Annakili

The movie revolves around Annakili, who falls in love with teacher Thyagarajan. Due to circumstances, Thyagarajan marries another girl. Azhagappan, a womaniser creates a misunderstanding about Annakili among the villagers; the rest of the film shows how Annakili proves her innocence.

• Sivakumar as Thyagarajan[2]
• Sujatha as Annakili[2]
• S. V. Subbaiah as Vadivel Ambal[3]
• Srikanth as Magudapathy[3]
• Thengai Srinivasan as Azhagappan[3]
• Venniradai Moorthy as Azhagappan's right hand man[4]
• Senthamarai as Madasamy[3]
• Fatafat Jayalaxmi as Sumathi[2]
• Manimala as
• M. N. Rajam as
• S. N. Lakshmi as

When Ilaiyaraaja met Panchu Arunachalam, the latter asked if the former had composed any songs; Ilaiyaraaja casually sang a bunch of songs, one of which was "Annakkili Unnai Theduthe". An impressed Panchu Arunachalam decided to write a film story to accommodate these songs; the film would be titled Annakili.[5] The climax, featuring a theatre being set on fire, was inspired by the film Kannagi.[6]

The film's soundtrack was composed by Ilaiyaraaja, who made his debut as composer with this film,[7] and the lyrics were written by Arunachalam. Selvaraj insisted to have Pavalar Brothers compose the music, but Arunachalam selected Rasaiyya to compose as he felt it was not appropriate to have three brothers to compose music.[8] Arunachalam added "Ilaiya" (Ilaiya means younger in Tamil language) as prefix in his name Raaja and he named as "Ilaiyaraaja" because in the 1970s there was one more music director A. M. Rajah who was a popular one. For the soundtrack, Ilaiyaraaja applied the techniques of modern popular film music orchestration to Tamil folk poetry and folk song melodies, which created a fusion of Western and Tamil idioms.[9][10] The song "Machanai Paartheengala" was originally composed and sung at a marriage by Ilaiyaraaja and his orchestra even before the film's release.[8] The violin portions of the song were used by music director K for the "Bar Anthem" in Mugamoodi (2012).[11] The song "Sonthamillai Banthamillai" is based on Nadanamakriya raga.[12]

• "Annakili Unnai" – S. Janaki
• "Machaana Pathingala" – S.Janaki
• "Muththu Muththa" (Adi Raakayee) – S. Janaki
• "Annakili" (M) -T. M. Soundararajan
• "Sontham Illai" – P. Susheela

Annakili was released on 14 May 1976.[13] Ananda Vikatan, in a review dated 30 May 1976, was positive towards the film, particularly the performances of Sujatha, Sivakumar and Srikanth, but felt it would have been better in colour.[14][15]

• Baskaran, S. Theodore (1996). The eye of the serpent: an introduction to Tamil cinema. Madras: East West Books.
• Dhananjayan, G. (2014). Pride of Tamil Cinema: 1931 to 2013. Blue Ocean Publishers.
• Greene, P. D. (2001). "Authoring the Folk: the crafting of a rural popular music in south India". Journal of Intercultural Studies (2nd ed.). 22.
• Titon, Jeff Todd; Fujie, Linda; Locke, David (January 2009). Worlds of Music: An Introduction to the Music of the World's Peoples, Shorter Version. Cengage Learning. p. 210. ISBN 978-0-495-57010-3.

• Annakili at IMDb