Wikipedia
Panakkaari is a Tamil language film starring M. G. Ramachandran in the lead role. The film was released in 1954. Leo Tolstoy’s classic Anna Karenina was made into a Hollywood movie in 1935 by Clarence Brown with the iconic star Greta Garbo playing Anna. It was filmed earlier as a silent movie in 1928 named Love, again with Greta Garbo as Anna and the ‘great lover’ John Gilbert in the male lead. The novel and the 1935 Hollywood version were popular in India and the story was filmed in Tamil in 1953 as Panakkari by K. S. Gopalakrishnan (the maker of Chakradhari) under the technical supervision of the renowned Newtone Studio founder-cinematographer-filmmaker, Jiten Bannerjee.
However, Panakkari failed at the box office, mainly because of its ‘anti-sentimental’ storyline. During the same period, another film, Pitchaikkari, a remake of a Malayalam film, proved a major hit and gave rise to a joke in the Madras movie circles — ‘Those who bought Panakkari became pitchaikkaarans (beggars), while buyers of Pitchaikkari became panakkarans (rich men)!'
Remembered for its different storyline, high production values and impressive performances by Nagaiah, Rajakumari and MGR.