Though Zanjeer is credited as Amitabh’s breakthrough film, it didn’t immediately enthrone him.
Rajesh Khanna countered with a huge hit in Daag that year.
But Deewar upended audience’s cinematic taste and filmland hierarchies at the very start of 1975.
Bachchan emerged as a one man industry, the angry young man who could regulate the thermostat of the entire film industry, recalls Dinesh Raheja.
.
IMAGE: Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar.
50 years after the release of Deewaar, hindsight suggests that this 1975 superhit signalled nothing less than a cultural re-set.
A darkly sentimental, action-laced drama, Deewaar set the thematic tone for Hindi cinema throughout the second half of the 1970s and the 1980s.
A grim new age had dawned. Zanjeer had been a pathbreaker but it was with Deewaar that the musical sixties were conclusively over.
The Kashmir-Simla romances and the Rajesh Khanna wave had crested and crashed.
Deewaar nailed the zeitgeist of its time. This nakedly emotional saga is about the forces of collision and cohesion operating within and without its morally conflicted crime boss protagonist.
Wittingly or unwittingly, the film spoke to the socio-political climate of the day — the loss of innocence as the clock began its countdown to the national emergency declared later that year.
At the same time, the moral quandaries it poses are eternal.
Deewaar made Amitabh Bachchan A Superstar
IMAGE: Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar.
Deewaar also fundamentally changed the Hindi film leading man. It made its brooding yet turbulently emotional protagonist Amitabh Bachchan (not pussyfoot around the fact that Shashi Kapoor’s was the supporting role) the era’s indisputable superstar.
Though Zanjeer (1973) is correctly credited as Amitabh’s breakthrough film, it didn’t immediately clear the decks and enthrone him. Rajesh Khanna countered with a huge hit in Daag that year. And in 1974, Khanna’s hits (Prem Nagar, Roti, Aap Ki Kasam) outnumbered Amitabh’s solo success (Majboor).
But Deewar upended audience’s cinematic taste and filmland hierarchies at the very start of 1975; and Bachchan followed it with Sholay later that year.
Simultaneously, Khanna’s films also fell out of favour and Bachchan emerged as a one man industry, the angry young man who could regulate the thermostat of the entire film industry.
Deewaar continues to remain relevant. It is director Yash Chopra’s most vital work. Amitabh considers the Salim-Javed script to be perfect. And pithy lines such as ‘ Mere paas maa hai‘ or ‘Main aaj bhi pheke huey paise nahin leta‘ still enjoy instant recognition.
The Mother, The Brother And The Public Enemy
IMAGE: Shashi Kapoor, Nirupa Roy and Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar.
Deewaar seems influenced by many an earlier classic like the seminal 1931 film, The Public Enemy, in which a soft-hearted mother is caught between her two sons — a military man and a gangster played by James Cagney.
Ganga Jamuna (1961) also had brothers on different sides of the law and Mother India (1957) showcased the turbulent relationship between a highly principled mother and her rebellious son. But what finally crystallises in Deewaar is clearly its own identity.
The plot’s poignant pivots are in the vain efforts by Vijay (Amitabh) to find the payback for his mother’s humiliations and his own deprived childhood through monetary fulfilment as an adult.
The film’s first half hour follows the travails of his mother, Sumitra (Nirupa Roy) who pays the high human cost of her coal miner husband’s lofty principles.
She brings up her two sons by living on the footpath and doing manual labour on a construction site.
Vijay grows up embittered, forever branded by the ‘Mera baap chor hai‘ forcefully tattooed on his forearm but his younger brother Ravi (Shashi Kapoor) has a sunnier world view and becomes a police officer.
This sets up the stage for a confrontation when Vijay abandons the straight and narrow path of virtue adhered to by his brother. Vijay gets his rewards, but find them like ashes in his mouth when his beloved mother resoundingly rejects him.
The Salaries of Sin And The Wages of Virtue: What Justifies Them?
IMAGE: Shashi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar.
