Suspicion, as in Vazhve MayamВ (1970), and the inability to perform, as in PunarjanmamВ (1972), are recurring themes in SethumadhavanвЂ™s work as is the Oedipal struggle. Yakshi (1968) is a psychological drama, adapted from Malayattoor RamakrishnanвЂ™s novel, in which the protagonist is a college lecturer and researcher who cannot let go of his insecurities and begins to suspect that his wifeвЂ™s love is fake and she is in fact a spirit who wants to drink his blood. The poignant final scene shows him walking into the distance, coughing heavily and out of breath, like a dog that is past its time. The fulfillment and sense of being loved that he gets at the beginning of his role as the male provider deserts him even as he clings on to his sense of duty.

He pulls a child out of a gutter and moves in with her mother, slogging it out for years to provide for them. He finally finds a job that does not require him to bow before others, ironically that of a rickshaw-puller. He likens the subservience that his friends show to authority, whether of the feudal landlord or the factory manager, to that of dogs. The opening scene in Odayil NinnuВ (1965), based on KesavadevвЂ™s novel by the same name, shows Pappu, the protagonist, as a child rebelling against the discriminatory attitude of the school master. Often in his films, the вЂmodernвЂ™ Malayali (man) is pictured as a being haunted by desires and obsessions and unable to uphold the same values in the domestic sphere of the patriarchal nuclear family that he fights for in the public sphere. Although most of his works are adaptations of literary works by popular writers (including Kesavadev, Thakazhi, Uroob, Malayattoor Ramakrishnan, Muttathu Varkey, Pamman, Parappurath, Thoppil Bhasi, KT Muhammed, MT Vasudevan Nair and Padmarajan), Sethumadhavan often picked stories of male protagonists trapped in the shackles of social mores and struggling to come to terms with societal transformation. SethumadhavanвЂ™s films can be read as both a reflection of the confines and thematic concerns of popular Malayalam cinema of the period and a response to it, often pushing its boundaries and extending its scope. Many films of that period revolved around the theme of marriage and womenвЂ™s role in society, reinforcing the roles of men as providers and claimants to the secular public sphere and women as upholders of honour and chastity, largely limited to the private/domestic sphere. The family melodrama is theorised as a genre that captures and reproduces the patterns of domination and exploitation in society. The portrayal of familial relations in these films often became a stand-in for discussing social transformation and resulting anxieties. Malayalam films had distinguished themselves from films in other South Indian languages as being more reflective of contemporary social issues and concerned with вЂrealityвЂ™ than with tradition and mythology. The rise of the organised working class movement and the spread of education and print journalism, along with the massive popularity of the progressive literary movement, had already resulted in a conducive atmosphere for the вЂsocialвЂ™ to flourish in Malayalam cinema by the time Sethumadhavan started making films. Shaping the Contours of Popular Malayalam Cinema He won a number of awards, including 10 National Film Awards and eight Kerala State Film Awards and, in 2009, the JC Daniel Award instituted by the Kerala Government to recognise contributions to Malayalam cinema. The film-maker will also be remembered for introducing a number of actors, including Kamal Haasan, Mammootty, Jagathy Sreekumar and Suresh Gopi (as a child artist) and even convincing the then Kerala Chief Minister EMS Namboodiripad for a brief appearance in the 1967 film Ollathumathi. Over the next three and a half decades, he helmed 69 films in six languages, most notably a number of Malayalam films starring Sathyan in the mid-60s to early 70s. SethumadhavanвЂ™s first film as an independent film director was the 1960 Sinhala film Veeravijaya. Born to Subrahmanyam and Lakshmiyamma in 1931 in Palakkad, Sethumadhavan first entered the film industry assisting director K Ramnoth in the 1951 Tamil film Marmayogi, one of the early films that enabled the rise of MG Ramachandran to superstardom.

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