Dada Saheb Phalke recipient, Dr Akkineni Nageshwara Rao has opened his heart and spoke a few words about today's Telugu cinema. He has opined that vulgarity has become so common in today's film that presumably upsets him. Recalling about good (g)olden days, he said movies have change a lot (for bad).
In a recent interview to the media, Nageshwara Rao has cited one of the narrations he had with his son Akkineni Nagarjuna about the same. He said he once told Nagarjuna about the vulgarity thing he noticed in Nagarjuna's films. Nagarjuna then said that he (ANR) has no idea as to what's happening in today's films and that his (Nagarjuna's) films are comparatively less in terms of skin shows.
Once a film was like a medium to the director to tell his message to the society or show his world through lens with the help of actors (to whom acting was next to God). Therefore, the skin show concept supposedly didn't crawl in then.
However, B grade movies slowly started to appear at the box office and it looks like mainstream feature film makers presumably wanted to pick up some masala elements from those movies. And that could be the reason why the item songs, double meaning dialogues and skin shows have taken the centre stage in today's Telugu cinema, unfortunately! Let us truly wish another Satyajit Ray, Shyam Benegal and K Vishwanath enter the cine industry to bring back its lost essence!
(AW Phani)
