69 - The Greatest Movie of All Times!!

An Army officer’s family is massacred. 

He remembers two junior officers who were court martialled.  

They were rascals but also brave.  

The retired officer decided to enlist them in his mission for revenge.

With these 4 lines of story, somewhere in 1972-73, started the birth of a movie called Sholay, unarguably the best movie of all times, according to me 😊😊.  When it got released in 1975, it was announced as “The Greatest Star Cast Ever Assembled! The Greatest Story Ever Told”

Apparently, the movie cost Rs 3 crores to make at that time and made Rs 25 crores for the Sippy family, during its run!!  In the current monetary terms, this turns out to be Rs 450 crores, only in Indian territory!!  And this does not include returns from re-releases for quite a number of times and the satellite rights!!  It was said that whenever the Sippy family required some money, they released Sholay again and again!!  And it ran to full-houses, again and again!!

This movie was released when I was 5 years old. My earliest remembrance of this movie is myself singing the Yeh Dosti song and circling the lamp-post which was located near our house in Delhi.  At that time, my father had a Philips Spool Player.  He somehow got the songs copied on the player and I used to listen to it.  When HMV released the dialogues, my father got me and my brother the cassettes and we used to listen to it in our Murphy Cassette Player.

The dialogues were so powerful and catchy that even today I can trot out all the dialogues while the film is running!!  When the time came for Video Players, I got the Sholay Video Cassette.  When the time came for DVP Players, I got myself the Sholay DVD.  I did not opt for the Blue Ray as the DVD itself was crystal clear!!

The movie is such that you can see it any number of times and still not get bored of it!  When I came to know that there is a scene in the movie where Sanjeev Kumar’s hand gets displayed while fighting, I went to the relevant site (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtTju_EXOCI) and saw it.  I did the same thing when I came to know that there was a different ending available for the movie.  This ending was objected to by the Censors and had to be cut off from the film.   In the original version, Gabbar gets killed.  During the fight, Thakur sees that a scissor-like pointed-thing is sticking out of a wall and Gabbar is near it.  Thakur goes back and runs towards Gabbar and pushes him to the pointed-thing and Gabbar dies (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Sb_RwXki60).  Since it was the Emergency time, the Censors refused this ending and asked the Director to show the ending as Gabbar being arrested by the police.  Since the film was in the making for 2 years and the Director had to release it, he reshot the ending as per the Censor board recommendation. The actual movie ending can be seen here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SDP_oaXGmg) from the 20:00 mark onwards when the Police comes and stops the fight between Gabbar and Thakur!!

This blog was just a teaser for the next couple of blogs on the movie.   I will be writing on the making of the movie as well as many incidents connected with the movie.  The interesting incidents have been referenced from the books “Written by Salim-Javed – The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters” by Diptakirti Chaudhuri and “Sholay – The Making of a Classic” by Anupama Chopra.

Like Veeru says in the movie – Is kahani mein emotion hai, drama hai, tragedy hai!!

Cheers!!  

Today’s Daffy Definition

BITCH – Beautiful Indian Teenager Causing Heartbreaks!!