Swati

aka The Pearl 1984 144’ col Telugu d/s Kranthi Kumar pc Shri Kranthi Chitra dial Ganesh Patro lyr Veturi Sundara Ramamurthy c Hari Anumolu m Chakravarty lp Suhasini, K. Jaggaiah, Bhanuchander, P.L. Narayana, Sarath Babu, Rajendra Prasad, Subhalekha Sudhakar, Sharada, Samyuktha, Ramaprabha, Anuradha

Kranthi Kumar’s directorial debut is an episodic melodrama about an aggressive young woman, Swati (Suhasini), who looks after her divorced mother (Sharada) while defending herself against predatory males in the street. Having arranged her mother’s second marriage with an old widower (Jaggaiah), Swati has problems with her new stepsister. When one of Swati’s friends is raped, local gossip blames the victim’s husband for failing to prevent the attack and the couple commit suicide. In the end, Swati’s father turns up wanting to meet his former wife once more before his death. He is allowed only to see her from a distance, while she is not told that he is still alive. One of Tamil star Suhasini’s best-known Telugu films. The director remade the film in Hindi in 1986 with Shashi Kapoor, Sharmila Tagore and Madhuri Dixit, with a score by Laxmikant- Pyarelal.

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