Kasethan Kadavulada

Kasethan Kadavulada
Directed by	Chitralaya Gopu
Produced by	M. Murugan M. Kumaran M. Saravanan M. Balasubramaniam
Written by	Chitralaya Gopu
Starring	R. Muthuraman Lakshmi Thengai Srinivasan Srikanth Manorama Venniradai Moorthy
Music by	M. S. Viswanathan
Cinematography	K. S. Bhaskar
Edited by	R. G. Gopu
Production company	AVM Productions
Distributed by	AVM Productions
Release dates	1972
Running time	120 mins
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Kasethan Kadavulada (English: Money is God) is a 1972 Tamil language comedy film directed by Chitralaya Gopu who made his directorial debut. The film stars Muthuraman, Thengai Srinivasan, Srikanth and Lakshmi in the lead roles and Manorama and Venniradai Moorthy in supporting roles. The film was a low-budgeted film of the time and is perhaps best known for Thengai Srinivasan dressing up as a fake saint, making a lot of situational comedies along with it.

Plot

Lakshmi (Manorama) is an extremely domineering second wife to Sivaswamy (Vennira Aadai Moorthy) and controls all his money treating him with scorn and disdain. When Sivaswamy's son Ramu (Muthuraman), son of his first wife, requires a sum of Rs. 3000 for his sister's husband, she refuses instantly. Ramu and his cousin Mali hatch a plot with Appaswamy (Thengai Sreenivasan) who pretends to be a fake swamiji in order to get to her money safe and steal a sum of Rs. 50,000.

Meanwhile, Rama (Lakshmi) is an orphan whose only friend is the doctor of a mental institution. When Rama wants a conduct certificate, the doctor bungles and hands over the certificate of a mad girl. Rama arrives at Parvathi's house to work as a secretary and Parvathi sees the certificate and decides to keep Rama at her house to humour her fearing her insanity. The film leads to plenty of humorous situations.

Cast

• R. Muthuraman as Ramu
• Lakshmi as Rama
• Thengai Srinivasan as appaswamy
• Venniradai Moorthy as
• Manorama as Lakshmi
• Sachu
• Suruli Rajan
• Senthamarai
• Sreekanth as Mali
• Rama Prabha as Rama

Production

Kasethan Kadavulada was based on the stage play of same name. AV Meiyappan who saw the play decided to adapt it into a feature film and insisted Gopu to direct the film thus made his directorial debut.^[1] Thengai Srinivasan was selected to appear in the character of Madras Tamil speaking tea seller masquerading as a saint.^[2] Gopu recalled that producers put up a huge cut-out for Srinivasan in the saint get-up. Srinivasan who was pleased did not want the lead actor Muthuraman to misunderstand so he and Gopu went to Muthuraman and explained that it was the role that became popular and even apologised to Muthuraman who smiled it away.^[3]

Soundtrack

The music composed by M. S. Viswanathan.^[4] Elements of the song "Jambulingame" was borrowed by S. Thaman in the song "Pudhu Punal" from the film Mouna Guru (2011).^[5]

Reception

Randor Guy of The Hindu stated that the film was remembered for "the excellent comedy sequences, humorous dialogue, fine direction of Chitralaya Gopu and excellent performances".^[6] Behindwoods included the film in their list "Top Ten comedy movies" and noted that the film "employs almost all known staples of comedy movies and throws them together to generate a hilarious film".^[7] Thirumalai titled his 2011 comedy film as Kasethan Kadavulada which had no similarity with this film.^[8]

References

External links

• Kasethan Kadavulada at the Internet Movie Database