Poola Rangadu

Poola Rangadu is a 1967 Telugu crime drama directed by Adurthi Subba Rao and produced by D. Madhusudhana Rao under Annapurna Pictures, starring Akkineni Nageswara Rao, Jamuna, Sobhan Babu and Vijaya Nirmala, with music by S. Rajeswara Rao. It is a remake of the 1955 Bengali film Sabar Uparey, itself based on A. J. Cronin’s 1950 novel Beyond This Place. Released on 24 November 1967, it became a box-office success. Our record lists a running time of 165 minutes.

What the story is about

Ranga Rao, better known as Poola Rangadu, is a carefree, jovial man who makes his living driving a horse cart and is in love with Venkatalakshmi. When he and his sister Padma were children, their father Veerayya, manager of a mill, was framed for the murder of the mill’s owner by the owner’s own business partners, Dharma Rao and Chalapathi, and sentenced to life imprisonment. Left on his own, Ranga has raised Padma with great care. Now Venkatalakshmi’s good-for-nothing brother Narasimhulu has his eye on Padma, while she has fallen for a young doctor, Prasad, and the past that wrecked Ranga’s family is not finished with them yet.

Cast

• Akkineni Nageswara Rao as Ranga Rao
• Jamuna as Venkata Lakshmi
• Sobhan Babu as Dr. Prasad
• Vijaya Nirmala as Padma
• V. Nagayya as Veeraiah
• Gummadi as Dharma Rao
• Allu Ramalingaiah as Police Punaiah
• Padmanabham as Bujji
• Chalam as Narasimhulu
• Bhanu Prakash as Chalapathi
• Suryakantham as Baby
• Geetanjali as Lilly

Making of the film

The adaptation was suggested to the producer by Gollapudi Maruti Rao. Mullapudi Venkata Ramana wrote the story, taking a basic plot point from Cronin’s novel, and Ranganayakamma wrote the dialogue. With the state government’s permission, the prison scenes were shot at the real Chanchalguda and Musheerabad Central Prisons in Hyderabad. The film is in black and white except for one song sequence, “Nee Jilugu Paita”, which was shot in colour.

Reception

Not every critic liked it: Griddaluru Gopalrao of Zamin Ryot, reviewing it on 1 December 1967, criticised the direction and performances. Audiences disagreed. The film was a box-office success, according to The Hindu‘s 2018 retrospective and CineGoer, and Wikipedia records a run of more than 100 days in 11 centres in Andhra Pradesh. Mullapudi Venkata Ramana won the Nandi Award for Second Best Story Writer for 1967.

Where to watch Poola Rangadu

We do not have a confirmed streaming platform for Poola Rangadu on file. The OTT details on this page will be updated when a platform’s own listing confirms it.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Poola Rangadu and the review and retrospectives it cites, linked above; our own cast and crew records.