Monday, 22 January 2024

Filmfare excerpt: Sridevi: Number One star of India: May 1985

Sridevi 

South by Southwest. 

Sridevi has the allure and chutzpah of all these tantalising Alfred Hitchcock heroines. Attractive, tantalising, mysterious because you never know what she'll do in the next frame. After Vyjantimala and Hema Malini she's kept the south banner flying. Like Ms. Malini, she's No. 1 and proud of it. The most inflation-prone actress around, her price rises with every new hit. But she feigns an innocent, I-don't-know-about-money expression, passing the buck on to a mamma who calculates her career with the skill of an army manoeuvre. 

A live wire, first-rate actress, Sridevi does deserve every coin of her success. It's impossible to imagine Mr.India without her as it's impossible to imagine anyone else doing the cobra act with all the hiss and bite in Nagina

Ms. India has been acting since she was in her diapers. She knows all the tricks, once the camera is on, she's transformed beyond recognisition. The lifeless face suddenly does magical things. An expert dancer, an expert marionette in those well-loved "emotional" scenes, she is made for the movies'. She came a cropper with her first Hindi effort Solva Sawan but after wielding a whip in Himmatwala., the plump-and-pretty doll has become the nation'as primetime sweetheart.



Filmfare, May 16, 1985



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