Two days back I watched
Maya Bazaar in color at Prasads. I must admit that this movie is one of the greatest movies we ever had. For a movie that is more than 50 year old, the theatre had packed audience. The audience age group was from 3 to 90 years and each and everyone among them was enjoying the movie to the fullest. While the elder people were enjoying the screen presence of all time greatest actors actors of telugu cinema like SVR, NTR, ANR, Gummadi, Savitri, Relangi at a single place, the children were fully enjoying the fighting sequences and the comedy done by Ghatotkacha's army and the younger croud was fully enjoying the songs and the subtle comedy in the movie. You hardly get to see any movie these days which appeals to such wide age group of audience.
Coming to me, I have fully enjoyed each and every scene in the movie. The sensible and delicate comedy present in many scenes made me even bigger fan of old movies. Felt that each and every scene in the movie was made after detailed thinking and even smaller detail was not missed. The highlights of the movie are
1) Actors performance: Each and every actor in the movie was apt for their role ..be it NTR as srikrishna, Savitri as Sasirekha, or SVR, ANR, Relangi, Ramanareddy..the best casting you can ever imagine. Savitri' action was too good in the movie. Especially when Ghatotkacha enters into her body, her action was awesome. If you are non telugu but want to know how Sri Krishna might have looked like, you have to watch this movie. After watching this movie, when you think of SriKrishna, NTR would come to your mind. I need not say anything about the screen presence, dialogue delivery, action of SVR as Ghatotkacha...I am one of those who believe SVR is the greatest actor we ever had in telugu film industry even better than NTR, though I have my biggest respect for NTR.
2) songs: When "
lahiri lahiri lahiri lo..." song started there were claps and whistles whose magnitude was comparable to the response you typically get in a hero's entry scene latest movies. Can you imagine such a response for a movie that was made half a century back? The claps got only bigger in the later part of the song when Srikrishna & Rukmini (NTR and his wife in the movie) go for boating to save Abhimanyu and Sasirekha (ANR and Savitri) from being seen by Sasirekha's parents. And ofcourse then comes the bigger highlight of Balarama and his wife (Gummadi and ?) going for boating and singing again "lahiri lahiri lahiri lo..." .. It was real fun as I never saw gummadi in such romantic scenes. In one of the latest interviews, ANR was telling that this song was shot during day time. But that is never felt in the song when you actually see it on screen, you really feel like it is one of those awesome full moon days.
The other songs like "
vivaha bhojanambu", "neevena nanu talachinadi", "sundari" also received very good response.
3) The other highlights are the screenplay of the movie, the special effects in the movie. In the song of "
Vivaha bhojanambu", it is still difficult to imagine how they shot the scene of SVR eating laddus in a single shot. All credit to the director, camera man and the producers of the movie.
4) Colors: Goldstone Technologies has done a wonderful job of making the movie into colors and I believe the success of the movie would encourage more companies attempting such things.
In the last I would say that, even if you have the slightest interest for old telugu movies, this is a must watch and you will not regret that experience.
