Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters

by Diptakirti Chaudhuri

  Salim–Javed effectively brought about the action revolution in Hindi cinema that signified a generational shift from the prevalent romantic themes. Quite surprisingly, Dostana revealed their ‘romantic’ side and is an interesting example of their versatility. Thus far, they had kept the love talk to a bare minimum in their films, even those with romantic themes or subplots—Seeta Aur Geeta, Andaz, Yaadon Ki Baaraat—but with this film they managed to show a new facet of their writing quite late in their career.

  Despite not meeting expectations, Dostana was a major commercial success in 1980, being the fourth-highest grosser of the year, and becoming a major triumph for the debutant producer. Salim–Javed’s reputation remained untarnished, though the strain of criticism and—more importantly—their inflating egos had started to show. That, coupled with the tension of their personal lives at that point in time, would have affected their output.

  Despite the tensions of Dostana, Amitabh Bachchan and Shatrughan Sinha came together in their final Salim–Javed script two months later. The film was arguably the most-awaited film in five years and easily the biggest canvas Salim–Javed worked on in their high-profile career. The film was Shaan.

  Shaan

  ‘The films which conform a 100 per cent to what the audiences are supposed to want, more often than not, fail’—Javed Akhtar

  In December 1980, Bombay’s Minerva cinema did a strange thing. They were showing a film where two young wastrels come to the rescue of an older idealistic man tormented by a villainous megalomaniac. They replaced that film with another where two young wastrels come to the rescue of an older idealistic man tormented by a villainous megalomaniac. Both films had a talkative heroine, a strong supporting cast, a young man who is brutally killed, the two heroes singing a song on a two-wheeler and the villain doing his version of a Russian roulette to punish traitors.

  In many ways, Sholay and Shaan were essentially the same movie.

  Both were huge multi-starrers with special effects and breathtaking production design that single-handedly set new industry standards. The producers bet the shirts on their backs to make both movies. And consequently, each came with the burden of being the most-awaited film ever. Not to mention the most expensive.

  Sholay’s success had affected everyone associated with it. Distributors, exhibitors and black marketeers had secured the futures of several generations on the strength of the film’s earnings. Ramesh Sippy was no longer the upstart son of a rich producer; he was a box-office god expected to work magic. Amitabh Bachchan—who had been a promising newcomer in Sholay—also became, well, a box-office god. And Salim–Javed were no longer a pair of young writers hankering for fame. Sholay had changed all their lives. And Shaan was meant to be nothing but a vehicle to trump Sholay. Everything related to the film was high octane and everybody knew it.

  The brief to the writers was to recreate action inspired by James Bond movies, complete with newfangled gadgetry and slick styling. International talent was used a lot more than in Sholay, with foreign action directors, special-effects directors, camera operators and sound designers brought in. They stuck to this brief quite well and even managed to pay tribute with a Bond-style opening scene.

  Initially, Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan were considered for the two leads, with Dharmendra slated to play the character Amitabh Bachchan portrayed. However—with Amitabh becoming the bigger star—it would have been very difficult to balance the two roles. So Shashi Kapoor—no pushover himself in stardom stakes—was brought in. Shatrughan Sinha appeared in a guest role (which was pretty meaty in the end).

  Although Ramesh Sippy packed the main cast with stars, he repeated the trick of having a rank newcomer—Kulbhushan Kharbanda—in the role of the villain. He managed to get the same level of audience surprise that he had got by having Amjad Khan play Gabbar. Well, almost the same level.

  Salim–Javed, for their part, named the villain Shaakaal (from Yaadon Ki Baaraat) and gave him reasonably good lines, including one that was picked up verbatim from the earlier film—‘Shaakaal ke haath mein jitney patte hote hain, utne hi patte uski aasteen mein hote hain.’xl There was massive curiosity around the new actor and several newspapers ran profiles of Kulbhushan Kharbanda before the release (something quite unheard of in those days, when people were less smitten by Bollywood than they are now).

