Akkineni Nageshwara Rao is one of the most celebrated actors of Telugu Film Industry. He was part of the Golden Era of Telugu Films and contributed immensely for generations of Cinema to come by, On the eve of the legend's birth anniversary, iQlikmovies.com brings you some of the lesser known facts about his unique film Paradesi in which he acted opposite Tamil legend Sivaji Ganesan.
Despite acting in a Social Drama role for the first time in Samsaram (29th Dec 1950), ANR happened to get more offers in Folklore films. He acted as a Social Hero in Bharani’s Prema (21-3-1952) again. It was Paradesi (14-1-1953) which established ANR as a top hero in Social Drama. This was the first film from Anjali Pictures production house and directed by L.V.Prasad.
Here are some of the lesser known facts about this unique feature film starring ANR:
ANR acted for the first time as a youngster in first half and an elderly man in second half. Being quite young then, ANR faced lot of troubles initially to get the elderly man character in good light.Veteran playback singer Ghantasala has been singing for ANR right from the film Balaraju . But for the first time Pithapuram Nageshwara Rao sang for ANR in this film. The song was ‘Nenendhuku Raavali’.This film features ANR and Anjali Devi shown as Dushyanta and Shakuntala respectively which was captured in slow motion for the first time in Telugu Cinema. For that purpose, they got the special effect camera from prominent Hindi film director V.V.Shantaram. One of the great friend duos in South Indian film industry- ANR and Shivaji Ganesan acted together for the first time in this film. It is interesting to see them act as father-son in it!Being a stage actor in earlier days, Shivaji Ganesan used to deliver dialogues with loud voice and heavy expressions generating melodrama during his scene filming. The director L.V.Prasad used to call him and tell patiently, “Thambi (Brother in Tamil), this is a film, not a stage drama. There is no need of such heavy acting for films. Please maintain limit!”.The shooting for this film had a break of six months in between. It was when Shivaji Ganesan got married. After coming for the shooting and facing the camera, Shivaji was looking as if he put on some weight. Seeing this, ANR jokingly said,” Our Shivaji seems to have had good food and treat at his in-laws place!”.When ANR said with lack of close up shots for the old man’s sympathy acting in the film would not give the much needed effect, L.V.Prasad patiently re-shot all those shots again with ANR without taking it to ego or his professional talent.
