Bhakta Prahlada

Bhakta Prahlada (meaning “Prahlada, the devotee”) is a 1932 Telugu film directed by H. M. Reddy and produced by Ardeshir Irani of the Imperial Film Company, based on the story of Prahlada from the Bhagavatam and the Vishnu Purana. Adapted from a popular stage play and performed by its stage cast, it stars Sindhoori Krishna Rao as Prahlada, with Munipalle Subbayya, Surabhi Kamalabai and L. V. Prasad. It premiered in Bombay on 6 February 1932 and was long regarded as the first Telugu sound film. It is now a lost film.

What the film is about

The film retells the story of Prahlada from the Bhagavatam and the Vishnu Purana, following the stage play it was adapted from, with Munipalle Subbayya as Hiranyakashipu. No complete synopsis of this particular version is known to survive.

Cast

• Sindhoori Krishna Rao as Prahlada
• Munipalle Subbayya as Hiranyakashipu
• Surabhi Kamalabai as Leelavathi
• Doraswamy Naidu as Indra
• Chitrapu Narasimha Rao as Brahma and Chandamarkulu
• L. V. Prasad as Moddabbai, Prahlada’s classmate

How it was made

After making India’s first sound film, Alam Ara (1931), Ardeshir Irani planned one film each in Telugu and Tamil, which became Bhakta Prahlada and Kalidas, and gave both to his associate H. M. Reddy, a former English teacher at Jagirdars’ College in Hyderabad who had moved to Bombay in 1927. Reddy adapted a popular play of the same name, written either by Dharmavaram Ramakrishnamacharyulu or by Surabhi Nataka Samajam, and used the play’s all-Telugu cast. Sindhoori Krishna Rao became the first protagonist of Telugu sound cinema, and L. V. Prasad, also an assistant director, the first actor given a comic role. According to The Hindu and The Indian Express, it was made for between ₹15,000 and ₹18,000 and shot in 18 or 20 days at Imperial Studios in Bombay. Adi M. Irani photographed it, H. R. Padmanabha Sastry of Prabhat Film Company composed the music, and the lyrics included poems by the 15th-century poet Pothana. With no playback singing, the actors sang their own lines to an orchestra kept far from the camera. The film ran 108 minutes.

Release and reception

The film was long thought to have been released on 15 September 1931, but film historian Rentala Jayadeva established that it premiered in Bombay on 6 February 1932, pointing out that it was only certified by the censors on 22 January 1932; it opened in Madras on 2 April 1932. The Hindu describes it as a commercial success. Critics were divided, faulting its closeness to the stage version, poor sound recording and low picture quality; the journalist Maddali Sathyanarayana Sarma, who saw it twice, found it almost identical to the play but praised the sound and songs.

“First Telugu talkie” and a lost film

Bhakta Prahlada is still widely described as the first released Telugu sound film. However, Jayadeva’s research, reported by The New Indian Express, found that H. M. Reddy’s Kalidas, which had Telugu dialogue, was released about three months earlier, on 31 October 1931. Like many early Indian films, which were shot on flammable nitrate stock, Bhakta Prahlada does not survive; only a few stills, advertisements and contemporary reviews remain. The Prahlada story was filmed again in Telugu in 1942 and 1967.

Where to watch Bhakta Prahlada

Bhakta Prahlada is a lost film, and no copy is known to exist, so it is not available to stream or buy.

Sources: the Wikipedia article on Bhakta Prahlada and the articles it cites, linked above; Wikidata; our own records.