  Upright and honest cop, DSP Shiv Kumar (Sunil Dutt) has two brothers—Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi (Shashi Kapoor)—who are conmen. They go around duping people till Shiv Kumar comes to their city and arrests them. They promise to reform their ways. Soon after, mega-villain Shaakaal (Kulbhushan Kharbanda), whose illegal businesses were being shut down by the police officer, has Shiv Kumar killed. Vijay and Ravi swear revenge and are joined by Rakesh (Shatrughan Sinha), a sharpshooter who was doing Shaakaal’s bidding because the villain was holding his wife hostage. They storm Shaakaal’s island den in disguise and destroy it completely.

  Salim–Javed took this simple (simplistic?) plot and created a massive film with several side stories, supporting characters, interesting situations and clever gimmicks.

  Shaan has some of the cleverest lines Salim–Javed have written. When heroine Renu (Bindiya Goswami) pulls up in a white convertible, Ravi is smitten by her and Vijay by her car. Smoothly and seamlessly, they carry on a long conversation wherein each describes their respective object of desire—the girl and the car—without realizing that they are talking about different things altogether. Even a seemingly insignificant role like Johnny Walker’s (who plays Renu’s conman uncle) had really witty lines. But after the flood of memorable lines in Sholay, Shaan’s script did not seem to crackle enough.

  The biggest weakness of the script was probably the need to show off ‘cool stuff’, with very little attention paid to the story and characters.

  For example, DSP Shiv Kumar is killed off by Shaakaal but not before he jumps off an island skyscraper after being kidnapped by four trucks, and is chased by a pack of wild dogs (much of this was shot in the UK). The inherent tragedy of the honest police officer’s death somehow gets lost in the whirlwind action.

  In terms of character development, this is the most inconsistent of the writers’ films. Kaala Patthar—for example—had characters which stayed consistent throughout the film. Amitabh Bachchan was a depressed introvert while Shatrughan was the garrulous aggressor and they remained true to their characters till the end. Amitabh did not sing any songs in Kaala Patthar, Deewaar and Zanjeer. Though he did sing a song in Trishul, it was an anti-romantic number that actually shows his indifference towards love.

  When asked about his strength, Salim Khan says, ‘Our forte was characterization, which was a weakness of Hindi films. A guy who loses his father in one scene is seen dancing in the next . . .’ Coming from someone so conscious of maintaining character graphs, Shaan was a big aberration. In the film, Vijay flirts with unknown women and he and Ravi sing a song with their girlfriends, within a few scenes of their brother’s death (which they have sworn to avenge). Vijay’s anger seems to switch off whenever the situation demands it. All this contributed to Shaan becoming a mish-mash of amazing technical finesse and a very loose script.

  Writer–director Sriram Raghavan sums up the typical audience reaction when he says, ‘I enjoyed Shaan for several great sequences, set pieces and all that but by the time they had the climax at the island, it was no longer real—even emotionally. There were logical flaws even in Sholay but you didn’t notice them. The loopholes of Shaan got noticed because the emotional impact was low.’

  Sholay was ‘The Greatest Story Ever Told’ while the posters of Shaan called it ‘The Greatest Show on Earth’. In a way, this difference—between a great story and a great spectacle—was what separated Shaan from Sholay.

  And this was caught out by the reviewers, who were quite brutal.

  Screen said, ‘For the majority of filmgoers, Shaan will offer audio-visual experience that will be quite extraordinary and, indeed, exciting enough to lure
them back to the cinema for a repeat viewing.’ However, it also said the ‘camera wizardry hitherto unequalled in the Hindi screen’ and ‘lavish settings, plus with dazzling contraptions [sic]’ were ‘used very imaginatively and deftly to wrap up a pedestrian, oft-repeated narrative of vendetta . . . which is taking too much advantage of the characteristic docility of the Indian audience.’ It specifically mentioned the writing by complaining about ‘a lack of originality in the conception of the theme’ and ‘a total absence of vitality which shows up painfully in the dialogue’. It went on to compare the film with Sholay (‘the director’s triumph, which literally bristled with vigorous and sparkling dialogue’).

