It is not even a week since Sholay ’s 3D version hit the screens and the collections are already inching towards the Rs 10-crore mark.
Okay, this is minuscule compared to what Dhoom 3 has raked in (believed to be over Rs. 300 crore) but then we are talking about a film that is nearly four decades old and still has the audiences glued to their seats.
How does one explain this phenomenon? A tale of friendship with a heady mix of romance, vendetta and top-class dialogues remains relevant even today. The icing on the cake is, of course, the dacoit chieftain who is deliciously ruthless.
There has been so much written about
The year also saw the release of another masterpiece, Deewaar , from Yash Chopra which catapulted Amitabh Bachchan to the superstar league and effectively marked an end to the heady Rajesh Khanna era. Deewaar , like Sholay , had the ‘bad guy’ winning the audience’s approval and Bachchan delivered the performance of a lifetime.
Yet, it was Sholay which created that incredible momentum and movie-halls across the country were packed for years on end. It was the real big- bang multistarrer even while we had had our share with Yaadon Ki Baraat a couple of years earlier and Waqt even further back in 1965. Sholay , though, was unique in its sheer magnificence and Gabbar Singh, as the epitome of absolute evil, became a household name.
The central theme of dacoity was also something which audiences could relate to comfortably. In real life, there were enough and more stories of the Chambal Valley where dacoits ran amok and a film (Bandit Queen) would eventually be made many years on the most celebrated of them, Phoolan Devi.
Despite its grandeur, we should not forget yet another remarkable movie on the subject of dacoits, Mera Gaon Mera Desh , which was released in 1971. It had one of the lead stars from Sholay , Dharmendra, in the pivotal role while Vinod Khanna played the dreaded dacoit, Jabbar Singh. The film is quite appropriately perceived by critics as the precursor to Sholay .
Mera Gaon Mera Desh also did very well and was among the highest grossing movies of ’71 even though Haathi Mere Saathi , riding on four elephants, emerged tops. The key stars of these two films (Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna and Rajesh Khanna) were to come together many years later for another mega dacoit theme, Rajput , which hit the screens in 1982. The film promised plenty but just could not strike the right connect with its audience as it happened with Sholay and Mera Gaon Mera Desh . Perhaps, dacoity had ceased to become interesting as a subject with the emergence of the 1980s!
Sholay, oddly enough, lost out on most of the awards in 1975 even while it was growing from strength to strength in movie-halls across the country. It was the other gangster film, Deewaar , which went home with the largest booty. What was even more intriguing was that Amitabh Bachchan did not get the Best Actor award for the film. The honours went to another immensely talented artiste, Sanjeev Kumar, for his role in Aandhi .
This film, though, was briefly banned because its lead heroine, Suchitra Sen, put in such an effective performance as a politician that comparisons were quickly drawn to the then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi. And this was happening in the year of the Emergency which meant Aandhi had to wait longer before it was finally released.
By the end of the day, 1975 will be better remembered as the year of Sholay . It is hard to think of any other film that continues to create that sense of excitement so many years later. Dacoits have long ceased to make news in the Chambal; a new set of stars have come and gone in Hindi cinema; people have moved to smart phones and yet, Jai, Veeru and the indomitable Gabbar Singh are still around. Sholay is one of a kind, it will be difficult to replicate something as grand on celluloid.