Reign Again, Mahanati

A new biopic on Savitri hopes to do justice to her legacy.

- G.C. Shekhar

THE unveiling of Savitri’s statue in Guntur last year was a telling event, one where the icon’s overarching legacy was being claimed by speaker after speaker. While some proudly expressed how she was the ‘daughter’ of Andhra and Telugu cinema’s greatest jewel, Tamil actress Suhasini, who unveiled the statue, had the last word in this proprietary tussle. “She might be your daughter, but she settled down as our daughter­in­law in Tamil Nadu,” she quipped.

That is how intensely the Telugus and Tamils competed to stake claim to Savitri’s rich legacy. No other actor in South India has straddled the cinema of two states and languages with such ease and dominance as Savitri did during the 50s and 60s. She was adored as “Mahanati ” (great actress) by her Telugu fans and the Tamil audience equated her with their king of acting, Sivaji Ganesan, by giving her the honorific “Nadigaiyar Thilagam” (the pride of actresses). Sivaji was “Nadigar Thilagam.” Savitri enthralled audiences of other sates as well— she did films in Kannada, Malayalam and Hindi, but her presence in Tamil and Telugu cinema was phenomenal.

No wonder then that her biopic is also bilingual —it’s titled Mahanati in Telugu and Nadigaiyar Thilagam in Tamil. “Savitri was a bilingual superstar and needs to be celebrated in both the languages in which she had done more than hundred films each,” said Nag Ashwin, the director of the biopic.