  The other major trade magazine, Trade Guide, also echoed this. ‘Compared to Sholay, this film is far superior in technical values. In this aspect, Shaan is 200% of Sholay. Runwise, it may run 30% of Sholay. At the box-office, it may do 40% of Sholay. In repeat audience consideration, it is 20% of Sholay.’

  Shaan is often referred to as a ‘flop’. It wasn’t that by any stretch of the imagination but nevertheless, it was a colossal disappointment. Ramesh Sippy sees it as falling short of expectations. He says, ‘At a cost of Rs 6 crore, Shaan doing business worth Rs 12 crore is nothing when Sholay, a film costing Rs 3 crore, does something like Rs 25 crore in its first run.’

  Amitabh Bachchan sees it differently. He says, ‘Shaan was an elegantly presented caper movie. At that time, the James Bond movies were doing exceedingly well the world over. Ramesh Sippy wanted to do something in the same genre. When it was released, it did seem to lack soul as it was replete with gizmos. It didn’t work but today it is widely circulated on video and DVD and often shown on the television and cable channels.’

  Every time Salim–Javed came under pressure, they always bounced back. While Shaan was a major disappointment, their next release—fourteen months later—went on to become the biggest hit of 1982. That film was also fraught with accusations of a shoddy script but it managed to bring about newness by virtue of being set in a different point in history, when it was time for a revolution. The film was Kranti.

  Kranti

  In 1949, a little boy called Harekrishna Goswami saw Dilip Kumar in the film Shabnam. He was already very fond of the star and after that film, he became such a big fan that he began calling himself Manoj—the name of Dilip Kumar’s character in Shabnam—and eventually joined films as Manoj Kumar. For him, the opportunity to direct Dilip Kumar in Kranti in the early 1980s was a dream come true. This was the period when the veteran actor was transitioning from leading roles to very strong character roles. Kranti marked the beginning of his second innings.

  Like Nasir Husain in Yaadon Ki Baaraat, this was the first time Manoj Kumar sought the help of other writers for his own film. Prior to this, all his directorial ventures—Upkar, Purab Aur Pachhim, Shor and Roti Kapada Aur Makaan—had been entirely written by him. Even Kranti’s dialogues are officially credited to him. Like all their screenplays, Salim–Javed did write the basic dialogues, which were then worked upon by Manoj Kumar. Javed said, ‘Kranti was completely Manoj Kumar’s baby . . . We wrote the story and screenplay, but according to what he wanted . . . Incidentally, Manoj Kumar himself wrote the dialogues of the film, and whatever changes were made were improvised by him.’ Unlike Salim–Javed’s usual insistence on not changing anything in their scripts, they were uncharacteristically pliable with this film—probably in deference to Manoj Kumar’s stature.

  The theme of patriotism that Manoj Kumar was associated with got a masala makeover in Kranti. From the quiet idealism of Upkar, he had upped the decibel (and glamour) somewhat in Roti Kapada Aur Makaan. With Kranti, he pulled out all stops, using extravagant sets, elaborate action and a packed multi-star cast. Even by the high standards of 1970s multi-starrers, Kranti was a biggie. And in order to pack all those stars in, the story was quite complicated.

  Set in the princely state of Ramgarh in the nineteenth century, the film begins with a coup engineered by Shambhu Singh (Prem Chopra) to install Shamsher Singh (Pradeep Kumar) as the king. The British also support this move because they gain control of the port. Sanga (Dilip Kumar), a citizen of Ramgarh, discovers that the British are using the port to smuggle arms into and artefacts out of the state but before he can do anything, he is framed for the murder of the dethroned king. Sanga escapes from prison, but is separated from his wife (Nirupa Roy), his older son and newborn baby boy, who is taken to the palace by the deceased king’s sister and raised as her own.

  Sanga becomes a pirate and a rebel against the British rule, going by the name Kranti. His older son Bharat (Manoj Kumar) also becomes a freedom fighter, and saves another rebel Karim Khan (Shatrughan Sinha) from execution. Sanga’s younger son Shakti (Shashi Kapoor) is now the general of the Ramgarh army and is ordered to capture Kranti. The female leads are Surili (Parveen Babi), who is part of Bharat’s team, and Rajkumari Meenakshi (Hema Malini), who starts off as an Anglophile princess but joins the ‘kranti’ and falls in love with Bharat.

