Kalpana (1977) - Retrospective

Film: Kalpana (1977)
Banner:Sri Annapurna Cine Enterprises
Technical: Black and White;35 mm
Release Date: April 22, 1977
Cast: Muralimohan (Raghuram), Jayachitra (Kalpana), Gummadi Venkateswara Rao (Raja Rao), Allu Ramalingaiah (Kalidas), Giribabu (Seshu), Jayamalini (Rani), Rohini Prasad (Papa), Bhanuprakash (Jayachitra's uncle), Varaprasad (Nuthan Prasad), L.E. Sundaram (Guest), Dr. Prabhakar Reddy (Doctor), Satyanarayana (Lawyer Dhananjaya Rao, guest role), Rao Gopal Rao (Guest), Chayadevi (Guest) Lyrics: C. Narayana Reddy, Veturi Sundararamamurthy, Gopi, Veeturi
Playback: S.P. Balasubrahmanyam, G. Anand, P. Susheela
Publicity: Gangadhar
Camera: Navakanth Art: Thota Hemachander
Editing: Anjireddy
Dialogues: Satyanand
Director of Photography: K.S. Prakash
Music: Chakravarthy
Producer: Kranthi Kumar
Screenplay, Direction: K. Raghavendra Rao

Story: Writer Raghuram (Muralimohan) rescues a girl named Kalpana (Jayachitra) who later claims to be his wife and forgets her past. He slowly falls in love with her. Once he sees her picture in a photo studio and starts enquiring about it, and he gets different answers from different people creating confusion about her. Her real identity is revealed only towards the end of the film. 

About the film:

The film is a remake of super hit Hindi film "Anamika" (1973 - produced by Tahir Hussain and directed by Raghunath Jalani) with Jaya Badhuri doing the title role, while Sanjeev Kumar played the role of a writer. The film has memorable music by R.D. Burman (Remember the song "baahOn mein chalE aa...", which is favorite to Lata Mangeshkar and who can forget the title song of "Anamika..." beautifully rendered by Kishore Kumar). Chakravarthy, who had not yet fallen into the commercial trap then, had given evergreen hit songs for the Telugu version - like "vadalanuraa ninu raghuraamaa..." (P. Susheela) and one of the G. Anand's career-best song "dikkulu chooDaku raamayyaa". He used the original tune for the title song "Kalpana...", still succeeding to a great extent in his own effort!

Nuthan Prasad was credited in the film with his original name (Varaprasad), though he changed his name to Nuthan Prasad two years before this film, when he acted in "Muthyala Muggu". Also, for an actor whose voice was known to be uniquely different, his voice was dubbed in this film by Chakravarthy, thus marking probably the only film in which his voice was dubbed. Jayamalini (Helen in the original) gets her voice dubbed by Dubbing Janaki. Giribabu did a pretty good job as Seshu, which was originally played by Ramesh Behl. Rao Gopal Rao appears in a guest role whenever Kalidas (Allu Ramalingaiah) tries to write a story he appears as a main lead in the story and troubles Kalidas and makes him scrap the story.

K.S. Prakash delivered a very good camera work, using highly appreciable shadows and lighting in creating various moods. 

The film was a decent hit, though it was naturally affected by Raghavendra Rao's own "bigger" blockbuster film, Adavi Ramudu which was released a week (on April 28, 1977) after the film Kalpana (on April 22, 1977); the film Adavi Ramudu created records (which are still not broken in some areas). Actually, 1977 was one of the best years for Raghavendra Rao, as he gave some of the best films in his career - Kalpana (April 22, 1977), Adavi Ramudu (April 28, 1977), Prema Lekhalu (September 09, 1977), Amara Deepam (September 29, 1977), Aame Katha (November 19, 1977) - all of which had different subjects and were all hits! Surprisingly enough, he had no other film release in the next eight months, until Simhabaludu (August 11, 1978), despite delivering a row of hits in the previous year! 

Jayachitra recollects...

I do not remember the basic story line of the film but I remember that the film was based on the Jaya Badhuri's film. I was happy to work for the remakes of two of her super hit films. One was Guddi, which when made in Tamil ran for more than 100 days in Devi-Sridevi Complex in Chennai - this was the first Tamil black and white film that ran for so long in that theater complex. Kalpana was also remake of Jayabadhuri's film Anamika. Raghavendra Rao I know earlier when he worked as an assistant to his father.

I worked with him in the film Jeevitam (Sobhan Babu, Sarada, Jayanthi - K.S. Prakash Rao) I played the role of Sobhan's daughter as a child artist and Raghavendra Rao gaaru is assistant director for that film. It was nice working with him. I can never forget the songs in the film - dikkulu chooDaku raamayyaa..., vadalanuraa ninu raghuraamaa..., oka udayamlO naa hRdayamlO... are even remembered now. In a show where I was among the audience, when Susheela gaaru sang vadalanuraa ninu raghuraamaa..., she got a lot of applause - a standing ovation - which I'll never forget, also because she mentioned that it was one of her favorite songs.

Article by: Sri

Info: Executive producer Prasad recently passed away, Rohini prasad his daughter who played the role of Papa in the film also passed away some years back.