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on 2008/2/28 4:32:51
Has the magic of successful pair in cinema gone from the South? Whatever happened to the on screen romance and lucky pair trend in vogue in the reel life of the past? The star-pair concept and the chemistry between male and female stars are fast being replaced by hard financial success logic in the southern tinsel world.
Many cine lovers of the generation past recall with a tinge of regret the bygone era of famous star pairs like MGR-Jayalalitha in Tamil, Prem Nazir- Sheela , or Sathyan-Sharada in Malayalam, NTR-Krishnakumari or Soundharya-Vekatesh in Telugu or Rajkumar-Bharathi or Rajkumar-Saritha in Kannada. They had once woven so much a mystic charm on and off the screen that cine buffs would not accept them apart. The situation found its match in Raj Kapoor-Nargis, Amitabh- Rekha , Dilip- Madhu Bala et al in the Bollywood.
Barring Tamils’ Surya-Jyotika and Ajith- Shalini or Malayalam’s Dileep-Manju Warrier
we do not have shining examples of lucky star pairs making a marital success. There are of course other unsuccessful marital alliances. Today, the star-pairs, if formed for a while, do not survive a few successful films. In recent times, in Malayalam, the star combo ceased with Dileep-Kavya (15 films) in 2006. In Telugu, the Gopichand-Anusha team does some good business together in Filmnagar. And in Tamil too, there are current generation pairs like Vijay-Trishna, Vikram-Trishna . Again, they do not become a popular, viable pairs for long. Anyway, nowhere do they compare with the amazing feat of the most popular matinee idol, Prem Nazir, who holds the world record with 650 film titles to his credit and, again, holds the record for acting opposite the then most popular heroine Sheela in 110 films!
With free movements of stars and multi-lingual projects common, successful pairs are limited to a couple of hits. Filmysouth’s bid to gauge the reasons for the disappearing lucky-pair trend brought out four distinct reasons for the end of lucky pair trend: the hero-centric films of the past are replaced by female-important films and new wave films that do not respect the old logics and arithmetic, the current crop of filmstars treat cinema as a profession, and they do not pour out their hearts to the scenes they act, the surviving senior stars want younger heroines, and the film making has become more broad based with the result that the growing army of new film producers-directors find new faces more manageable and far less expensive than established senior stars. Linguistic barrier and geographical borders are fast disappearing in the present cine world.
Is it a good or a bad trend? As usual opinion differs. Yesteryear heroes like Madhu , Shankar in Malayalam believe the broken star-pair trend only reflects the current reality. Nothing to bemoan or bemuse. They also agree that the younger lot are hard professionals and are not as image-conscious as the earlier artistes. Those in parallel cinema say they have always believed there never had a thing like lucky pair.
And yet, there are umpteen cine lovers who wistfully look at Rajesh-Khanna-Mumtaz or Kishore- Madhu Bala or Sathyan-Sharda famed pairs and say softly, `those were the days…’
