Story:
Kamal is a post graduate yet unemployed youth, who accidentally stumbles upon a druken millionaire (Sameer Kakkar). In a fit to fulfill his desire to taste the riches, he house-arrests the millionaire in his own ramshackle room and takes the place of the millionaire himself in a luxury lodge. There, he meets the daughter (Amala) of a magician (Ramesh) and falls in love with her. The lover (Pratap Pothan) of the millonaire’s wife (Ramya) hires a killer (Tinnu Anand) to kill the millionaire. The killer, not knowing how the millionaire looks, attempts to kill Kamal who takes the millionaire’s place. Kamal escapes the attempts but in the process realizes the problems in the millionaire life he chanced to see. He also reveals the truth to Amala who also takes interest in him. She forgives him, writes her address on a paper and throws at him but he misses it. Kamal realizes the truth of life with the death of the beggar (P.L. Narayana) that he always observed, and the film ends with Kamal joining a waiting line of unemployed youth.
(Kamal was famous for his moustache until this film. This was the first time he ever appeared in a film without a moustache, after graduating from child artiste, of course. When his photos sans moustache appeared in magazines, it soon became the talk of the town, since his looks with the moustache were such a craze back then!) Kamal got Filmfare best actor in Kannada for this film.
Producer-Director Singeetam Srinivas Rao gaaru speaks about the film:
When I was working as an assistant to K.V. Reddy gaaru, we had a scene where a comedian has to emote fear. The director did not want any dialogue and wanted to have only mannerisms to express the feeling. That was when I thought, “Why not do a whole film this way?!” and that thought kept on haunting me for a long time but I didn’t have any idea about the story and other aspects of such a film. I finally got the idea when I was in the shower one day, and I wrote the screenplay within a couple of weeks after that! Later one day, I narrated the idea to Kamal Hasan with whom I was doing a film at that time. As you know, Kamal always get excited to do new things was ready to do the film.
