Sholay
after adjusting inflation. In 1999, BBC India declared it the "Film of the Millennium"; in 2005, the judges of the 50th annual
Filmfare awards called it the best film of the last 50 years.
When first released the film was declared a commercial disaster. Word of mouth convinced other movie-goers to give the film a chance and it soon became a box-office phenomenon. It ran for 286 weeks straight in one Mumbai theatre, the
Minerva.
The film was produced by
G.P. Sippy and directed by his son
Ramesh Sippy. It was written by scriptwriters
Salim-Javed.
R. D. Burman contributed the music. It was the first Hindi (and possibly Indian) movie to have a
stereophonic soundtrack.
Minor characters included:
*
Jagdeep as Surma Bhopali
*
Asrani as the comic jailor
*
Viju Khote as Kalia
*
Mac Mohan as Sambha
*
A.K. Hangal as the blind
imam *
Sachin as the imam's son
*
Leela Mishra as Basanti's aunt
*
Satyen Kappu as Thakur's servant
*
Helen as a sexy
Gypsy dancer
*
Jalal Agha as a Gypsy singer
|
Top to bottom: Gabbar Singh, Inspector Thakur, Veeru, Jai |
A retired police officer, Thakur (played by
Sanjeev Kumar), hires two convicts, Veeru and Jai (
Dharmendra and
Amitabh Bachchan), to capture Gabbar Singh. Singh is a bandit, a
dacoit, who sent his men to kill Thakur's entire family. Only Thakur and his daughter-in-law survived.
Thakur cannot take revenge himself; Gabbar Singh cut off his arms. He is handicapped, and would have no chance against a whole band of vicious dacoits. However, when he was a police officer, he had dealings with the two petty criminals, Veeru and Jai, whom he learned to admire despite their misdeeds. He thinks that Veeru and Jai have what it takes to defeat the bandits. Veeru and Jai are reluctant at first, but finally agree to come to Thakur's village and help him carry out his revenge.
Once in the village, the cynical young men find themselves growing fond of the villagers, and taking pity on their sufferings under bandit tyranny. Some of the villagers evoke more than fondness: both Veeru and Jai fall in love. Veeru is attracted to Basanti (played by
Hema Malini), a feisty young woman who makes her living driving a
tanga, a horse-drawn cab. Jai is drawn to Radha (
Jaya Bhaduri), the refined and reclusive widowed daughter-in-law. This being village India, widow remarriage is unthinkable; their mutual attraction is subtly drawn, unspoken, and doomed.
Bloody clashes between Jai, Veeru, and the bandits follow. After much sorrow and suffering, the bandits are captured.
The film had two endings. The original ending (shown in some DVD versions) shows Thakur killing Gabbar Singh, trampling him with spike-soled shoes. However, the CBFC (Central Board of Film Certification, or censor board) found the ending unpalatable. Police officers, even ex-police officers, should not commit murder. A new ending was filmed, in which the police arrest Gabbar Singh in the nick of time. Several other, smaller, changes were required.
Sippy's original 204-minute version was significantly different from the censored theatrical release.
Sholay was released on
15 August 1975 in the Bombay region. Audiences were light at first, and the critics were harsh.
* The critic K.L. Amladi of
India Today called the film a "dead ember" and added, "Thematically, it's a gravely flawed attempt."
*
Filmfare said that the film was an unsuccessful mincing of Western style with Indian milieu, making it a "...imitation western—neither here nor there."
Trade journals and columnists called the expensive film a flop
.
Then a curious thing happened. The cinema halls started to fill up. People weren't buying tickets in advance but they were coming to the theatre to see a film that their friends had liked. Before long, the film became a popular craze. All shows were sold out.
* Ticket scalpers could get outrageous prices for tickets.
* At some theaters, the queue to ticket counters stretched more than a kilometer.
. Fans stood in line during monsoon rains to buy tickets.
* Some fans who saw the film thirty, forty, even a hundred times.
Watching
Sholay in theatres became something like a
karaoke experience. Many fans in the audience had memorized all the dialogues and spoke them out loud, in chorus with the characters in the film. Some fans had even memorised the sound-effects.
Ten weeks after its release, the film was declared a superhit. On 11 October, 1975, the film was released in several other Indian film distribution districts. Sholay grossed about 35
crore rupees in its first run, a record that remained unbroken for the next nineteen years. Sholay ran for more than five years. At Mumbai's
Minerva theater, it was shown in regular shows for three continuous years, and then in matinee shows for two more years. Even in 240th week of its release,
Sholay was packing the theaters.
 |
Rocky terrain of Ramanagaram |
The film was a lavish production for its time. It took two and a half years to make; it went Rs. 300,000 over budget. Much of the film was set in the rocky terrain of
Ramanagaram, a village near
Bangalore. The filmmakers had to build a road from the Bangalore highway to Ramnagaram for convenient access to the sets.
