On June 27 this year, a fully restored and unedited version, complete with hitherto deleted scenes and the original ending of Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay where Thakur kills Gabbar with his feet, wearing nail-fitted shoes customised by his man-Friday Ramlal, had an open-air screening at the Piazza Maggiore as part of Bologna’s annual Il Cinema Ritrovato Festival.
The response it received, followed by a dedication tweet by the Iranian consulate general in Mumbai proudly sharing a full-page tribute to the film by an Iranian newspaper, proves how much of an iconic status Sholay still enjoys the world over.
A lot has been written about the film and the cult status it has gained over decades. It has become such an integral part of our cultural zeitgeist that even to this day Sholay posters, Sholay table mats and Gabbar coasters are a huge draw, for millennials and Gen Z included. Mohan Makijany, better known as Mac Mohan, acted in over 200 films but is still remembered by the three words his character Samba spoke in Sholay: “Poore pachaas hazar”.
Asrani, even to this day, gets into his ‘Angrezon ka zamane ke jailor’ avatar in every stage show to rev up the audience. Jagdeep’s cameo as Soorma Bhopali became so popular that he directed a film with the name a decade later, with Amitabh Bachchan and Dharmendra making cameo appearances. From Mausi to Hariram Nai to the two nameless guys discussing the cause and effect of ‘soocide of Angrej log’, every character is etched in our memory, cinephiles and plebeians alike!
It is quite ironic that a film of such iconic status had a tepid response to it when it opened in cinema halls on August 15, 1975. Even before its release, the film faced problems with the ever-puritan Central Board of Film Censors, which took umbrage at the macabre killings of Ahmed, Rahim Chacha’s son, and the revenge of Thakur culminating in Gabbar’s gory death. Ramesh Sippy had to accede to their demand and edit out Ahmed’s murder and come up with a new ending in which Gabbar lives. Thankfully, the newly-restored and unedited version can now show us the film in its entirety.
Sholay was a visionary film in more ways than one. It was possibly the first time where huge billboards were used to advertise it with such hyperbolic taglines as “The greatest film ever made” and “The greatest story ever told” to create the hype and curiosity among people. It did not work at first since audience reaction was lukewarm and film critics were scathing since it is easy to criticise failure.
The film was even given the sardonic sobriquet of ‘Chholey’, with one newpaper critic calling it a “dead ember”. Thankfully, all these unfounded criticisms met with premature deaths since word of mouth proved to be the blessing that the Sippys were looking for and what the writers Salim-Javed had predicted from the beginning.
Sholay went on to run for five uninterrupted years at Mumbai’s Minerva theatre. It was inevitably voted Film of the Millennium in a BBC India online poll and was rightly named the greatest Indian film in a British Film Institute poll.
In another visionary and smart marketing ploy, Polydor came up with a 58-minute record of the film’s choicest dialogues — a rarity in those days. The dialogues of Gabbar took precedence over others, and all the initial criticism about Amjad Khan’s squeaky voice were conveniently forgotten. Such was his popularity that he even reprised his role in a Britannia Glucose D biscuits commercial with the adline “Gabbar ki asli pasand”. Gabbar became a brand in itself, and has been since.
Like most of our Hindi films, Sholay also drew inspiration in plot details and scenes from films like Once Upon A Time In The West, Only Angels Have Wings, Take Me Out To The Ball Game and even Kishore Kumar’s Half Ticket, but it is inherently Indian in character and feel — and unapologetically rustic Indian at that.
A film like Sholay should never be remade. Ram Gopal Verma, a self-proclaimed fan, made an eminently forgettable adaption of the film. But even otherwise, a scene like Veeru talking to Basanti as the voice of Shiva, hiding behind his idol, will be deemed blasphemous in today’s polarised society.
Arnab Banerjee is a corporate executive who lives for the movies