page_title: Sant Tukaram (film)
section_title: Production
hierarchical_section_title: Sant Tukaram (film) / Production
caption_attribution_description: English: Sant tukaram
context_page_description: Sant Tukaram, also known as Saint Tukaram, is a 1936 Marathi film, produced by Prabhat Film Company and based on the life of Tukaram, a prominent Varkari saint and spiritual poet of the Bhakti movement in India. The film was directed by Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal and featured Vishnupant Pagnis in the lead role of the saint.
  Sant Tukaram is revered as a great Indian film. It was the first Indian film to receive international recognition. It was adjudged one of the three best films of the world at the Venice Film Festival and was showcased in other international film festivals. It was a runaway success and broke the box office records by being the first Indian film to run in a single theatre for more than a year. It was Prabhat's and Pagnis's most famous film and became the archetype for devotional film.
context_section_description: Sant Tukaram was directed by Vishnupant Govind Damle and Sheikh Fattelal. The script was written by Shivram Washikar. It was produced at the Prabhat Film Company at Pune owned by V. Shantaram, a notable and internationally acclaimed film maker of India. The film was made in Marathi language. The running time is 131 minutes.
  Two earlier films from 1932 tried to capture Tukaram's life, but were unsuccessful at the box office. While those focussed on the miracles of the saint, directors Damle and Fattelal tell the story of a saint who rose from the common folk, concentrating on his everyday life, with little importance given to miracles. Washikar said that he wrote the film as a "researcher" as well as a devotee, keeping in time that most of the audience of the genre of sant (saint) films are devotees and want a hagiographical telling, rather than complete historical accuracy.
  Damle and Fattelal created the settings to ensure that the features of the actors were accentuated distinctly in the film by having minimum background settings and scenes, which was termed as "compositional style”. The film was made in neo-realistic style (a style which came into vogue much later in foreign films) and provided telling performances from all the artists but the most impressive, which won the hearts of the people, was that of Jijai, wife of Tukaram played by Gauri.
  The filming is done in traditional style. After the title cards are presented, a song dedicated to Vithoba, seen as a black stone image, is presented. The song which begins with the title cards is also continued. The meditative shot of Tukaram gives a Bhakti ethos which  is continued for about 2 minutes. This is followed by the saintly presence of Tukaram in a traditional pose, cross legged with folded hands and holding a musical instrument and with religious markings on his face. Sitting on the ground in deep meditation for a while, his singing merges with the background song. The song is one of the Tukaram's 4,000 verses and is aptly fitted with the devotional worship of Vithoba. The song's first stanza is Panduranga Dhyani, Panduranga mani (meaning "I meditate on the figure of Panduranaga (Vithoba); his thoughts fill my mind"). This is an aradhana (prayer) shot where the saint, the God and the audience are brought to the same ethereal plane of worship. The scene is set by the directors in a very "scopic aspect of the worship", the mise en scène. In the scene that follows, the song is continued but is now sung in a theatrical style (Sangeet Natak style) by Tukaram's arch rival, the Brahmin priest Salomalo, in a temple setting. Salomalo claims that the song is his own composition and not that of Tukaram. With this scene, the story of the film starts with clever editing of scenes in which the two adversaries exchange claims to the song, in a shot reverse shot technique.
caption: The end of the film where Tukaram flies off to heaven.
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