Critics and movie-goers agree that the film was not totally original.
* It drew heavily upon the conventions of
Western films, especially
Sergio Leone's
spaghetti Westerns. The massacre of a family near the beginning of the film is similar to a scene from Leone's
Once Upon a Time in the West as well as a scene from
John Ford's
The Searchers.
* The first film to show a village hiring mercenaries to protect itself from bandits was the Japanese director
Akira Kurosawa's
The Seven Samurai. Hollywood remade
The Seven Samurai as
The Magnificent Seven in 1960, fifteen years before
Sholay.
*
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) featured two appealing outlaws, just like Jai and Veeru.
* Critics also cite the Indian films
Mera Gaon Mera Desh (1971) and
Khote Sikkay (1973) as possible inspirations.
* Gabbar Singh was modeled on a real-life dacoit of the same name who menaced the villages around
Gwalior in the 1950s. He terrorized the local police. Any policeman captured by the real Gabbar Singh had his ears and nose cut off, and was then released as an object lesson to other policemen.
* The music for the song "Mehbooba" was "inspired" by a Western tune, "Say You Love Me" by
Demis Roussos, a singer-songwriter of Greek origin.
* There is a scene in
Sergio Leone's
For A Few Dollars More (1965) in which an outlaw, El Indio, loads a gun and threatens to kill another man. This is said to have inspired the
Sholay scene in which Gabbar Singh threatens to kill his rebellious followers.
Sholay has inspired many imitations, in cinema and television. None of them has had the success of the original film. The latest attempt to trade on
Sholays fame is a
Ram Gopal Varma film, still being cast, which was announced as "in the spirit of Sholay". The producers of original movie are threatening to sue for copyright violation.
The stars of the film appeared in other films; they did not seem to be limited by their roles in
Sholay. However, some of the supporting actors never escaped the shadow of their hit film.
Amjad Khan, who played the bandit chief so brilliantly, had an undistinguished film career afterwards. He played Gabbar Singh again in the 1991
Ramgarh Ke Sholay, a parody. He also reprised the role in a commercial for biscuits.
Comedian
Jagdeep, who played Soorma Bhopali in the film, also attempted to capitalize on his
Sholay success; he directed and played the lead role in the 1988 film
Soorma Bhopali; Dharmendra and Amitabh also appeared [
1]. The film was not a success.
Sholay is out of the theaters, but thanks to television, VCRs, and DVDs, it is widely available and still extremely popular. Young Indians who had not been born when
Sholay was released will still have seen the film and know the dialogues and characters.
The extent to which
Sholay has become part of the cultural make-up of modern India can perhaps be illustrated by the success of the
Sholay mobile game. In 2005, some game developers (
Indiagames) released a game for mobile phones that was based on
Sholay. The game sold extremely well.
When it was first released,
Sholay won only
one Filmfare award: film editor M. S. Shinde won for
Best editing. He had edited 3,00,000 feet of film into 20,000 feet of theatrical release.
After the censors mandated cuts, the film was 18,000 feet and ran for 3 hours and 20 minutes.
The initially-ignored film had its revenge at 2005's 50th Filmfare Awards, when it received an award as the
Best Film of 50 Years. Ramesh Sippy was there to receive the trophy.
|
Jai, Veeru, Thakur and Gabbar admiring Asrani, who's rehearsing his role of an English Jailer |
* Sanjeev Kumar wanted to play Gabbar Singh, but the producers insisted that he play the police officer.
* The producers wanted
Danny Denzongpa to play the bandit chief, but he was committed to Feroz Khan's "Dharmatma". Amjad Khan was a second choice.
* The scene in which Thakur's family is killed was cut by the censor board; the murder of a small child was deemed too horrific to show.
* The film sparked two real life romances. Amitabh married
Jaya Bhaduri, who played the widowed daughter-in-law, in 1973, during the filming.
Dharmendra married
Hema Malini in 1980, five years after the release of the film.
* Amjad Khan prepared to play a bandit chief by reading a book titled
Abhishapth Chambal, which told of the exploits of
Chambal dacoits. The book was written by
Taroon Bhaduri, who just happened to be the father of Jaya Bhaduri.
* The screenwriters, Salim-Javed, named Veeru and Jai after a couple of Salim's college friends.
R. D. Burman, who composed the music for the film, was at the height of his career in 1975, when the film was released. However, the songs from
Sholay attracted less attention than the dialoguesâ€"a rarity for Bollywood.
The songs of the film were:
# "Jab Tak Hai Jaan", sung by
Lata Mangeshkar# "Koi Haseena", sung by
Kishore Kumar and
Hema Malini# "Holi Ke Din", sung by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar# "Yeh Dosti", sung by Kishore Kumar and
Manna Dey# "Mehbooba Mehbooba", sung by
Rahul Dev Burman; this song is still a hit and is regularly featured in various clubs and parties.A kawali was also recorded, but it was never picturised or released.
