ‘Sakshi’ Rangarao, Vankayala, Janaki, Arunkumar, Bhoomeswararao, Potti Prasad, Manju Bhargavi, Mohan Sharma

Vishwanath’s sequel to Shankarabharanam (1979) concentrated on classical dance. The drunken dance critic Balakrishna Bhagavatar (Kamalahasan) writes a review denouncing a mediocre but much-touted dancer (Sailaja). It turns out, in a flashback, that the dancer is the daughter of the reviewer’s old flame Madhavi (Jayapradha). Madhavi persuades Balakrishna to teach her daughter. He eventually dies of a broken heart but his pupil achieves mastery in classical dance so that the classical art (cf. Shankarabharanam) will live on. The film is dominated by Kamalahasan, who demonstrated a remarkable, unexpected skill to dance the Bharat Natyam, although the rest of the film’s classicism is pure kitsch.

Film