Annakkili (1976)

Eternal-triangle story set and shot on location in the picturesque village of Thengumarada in a valley near Sathyamangalam. The young village midwife Annam (Sujatha) falls for the new schoolteacher (Sivakumar), but he marries her friend Sumathi (Jayalakshmi), the rich landlord’s daughter. The owner of the local cinema, Azhagappan (Srinivasan), is the villain: he abducts the teacher’s son to blackmail Annam into marrying him. She sets fire to his cinema and rescues the infant but dies in the process. Silent Tamil film shows often had live attractions on the programme and this aspect was later incorporated into the films e.g. as a special dance drama. Here, two long extracts from other films were worked into the plot by having the heroine go to her local cinema and watch Padmini dancing as Andal, the mythical devotee offering flowers to her god, and - intercut with the climax - Kannamba playing the title part in Kannagi (1942) where she burns the city of Madurai after proving the innocence of her husband. The film also launched Ilaiyaraja’s phenomenal career as a music director with the songs Annakkili unnai thedudhu and Machanai partheengala, two extremely popular and long-lasting hits in TN.