Salim Javed’s excellent story-screenplay-dialogue and Yash Chopra’s direction brilliantly capture the moral choices and imperatives that transform a dockyard coolie with a boulder-sized chip on his shoulder into an underworld don.
Deewaar does offer a rather sympathetic take on a gangster and it doesn’t skimp on flaunting the glamorous aspects of his underworld lifestyle too (Bachchan in snazzy suits, aviators and fast cars).
But the film is ultimately a cautionary morality tale about the anguished life and times of a transgressor. It acknowledges that the wages of virtue are not plentiful but pertinently asks whether being wronged justifies rolling in the high salaries of sin. Ravi pointedly reminds his Bhai: ‘Doosron ke paap ginaane se tumhare apne paap kam nahin ho sakte!‘
Deewaar debates still-contemporary issues — the price people pay for principles, and on the flip side the high cost of Faustian bargains struck by selling the soul.
And that is why the film is not dated even after 5 decades but continues to resonate with new generations of viewers.
Also, of course, it’s still an engrossing, albeit heavy, watch. Sure, details of Vijay’s meteoric ascent are conveniently glossed over and there are concessions to crowd-pleasing sentiment (the mother is cured when the atheist Vijay finally prays and his coolie badge number 786 saves Vijay’s life multiple times). But the writers here definitely understand the raw potency of terrific sequences and clap-worthy dialogue. Deewaar is chock full of both.
The Other Mother, The Thief … And Parveen Babi
IMAGE: Amitabh Bachchan and Parveen Babi in Deewaar.
What further distinguishes Deewaar are the many strong supporting roles. Shashi Kapoor is blazingly earnest in his character’s righteousness and won the Best Supporting Actor trophy at Filmfare Awards … the film’s sole acting award.
In one of the films best sequences, Ravi shoots down a young thief only to realise he had stolen just a loaf of bread (yes, like Valjean in the French classic Les Miserables). But Deewar takes it in a new direction when Ravi visits the thief’s parents with food and is met by the mother (Dulari) who flings the rotis in his face and the father (A K Hangal) who rationalises being punished no matter how minor the crime. This centres the conflicted Ravi morally.
The way Yash Chopra treated Parveen Babi’s cameo defied Hindi film norms and is in sharp contrast to his own sucrose-saturated latter films which often paid overt obeisance to traditional morality.
Unlike Neetu Singh who played Shashi Kapoor’s conventional love interest, Parveen is a leading lady who not only flaunts her drink openly but also indulges in premarital sex with her lover, Amitabh.
Parveen said she liked the realistic writing and the fact that she didn’t have to sing or dance (Kudos to the makers for resisting that/this obvious temptation).
Watch her as she stylishly lights two cigarettes in bed and gives one to Amitabh (a la Bette Davis and Paul Henreid in Now Voyager, 1942).
The real heroine of Deewaar is Nirupa Roy as the mother. Only 44 years old then, Roy is ideally cast (though 1960s superstar Vyajayanthimala was first considered) as the maternal figure overflowing with tenderness but with a spine of steel.
Roy is genuinely moving, whether she is projecting stoicism or having a breakdown. Deewaar established her as Amitabh Bachchan’s screen mother in numerous subsequent films.
The Best Anatomist of Angst
IMAGE: Amitabh Bachchan in Deewaar.
Finally, the film belongs to Amitabh Bachchan. Vijay could have come across as surly if played by a lesser actor but Bachchan proved he was the best anatomist of angst in modern Hindi cinema.
Bachchan’s dry laconic approach stops certain scenes from appearing soap-operatic.
His oratorial skills are on display in the monologue, and his agility skills in the action sequence — he aids the suspension of disbelief when he is required to single-handedly thrash seven goons.
Incidentally, Amitabh’s famous knotted shirt look in this scene happened because the shirt provided was too long to be buttoned.
And because of Bachchan’s long sideburns look in the film, the joke was that one never really got to see his ears. No matter. It was his face that was the actor’s canvas.
Deewaar remains a must watch classic for all cinema enthusiasts. Watch it for Salim-Javed’s era-defining script and to catch Amitabh Bachchan in his prime.
