Strange beliefs around snakes in Kannada movies

Many a times snake has played the protagonist in the movies. In the 1980s and 90s, people have watched the snake on the screen as a most powerful protagonist taking revenge.

Here are the interesting details about the association of snakes and the movies.

The Nagin or the female snake has played an important role in movies across the languages in India. The movies have used the instances from mythology and with an addition of fantasy, made the people glued to their chairs and watched the snake take its revenge.

 

The snake tune

Nagin Hindi movie which was released in 1954 is the first movie to give a special tune for the snake. This tune became so popular that many filmmakers took a clue from it and made movies on plots revolving around the snake. In the movie Nagin, Vaijayanthimala played the protagonist. The theme music was composed by Hemant Kumar. Kalyan Ji gave wings to the tune, and it was fine tuned by him. The tune was made with the Univax instrument. The song 'Man Dole Mera Than Dole', sung by Lata Mangeshkar is the favourite of many movies lovers even to this day.

Dr Raj and Leelavathi's Nagapooja

The Nagin movie had inspired the filmmakers in Karnataka too. Nagapooja with Dr Rajkumar and Leelavathi in the lead was released in 1965, which was the first successful movie made on the theme of the snake. Directors like Shankar Singh, Vithalachar and others became attached to the snake sentiments and started believing that having the snake in at least one scene will make the movie a hit. Thus they had at least one scene in the movie featuring the snake.

 

Revenge of the snake

Nagina Hindi film made in 1986 made Sridevi popular in the role of snake woman. This movie set the trend for the snake-based commercial movies. Following this, there were many movies on these lines. There were devotional movies, thrillers and even fantasy movies based on the snake theme.

This gave way to coining of titles like Havina Hede, Keralida Sarpa, etc. Puttanna Kanagal made a milestone movie in Kannada named Nagarahavu and used the revenge of the snake as a symbolic theme of the movie effectively. He had used the snake theme music which won the hearts of people.

 

Nagamandala

A folktale called Nagamandala was brought to the big screen by director TS  Nagabharana. Commercial movies like Garudarekhe, Nagini, Shivanaga are also prominent movies in the Kannada film industry. Sri Nagashakthi is the latest Kannada film on the theme of the snake.

In the movie Khaidi, Dr Vishnuvardhan and Madhavi were the snake gods. The song Thale Hoova Podeyinda is one of the all time hit songs. The snakes are also used as a symbolic gesture to show intimate scenes and sensuous incidents in the movies.

However, with stricter rules, now it is not easy to use snakes in the movies unless it is a CG work.