Sholay

Dharmendra,

Sholay (Flames)
File:Sholayposter2.jpg
Directed by	Ramesh Sippy
Written by	Salim Khan, Javed Akhtar
Produced by	G.P. Sippy
Starring	Amitabh Bachchan, Sanjeev Kumar,
Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Amjad Khan
Cinematography	Dwarka Divecha
Release date	1975
Running time	188 min / India:204 min (director's cut) / USA:162 min
Language	Hindi

Sholay (Hindi: शोले, Urdu: شعلے) (advertised in English as Embers, Flames, or Flames of the Sun) is one of the biggest blockbusters in the history of Bollywood, (India's Bombay film industry). It was released in 1975 and starred Sanjeev Kumar Dharmendra, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri, and Hema Malini. Amjad Khan, as a villainous bandit chief, held his own against some of the biggest stars in 1970s Bollywood cinema.

It is the highest grossing movie of all time in India. It has earned Rs. 2,134,500,000, equivalent to US $ 50 million, after adjusting for 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.

Credits

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

Synopsis

File:Y gabbar thakur.JPG

Top to bottom: Gabbar Singh, Inspector Thakur, Veeru, Jai

Template:Spoiler A retired police officer, Thakur Baldev Singh (Sanjeev Kumar) hires two convicts Jaidev and Veeru (Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra) to capture Gabbar Singh, a bandit chief who's terrorizing the small village of Ramgarh. Through a flashback we discover that the two petty criminals had once saved the Thakur’s life after taking on a gang of bandits.

Through further flashbacks it is revealed that the Thakur had previously captured Gabbar, but that the latter escaped, and, in retribution, massacred the Thakur’s entire family (with the exception of his daughter-in-law, who was not at home at the moment). When the Thakar had himself attempted to exact revenge on Gabbar for the massacre, he was captured and mutilated, having his arms cut off.

Once in the village, the cynical young Jaidev and Veeru find themselves growing fond of the villagers, taking pity on their sufferings under dacoit 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, or a horse-cart. Jai is drawn to Radha (Jaya Bhaduri), the reclusive widowed daughter-in-law. This being village India, the re-marriage of a widow next to unheard of; nonetheless, her father-in-law agrees that it would be best for her to wed Jai, and not lead an entire life of loneliness and misery.

Bloody clashes between Jai, Veeru, and the bandits follow. After much sorrow and suffering, the bandits are slain.

The film has two known endings. The original ending (shown in the Eros-released DVD) has Thakur baldev Singh killing Gabbar Singh, trampling him with spike-soled shoes. The C.B.F.C. (Central Board of Film Certification; that is, India's censor board), however, found the ending unpalatable. Police officers, even ex-police officers, should not be shown to commit murder. A new ending was filmed, in which the police arrest Gabbar Singh in the nick of time. Several other, smaller, changes were made, as well, which ceased to be necessary with the alteration.

Barring the ending, the two versions of the film are mostly the same. Template:Endspoiler

Response

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 -- at the start -- 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.
• There are 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.

Production

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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.

Inspiration

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.
• Sholay's extensive use of slow-motion in shoot-outs was influenced by the westerns of Sam Peckinpah such as The Wild Bunch (1969) and Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (1973)
• 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.
• The protagonist of the western One-Eyed Jacks (1960) played by Marlon Brando has a double-sided coin which he uses to his advantage much like the Jaidev character in Sholay.

Legacy

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DVD release of Sholay

Sholay has inspired many imitations, in cinema and television and has spawned a whole sub-genre of films whimsically dubbed Curry Westerns as a tribute to Spaghetti Westerns. None of them has had the success of the original film. The latest attempt to trade on Sholay's 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.

Awards

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.

Trivia

File:Rare Sholay Set Photo Old 0075.jpg

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.
• The film grossed over Rs.150 million. This record was beaten 19 years later by Hum Aapke Hain Kaun in 1994.
• From September 1st through the 5th, 2006, the Walter Reade Theater of New York City's Lincoln Center, held screening of "Sholay." The film is said to be one of the favorite's of the Theater's program director, Richard Peña.

Soundtrack

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 dialogues—a rarity for Bollywood.

The songs of the film were:

1. "Jab Tak Hai Jaan", sung by Lata Mangeshkar
2. "Koi Haseena", sung by Kishore Kumar and Hema Malini
3. "Holi Ke Din", sung by Kishore Kumar and Lata Mangeshkar
4. "Yeh Dosti", sung by Kishore Kumar and Manna Dey
5. "Mehbooba Mehbooba", sung by Rahul Dev Burman; this song is still a hit and is regularly featured in various clubs and parties.

A kawali "Aa Shuru Hota Hai Phir" was also recorded, but it was never picturised or released.

References

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External links

• Sholay at IMDb
• Raheja, Dinesh. Why Sholay is a Cult Classic Rediff.com.
• BBC Asian Network
• University of Iowa article