Samsaram (1950)

A major melodrama hit about the fragmentation of a joint family made in the same year as Prasad’s seminal Shavukaru. After their joint appearance in Palletoori Pilla, also 1950, Telugu cinema’s two best-known stars, N.T. Rama Rao and A. Nageshwara Rao, again teamed up for this story about a middle- class government clerk Raghu (NTR), living happily with his wife Manjula (Lakshmirajyam), until his scheming mother Venkamma, his sister Kamakshi (Balasaraswathi) and her cowardly husband (Venkatramaiah) move into his house. Venkamma appropriates all of Raghu’s earnings and Kamakshi plots to have Manjula blamed for all that goes wrong in the household. Raghu, unable to pay his pregnant wife’s medical fees, loses his job and abandons his family. His brother Venu (Nageshwara Rao), a flirt who lives off his girlfriend Kamala (Pushpalata) and her rich father, eventually traces Raghu and finds him a job as a porter in a mill. Venu also manages to reunite the family. The film borrows the popular Tamil cinema convention of introducing a comic duo (here Venkatramaiah and Suryakantam) into the melodrama.