by Allan Fish
(India 1975 210m) DVD2
Aka. Flames
The art of crushing a snake
p G.P.Sippy d Ramesh Sippy w Salim Khan, Javed Akhtar ph Dwarka Divecha ed M.S.Shinde m Rahul Dev Burman ly Anand Bakshi ch P.L.Raj art Ram Yedekar cos Shalini Shah
Dharmendra (Veeru), Abitabh Bachchan (Jai), Sanjeev Kumar (Thakur), Hema Malini (Basanti), Amjad Khan (Gabbar Singh), Jaya Badhuri (Radha), A.K.Hangal (Imaam Saheb), Leela Mishra (Mausie), Satyendra Kapoor (Ramlal), Iftekahr (Narmalaji), Vikas Anand (jailer), Mac Mohan (Sambha), Keshto Mukherjee (Hariram),
When the British Film Institute conducted a poll as to the greatest Indian films of all time, the results might have been seen as surprising. It may have been taken as a given that the films of Satyajit Ray would dominate, and yet only two of his films made the top 10 (Pather Panchali at 2 and Charulata at 6), the same number as Ritwik Ghatak. Their films went against the grain of Indian cinema, however, not Bollywood musical or genre productions but humanist dramas influenced by western and Japanese ideals. Several Bollywood films made the top 10 as well, including Mother India, Pyaasa and Awaara, all also included in this selection. It was neither, however, that took the premiere spot. That honour was set aside for the Sippys’ Sholay.
Sholay is best described as a pot pourri film, one made up of diverse ingredients spun into a mixture that should be unpalatable but in actual fact is entertainment gold. Take the plot; a retired police inspector Thakur requests a jailer to bring him two infamous criminals to perform a task for him. They had once helped him defend a train from bandits while under arrest and he sees them as the ideal people to help him gain revenge against a feared bandit, Gabbar Singh. He had once arrested Gabbar and had him sentenced to 20 years in prison, but he escaped within days and, having sworn revenge on Thakur, went to his house and killed five members of his family, luring Thakur out to follow him. He then captured Thakur and chopped off his arms.
Then there’s our two antiheroes, Jai and Veeru, a sort of subcontinent Butch and Sundance who travel in a motorcycle sidecar, make all their decisions based on the toss of a coin and see life as an adventure. They agree to help Thakur and the local villagers against the bandits and in doing so each begin a romance with a local girl. In the case of the more sensible Jai it’s with Thakur’s surviving daughter Radha, while Veeru goes after local cart driver Basanti, who can talk for the entire Indian race.
Essentially what we have here, despite the various musical numbers, is an Indian western. While the term ‘eastern’ may have been coined to describe the samurai films that either take their influence from or in some cases themselves influence American westerns, the label has never been more appropriate than here. One immediately sees elements of The Magnificent Seven in the duo being hired to protect a village from bandits. The family massacre and several other sequences are riffs on Sergio Leone, especially Once Upon a Time in the West, while a sequence of Basanti being forced to dance on broken glass to keep her lover alive recalls Julie London’s humiliation in Mann’s Man of the West.
Throughout Sippy maintains a comic action tone that prefigures the buddy action films of the 1980s. All the performances are heightened in the usual manner, but who could be better than Dharmandra and Bachchan as the antiheroes or chatterbox Malini? Who else could play the armless Thakur but Kumar? And best of all there’s Amjad Khan, equal parts Robert Newton and Mapache and dressed like Fidel Castro, as the bandit with a fondness for Russian roulette. That no-one can take it seriously is without question – the good guys never miss their target, the bad guys couldn’t shoot an elephant point blank – but it’s the essence of Bollywood in a nutshell. Interviewed in Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film, Bachchan opined that Indian cinema was so popular because it gave poetic justice inside three hours. In life, you’re lucky to get it in a lifetime.
For quite a while this has indeed been considered by both intellectuals and audiences as the greatest Indian film of them all. I can’t quite agree with that assessment, as S. Ray reigns supreme with a number of his masterworks, but SHOLAY is still justly celebrated. The comparisons to MAN OF THE WEST and THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN are dead-on, and overall this is a commanding review that frames one of the great Indian classics.
You mean Once Upon a Time in the West.
Yes, I understood that but wrote it wrong in my comment.
Good stuff Allan. Yes, Basanti sure can talk as can Channo (Neetu Singh) in Yash Chopra’s Kaala Patthar. And the film is indeed pure entertainment with dialogues and performances that stay long in the memory. At one point, I probably knew most of the dialogues from this film, especially anything by Gabbar. It was Amjad Khan’s first major role yet some often kept repeating that he never matched the heights that he did here.
It was probably the first Curry Western although there weren’t that many more made through the 1980’s.
Sachine—
This is yet another passionate and authoritative addition that we are most grateful to get here!
It is hard to adequately describe the centrality of this film for Hindi-speaking Indian culture and to an extent beyond this. The film is a culture unto itself, from its central characters to its lines to its songs.. it’s all the stuff of folklore in India. I could not really think of a single Hollywood film as central in the very same way in terms of both critical and popular registers. And this is true for very many industries. The Seven Samurai in Japan is perhaps the closest approximation. Obviously it is one of the models for this film but Sholay is both like this film in terms of deploying a vast arsenal of socio-political codes and on the other hand a more Leone-like venture which constantly references a numbers of important Hollywood iconic moments from the Great Dictator to Ben-Hur and of course uses as model a number of Westerns right down to the Professionals. Bachchan incidentally is once again a star whose equivalent in terms of the magnitude of his box office record, the critical reverence for him as an actor and his sheer cultural transcendence is hard for me to describe adequately because once again there is no one comparable in a Western context (even among the giants).
But this is ultimately a ‘great’ popular film rather than a great work of art the way a Ray film is. It is the same distinction that I regular draw between some very important Hollywood films and truer ‘auteurist’ attempts.
So again great going here Allan though I’m unsure if you saw the more well-known cut of this film or the director’s cut not available until recently. The director’s cut adds a couple of sequences but most crucially there is big difference in the climactic moment. The film released at a time of great political volatility in India and the ending was deemed to be too dark. The censors (which is a government institution in India) started giving the director trouble and he eventually compromised. Luckily it’s finally available on DVD or has been for a few years. Also most of the deleted and/or reworked footage is available on youtube (without subs unfortunately):
There’s one more scene that I couldn’t find on youtube where the Thakur is hammering the nails into his shoes.
I should admit that as a personal preference I would take Deewar (an almost equally iconic Hindi film that released the same and with Bachchan in his most seminal role) over this. It’s a film I’ve always admired more than I’ve loved though one is likely to get lynched in India for saying this!
Well, if there is a longer version, anyone who has it please get it sent to me. It would also improve in that the songs are not subtltled in all the UK DVDs. Just trhe dialogue.
Kaleem, I do remember your stellar regard for DEEWAR from past discussions. The comment you left here is a towering one, and it is a special treat to have it here. The scene additions are spectacular.
I think Kaleem nailed it in his comment. A great popular film but doesn’t rank among India’s greatest films. I would take anything from Satyajit Ray, Ritwik Ghatak, Guru Dutt, John Abraham, or Kumar Shahani over Sholay. Its a film that, to me, represents the absolute highest a Bollywood film can achieve (I think the same way about Lagaan).
Indeed Anu! Great to see you in these parts again. Hope all is well with you!