Namitha in Jaganmohini

The audio of the Telugu version of the bilingual movie Jaganmohini, the remake of the yesteryear’s Telugu classic film Jaganmohini (1978), was recently launched at Prasad Labs, Hyderabad. D. Rama Naidu released the audio CD and presented the first copy to C. Kalyan. The celebrated music maestro Ilayaraja, as the music director, has composed music for the new version of Jaganmohini. The film is being made in Telugu and Tamil by producer H. Murali under the banner of Murali Cine Arts and directed by N.K. Viswanathan with Raja, Namitha and Meera Chopra (Nila), enacting the role that was done by Prabha and Raja steps in the place of Narasinha Raju. The music of the Tamil version was released earlier.

The original Jaganmohini was made in Telugu first. Later, it was dubbed in Tamil and it had a historic run for 375 days in Tamil Nadu, which was a much talked about record for a dubbed movie. There are many movie-lovers who saw that film several times. It was directed by Vithalacharya, writer Vennelakanti said.

Narasimha Raju, the hero in the original version, appears in the new version as the father of the hero. Gorgeous Namitha performs the character performed by Jayamalini in the original version. After a brief gap, Actress Nila, who is popular as Meera Chopra in Telugu, is back in the Tamil movie as the second heroine in Jaganmohini. Reportedly, the major attraction of the film will be the scene in which glamorous Namitha collecting pearls diving underwater in the sea.

Has Namitha’s harvesting pearls underwater inspired by the shell-collector enacted by the original Bond Girl Ursula Andress (as Honey Ryder) in Ian Fleming’s James Bond classic and the first Bond movie, Dr. No (1962), starring the original Bond, Sean Connery? The images of Ursula Andress collecting shells and, in a well-known scene of her rising out of the Caribbean Sea in a white bikini (see photo), is still circulated on the internet and they continue to be the most popular till date, more than any other scenes in any films in world cinema of any language, of all times. Can Namitha live up to that magic effect or repeat the stupendous success of Jayamalini in Indian cinema with her performance in the original Jaganmohini? We hope she can do that, or even better, as she is a dedicated performer as much as she is gorgeous!