Maestro Ilayaraja News and Tidbits 2014

[rajsekar]

I had earlier planned to comment on this news item, but couldn't do it.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/e...w/44924781.cms

Where are our so called superstars and egocentric technical artists in Madras? Few are busy dancing with 27 year old actresses. I would be really surprised if Ilayaraja didn't attend Ashok Kumar's funeral. I see Raaja attending all kinds of functions in recent months. Anyway, I cannot comment on film world politics.

I want to highlight the great artistic work done by Ashok Kumar combined with fantastic musical scores by Ilayaraja. Ashok Kumar has done maximum number of movie/ song cinematography using Raja's scores. Incidentally Ashok Kumar handled the lens for all of Mahendran's movies. Ashok Kumar won the National Award for Nenjathai Killathe in 1980. During that period, the Indian film banner/ poster had a rare design wherein only three technical artist's names would be printed against a background silhouette of the movie title. It would be "Mahendran, Ilayaraja, Ashok Kumar". Everything else is irrelevant. Some of those movies became super hits. It was a rare and great combination of artists in Indian films. Even today you cannot see see such film banners or posters. If I am correct, India's first female cinematographer BR Vijayalakshmi (worked in several Bhagyaraj's films) tutored under Ashok Kumar.

The current trend is to show the hero's name prominently printed followed by the heroine's item number. The names of Music director and Cinematographer is printed in the smallest font. The music director is anyway a complete waste for current movies, since pirated tunes and scores are most sought after. Have you heard the latest "Kathi" songs? - all third rate tunes. Sorry, I am digressing from the main post.

Ashok Kumar and Balu Mahendra were two pioneering cinematographers who used natural lighting for all their work. The entire film shooting would be scheduled to suit day light conditions and as a result their movies would take longer time to complete. They used filters to the maximum extent. Below you can enjoy three of my favorite and extraordinary song sequences of Ashok Kumar's brilliant day light frames (pay attention to the hair frills and wide angle shots in natural light) along with Ilayaraja's mesmerizing orchestration.


(Ashok Kumar directed this super hit movie and requested Raja to re-tune another super-duper song. Hear the two great interludes and compare that with the original Tamil song)

(Uma Ramanan's rendering)
(S.Janaki's soulful rendering in Hindi and possibly the first full Hindi song in a Tamil film)