Meera (1945 film)

Meera
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Ellis R. Dungan
Written by	Kalki Krishnamurthy
Produced by	T. Sadasivam
Starring	M. S. Subbulakshmi
Cinematography	Jitan Banerji
Edited by	R. Rajagopal
Music by	S. V. Venkatraman
Production company	Chandraprabha Cinetone
Distributed by	Narayanan & Company
Release date	3 November 1945 (1945-11-03)
Running time	136 minutes[1]
Country	India
Language	Tamil

Meera is a 1945 Indian Tamil-language historical musical film directed by Ellis R. Dungan, produced by T. Sadasivam and written by Kalki Krishnamurthy. Based on the life of the 16th century mystic and poet Mirabai, the film stars M. S. Subbulakshmi as the eponymous character, a zealous devotee of Krishna, who considers him to be her husband. Despite marrying Rana (Chittoor Nagayya), she follows her own way of living, which is unacceptable to her husband and his family.

Sadasivam wanted to produce a film that would make his singer wife Subbulakshmi's music available to the average person, so he started looking for a good story; Subbulakshmi chose the story of Meera. The film began production at Newtone Studio in Madras, but was filmed predominantly on location in North India in places like Jaipur, Vrindavan, Udaipur, Chittor and Dwarka to maintain credibility and historical accuracy.

Meera was released on 3 November 1945, Diwali day, and became a major critical and commercial success. This led to the production of a Hindi-dubbed version, which had a few scenes reshot, that was released two years later on 21 November and also achieved success. Despite the Hindi version making Subbulakshmi a national celebrity, it would be her last film as an actress, after which she decided to focus solely on her musical career.