It was in 1930, not 1928, that Vigathakumaran (The Lost Child), the first ever Malayalam movie to be made, came out, asserts director JC Daniel’s son Harris, when we ask about the date a second time. Reports about the film have so far stated 1928 as the year of release. Harris, now a grand 88, shows us a notice about the release of the film at the Capitol Cinema Hall in Thiruvananthapuram on October 23, 1930, between 6.30 and 9.30 pm. However, the shooting of the film had begun in 1928, he says, when TNM met him at his house in Thiruvananthapuram that he and his wife Susheela moved into last year.
After remaining undiscovered for decades, Daniel’s film and the history of its making was unearthed by journalist Chelangat Gopalakrishnan in the 1970s, following a chance spotting of the old man in his black coat and trousers at the Thampanoor bus station. The clothes, one worn by “gentlemen of Travancore in the old days”, is what made Chelangat take note of the figure, quietly getting into a bus to Neyyattinkara. From the men sitting at a paan shop nearby, Chelangat learned that Daniel was once a rich man who had lost everything after he made a film. Until then, history books had mentioned Balan, the talkie produced by TR Sundaram in 1938, as the first Malayalam film. But it seems there were at least two silent movies before Balan.
Chelangat sought out more details about Daniel till he discovered the septuagenarian in a house in Agastheeswaram in Kanyakumari with his wife Janet. The man who would be known as the Father of Malayalam Cinema emerged from his sick bed to tell his tale. Chelangat uncovered the story of Vigathakumaran, written, produced and directed by Daniel, who also played the male lead in the film. Publishing the story, without taking permission from the editor, had cost him his job, Chelangat wrote in his memoir Malayalam Cinema: Chithram Vichithram. But it is his writings that led to JC Daniel coming to be known as the Father of Malayalam Cinema.
Unfortunately, there is no copy or even a strip of film of Vigathakumaran left. Only a black and white image of a fight scene somehow survived, the one you now see on the Wikipedia page of the film. Harris tells us why. “I was seven when my father allowed us to play with the negatives of the film, which was kept in a round tin at home. We – my sister and I – cut it to pieces and burnt it all. I remember watching in awe the violet flames it created. We had no idea about the value of the film,” Harris tells us the anecdote that people learnt when Chelangat’s stories had finally established the truth about the first Malayalam film. A second silent film called Marthanda Varma, produced by a relative of Daniel and directed by PV Rao, came in 1933. A grainy copy of the film is on YouTube.
Harris had not wanted to talk about his father’s film for a long time. Susheela tells us he’d get angry if someone asked. “It ruined us. Father’s share of the wealth had gone fully into the film,” Harris says.
Daniel got interested in films after watching silent movies from Hollywood. He was also into Kalarippayattu. “He thought, why can we not make one? No one knew how, so he travelled to Madras and Bombay, he got equipment for the studio, and he made the film about a boy who gets kidnapped from Travancore and shipped to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). Those days that used to happen a lot. They went twice to Ceylon. My brother CJ Sundaram played the child, who grows up to become the man played by my father. My brother became the first child artist of Malayalam cinema,” Harris says, showing us the photo of his brother who went on to become the principal of Trinity College in Kandy, Sri Lanka.
Vigathakumaran also marked another cruel chapter in the history of Malayalam cinema. PK Rosy, the Dalit woman who played the female lead, was treated so badly that she had to go into exile. Privileged caste men, upset at watching Rosy play a Nair woman, attacked her home and she was forced to flee the town. Much like Daniel, she lived a life of obscurity with her family until her death in 1988.
Daniel and Rosy’s stories were once again brought to light when filmmaker Kamal made a biopic on Daniel in 2013 called Celluloid with Prithviraj in the lead. The famous fight scene, preserved in the single photograph left of the film, was reenacted in Celluloid.
Harris vaguely remembers another scene from some of the film strips he played with, which had his brother on a tricycle, getting kidnapped. By the time Harris was born – in 1935 – the film was long forgotten. Daniel, in an effort to rebuild their lives, had learned and begun to practise dentistry, and found some success too. However, a second attempt at filmmaking, prompted by the visit of a Tamil actor to his clinic, led to more misery, says Harris. “It was in Pudukottai. The actor, PU Chinnappa, came as a patient and after learning of my father’s desire to make a second film, said, ‘You come to Madras. We will make a film. I will act as your hero.’ My father, hearing this, sold all his dental equipment and took his savings and went to Madras. But nothing came out of it,” Harris says.
Even in his advanced age, Daniel still nursed dreams of making another film. Susheela says he’d turn the pages of the Bible and approach her with a story he could make a film about. But the family did not want to have another experience like their first. Daniel passed away in 1975 in Agastheeswaram years after he was affected with partial paralysis.
Daniel used to be critical of later films that came in Malayalam, Harris says. Like his father, Harris too watched mostly English movies in his youth, “the ones that came out in Sree Kumar / Sree Visakh” – one of the oldest movie theatres in Thiruvananthapuram that stopped functioning some years ago.
“He used to keep notes of the films he watched, writing them meticulously after coming home,” Susheela says. From his seat, Harris, holding his walking stick, dreamily recalls a few favourite names – Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren, Ingrid Bergman.
Harris too has acted in theatre in his days at the university. He shows us a photo of him playing a female character on stage. Perhaps if his father’s historic creation had found better acceptance, the family would have taken a keener interest in the world of arts. They had not approached anyone to correct the records that noted Balan as the first film, until Chelangat discovered Daniel and his film. Even now, all they ask is for the unveiling of Daniel’s statue that has for long been promised by the state but still not materialised. Harris and Susheela keep approaching officials in the Culture Department and others for discussions. “We keep reminding them of his [Harris’s] age. We’d like to see it happen in his lifetime,” Susheela says.