In 1987, Singeetham Srinivasa Rao gave Indian cinema a dialogue-free film in Pushpaka Vimana — the black comedy starring Kamal Haasan and Amala Akkineni follows the life of an unemployed graduate who tragicomically assumes the identity of a wealthy man. Almost 40 years later, Rao’s experiment with dialogue continues. In his 61st film, the recently released Telugu musical Sing Geetham, dialogue resolutely exists. But almost exclusively in sing-song.
Admirers of Rao aren’t strangers to his love for experimentation on film. In Apoorva Sagodharargal (1989), he reimagined the familiar separated-at-birth twins trope by having Kamal Haasan portray one of the twins as a little person. In Michael Madana Kama Rajan (1990), Haasan — his frequent muse — returned to the mad scientist’s table, but this time in a comedy about quadruplets. And in Aditya 369, Rao fiddled with the time machine — a first for Indian cinema — with Nandamuri Balakrishna playing dual roles. But this time, it’s personal. Rao has been waiting to bring Sing Geetham to life for more than 40 years.
“I had this thought that somebody should do an entire film with all the dialogues being sung,” Rao, now 94 years old, begins. Traditional musicals have historically woven music and dance into their narrative, popularised in the 1930s by the work of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
Rao, a fan of the genre, instead wanted to convert all dialogue into song, heroing music, a fixture that holds rich significance in Indian films. A fan of Gene Kelly musicals, Rao let the idea marinate for many decades, travelling various places with him. It finally found a home in Nag Ashwin’s production, the acclaimed Sing Geetham, which released earlier this year.
Ashwin, who is known for directing Keerthy Suresh’s Mahanati (2018) and Prabhas’s Kalki 2898AD (2024), co-produced the film with Swapna Dutt’s Swapna Cinema (Rao notably mentored the director on filming certain portions of the Prabhas spectacle.)
“Without Nag Ashwin’s support and passion, Sing Geetham wouldn’t have been possible,” the filmmaker says.
Virtual Set-ups
Nag and the production team facilitated a virtual set-up for the filmmaker so that he could direct from the home theatre at his residence in Chennai. “Although I had all the energy, I directed the film online,” he says, crediting the “brilliant management” behind the scenes. “I could shoot from my home theatre and could also instruct all the actors.”
The film starred Ahilya Bamroo, Ayaan and Shalini Kondepudi, relatively fresh faces in the industry. Rao reveals that they decided to choose actors who could sing. “With the idea of making a film with songs immediately came the decision to select singers as the lead actors, because they sing their own lines here.”
Rao’s films have always been earmarked with his characteristic childlike sense of humour, something that is easy to come by in Sing Geetham, which deals with a village navigating a curse and an ecological crisis. His films also run on another powerful fuel: perfect casting. His work across Tamil, Telugu and Kannada cinema has led to enduring creative partnerships with stars such as Kamal Haasan, Nandamuri Balakrishna and Dr. Rajkumar.
“Each actor has his own status and his own aura and Balakrishna is different from Kamal Haasan, who is again different from Dr. Rajkumar. They are all great actors who have their own way of doing things. My job is to see and find out what exactly is their rarity and then try to get that best out of them from their own creative ability. So, that is how I worked with Rajkumar garu, Balakrishna garu, and Kamal Haasan garu.” (Garu is a Telugu honorific). The idea, he explains, was to extract the maximum capacity out of their talent to increase their individuality.
An Education in Cinema
Rao, who began his career assisting the legendary Telugu filmmaker K.V. Reddy on landmark Telugu titles such as Mayabazar (1957), has always maintained that a sense of madness and extreme willingness power his experiments. This was apparent as early as his associations with Reddy, he recalls. “Even during story discussions of films like Mayabazar, Pellinaati Pramanalu (1958), and Sri Krishnarjuna Yuddhamu (1963), we would come up with fresh ideas. We were trained to bring in new and fresh ideas that weren’t thought of before, even during those days of Mayabazar.”
An admirer of literature and world cinema, Rao acknowledges the impact of international films on his work. “When I moved to Madras (now Chennai), I knew only Telugu cinema. And then I started watching Tamil and Hollywood cinema. In college, we were all naturally more drawn towards Hollywood,” he says. Rao recalls watching Fred Zinnemann and Montgomery Clift’s From Here to Eternity (1953) and Clark Gable’s Gone With the Wind (1939) on repeat with rapt attention as a young man getting through college. “I used to appreciate these films a lot so they were definitely an influence,” he says. But an international film festival in the ’50s changed Rao’s understanding of cinema. “I watched a Japanese film, an Iranian film, a Mexican film and a Sri Lankan film. I realised there was more to cinema than just Hollywood,” he says.
Still Watching, Still Learning
In a career spanning over half a century, the filmmaker has won two National Film Awards (Best Feature Film in Tamil for Dikkatra Parvathi in 1974 and Best Popular Film Providing Wholesome Entertainment for Pushpaka Vimana in 1988, among other prestigious film accolades. Is there a film that he didn’t think got the response they deserved? “I’ve liked every film I’ve made. But there have been times audiences have disagreed with me,” he says, pulling up the example of Neeti-Nijayiti, a Telugu comedy which marked the filmmaker’s directorial debut in 1972. “It was appreciated by a lot of intellectuals, but it was a big flop at the box-office. So, all the appreciation from the press went to waste when the public rejected the film.”
Rao might be a nonagenarian, but he has kept himself young by taking up animation courses to make films like Son of Aladdin (2003) and Ghatothkach (2008) in his 80s and introducing musicals to Gen Z and Zoomers in his 90s. He marvels at the evolving film tech but remains wary about the changes it’s brought. “In my opinion, emotion is missing [in films]. There are a couple of films that might do well at the box office, but most of them boost up a hero’s character. The presentation doesn’t capture natural life, something the cinema of those days did.”
Among the new generation of films, there are two that particularly caught Rao’s eye. “Kantara (2022) and Pushpa 2 (2024) are fantastic movies that I immensely liked for their characterisations. Rishab Shetty was a new face [for the pan-Indian audience] during the release of Kantara, and he has subsequently become a star, but the film was so rich in emotions and characterisations.”
If Rao has kept going at it without ever repeating himself with his films for the better part of his life, it is because of rewarding collaborations. “I think the most rewarding time of my life has been working with Ashwini Dutt garu (legendary Telugu film producer and father of Priyanka and Swapna Dutt), and now Priyanka, Swapna and Nag Ashwin. “They are people who like to back good cinema, not necessarily concerned with how much a film might make,” he quips. And the next, but most important factor is preoccupation.
“It is the passion," he says, "to do what nobody has done which has made me create something new every time whether it is Pushpaka, Apoorva Sagodharargal, Michael Madana Kama Rajan, Mayuri, or… Sing Geetham.”