The ‘masala film,’ or what is broadly defined as the Bollywood movie, is a mixture of genres, taking its name from a combination of various ground seasonings. Like many Indian films since, including plenty that have done it with far less finesse, Sholay drew heavily from American and global cinema.
It’s also the definitive encapsulation of ‘Bollywood’ as we understand it today, its existence having been intertwined with the very fabric of both the medium and the industry. For the Indian and South Asian diaspora, it is quite simply, unavoidable. Even my own household would come to a standstill whenever it played on television, and by the time I actually got around to watching it (thanks to a 3D re-release, no less), I was already familiar with every other line of dialogue, parodied year after year during award shows and comedy bits, and every song and dance number, played ad nauseam on classic radio stations. For those of us who hadn’t been born yet, stories of its explosive impact on cinema and culture were akin to legends of Hindu mythology, passed down to us by our parents and grandparents, only they were there to actually witness the events. Not only that, Sholay is also by far India’s most ubiquitous pop-culture phenomenon. If you ask people what the greatest American film is, the answers will vary from The Godfather to Citizen Kane to Casablanca, among a handful of others, but when it comes to Indian cinema, there’s usually only one that comes to mind. Sholay would go on to make more than five times its original budget, and its theatrical run in Mumbai – the same run deemed a disaster after just two weeks – lasted until the February of 1981. The film eventually received a nationwide release the following October, and went on to become the highest grossing Indian film of 1975, but it wasn’t quite done there. In order to ride the wave of its sudden success, the producers released a second soundtrack to the film which contained neither its songs nor its instrumental score, but snippets of dialogue. Word of mouth on the movie was so strong that people started filling theatres in its third week. But it never came to that, because a few weeks in, something strange and miraculous happened. Director Ramesh Sippy and screenwriting duo Salim-Javed even considered re-shooting the ending so that the character of Jai (a then unknown Amitabh Bachchan) would survive, in a desperate attempt to try and break even on what would be $15 million today. Initial reviews were largely negative, and its poor marketing failed to attract crowds even in Mumbai, the heart and home of Indian cinema. The film was released on August 15th, 1975, India’s 28th Independence Day, and opened to a lackluster response, to put it mildly. A few days ago, Sholay celebrated its 40th anniversary.
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