Once he steps out of the house, he is seen as a different man, even attempting to flirt with women who work in his fields, but all without a semblance of haughtiness. The film also demanded that Sivaji act like a respected village chief outside but within the house, as a hen-pecked husband bearing humiliation from his wife. In Muthal Mariyathai, he demonstrated that he can act with restraint and play the part in tune with the times, if the filmmaker desires. I would go on to say that Muthal Mariyathai and later, films like Thevar Magan and Padayappa, helped to reinstate Sivaji as an actor par excellence to a whole new generation of Tamil film viewers. For those who started watching Tamil films post the 80’s like me, the enduring impression of Sivaji was that he was “overacting.” The generations before that who have seen Sivaji at his peak in films like Karnan, Veerapandiya Kattabomman, Vietnam Veedu Sundaram, Paasa Malar to name a few, however, swore by his acting and maintained that none could match his histrionic skills in Indian cinema. Filmmakers still cast him as a young hero and made him dance and prance around trees in song sequences with relatively young heroines. Around that time Sivaji, one of the greatest actors this country has ever seen, was already past his prime. This one scene in the whole film is enough to justify why director Bharathiraja opted for Sivaji Ganesan to portray the role of Malaichami in the film. The actor is Sivaji Ganesan and the film is Muthal Mariyathai, which hit the screens on this day, 35 years ago.
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