  Father and sons clash as the British discredit the freedom fighters. Both Bharat and Sanga believe that the other is sabotaging the freedom movement, while Shakti tries to capture them. After many skirmishes, the freedom fighters finally meet the British and Ramgarh forces in a pitched battle on the ramparts of the fort. Bharat is killed during the battle, while Meenakshi gives birth to Bharat’s son. The film ends with Sanga passing on the flame of Kranti to Bharat’s son.

  It is to Salim–Javed’s credit that what sounds almost incomprehensible in description works better on screen. With easy-to-recognize set pieces, familiar situations and memorable dialogues, the writers tried their best to make it palatable to the typical Hindi film audience. One of Kranti’s weaknesses was a dragging climax with all the stars doing much more than they should have.

  Incidentally, Kranti’s final story was completely different from when it began. ‘It will be about seventy years in the life of a village, the change that has at last come. The change for the better in which the farmer can breathe fresh air, away from the clutches of the moneylender and the zamindar, tentacles holding him as bonded labour,’ Manoj Kumar had said in a 1977 interview about his then-current production Naya Bharat which had the same star cast. Clearly his original vision went through a significant change once writing commenced.

  An element of Kranti that was quite incongruous for a Salim–Javed film was the primitive treatment of women. While it was common for women to have marginal roles in multi-starrers, Kranti had a fair bit of gratuitous skin show, which was new for a film written by the duo. And in an inexplicable bit of misogyny in the garb of patriotism, Bharat points to the foreigners’ disregard for Indian traditions by speaking ill of the British for saving a woman from a sati pyre. While the demonification of the British was done because they rape the woman they save, Bharat ends up defending sati by calling it ‘apne parivar ki parampara’ xli.

  Interestingly, Kranti is presented as a concept or character, which is passed from one generation to the next—much like Phantom from the eponymous comic series—to carry on the struggle for freedom.

  The template for Kranti was used in Mard a few years later—with several similarities between the two films. Both films have obnoxious Britishers perpetrating unspeakable atrocities on hapless Indians till two generations of freedom fighters take them on. Add to that the age-old favourite lost-and-found saga and subplots of expatriation of priceless artefacts and shrewish Anglophile women tamed by patriots, and you pretty much have identical films. Incidentally, Mard was also among the top-grossing films of 1985.

  While Kranti was a huge commercial success, it got a poor critical reception. The reviews—while praising some aspects of the film—were almost unanimous in criticising the screenplay. Screen said, ‘If, in spite of its grand sweep and technical brilliance, Kranti has failed to impress, it is largely because it has for its foundation a weakly and amateurishly written screenplay. A film of Kranti’s dimension and sweep should have had a well-k
nit screenplay with powerful characterisations and situations. The grandeur of the settings, the technical brilliance and Manoj’s sensitive direction are all at a disadvantage in telling a predictable story set against the backdrop of the freedom struggle in the middle of the nineteenth century.’

  K.M. Amladi, writing in the Hindustan Times, felt, ‘For all the time, money and talents that have gone into the making of it, Kranti is in a word magnificently shallow . . . The film’s weakest point is its script for which Salim–Javed and Manoj must share the blame. It is riddled with that depressingly predictable missing-brothers syndrome—another down-the-line product from the Salim–Javed script conveyor belt. What it lacks is any spark or any cutting edge.’

  Manoj Kumar’s own acting and his heavy-handed direction have ensured that Kranti’s appeal does not endure. In fact, it is probably the most dated of Salim–Javed’s films, which is strange because the period setting should have made the movie timeless. But the overdone emotions, theatrical acting and the bombastic dialogues—hallmarks of the worst of 1970s Hindi cinema—can be found throughout the film.

  What is undeniable is the laboured feel of the script—possibly a factor of Salim–Javed’s strained relationship and the pressure on them to write big films. Risk-taking was something they had completely eschewed and once-novel ideas had become predictable now as Amladi’s review in the Hindustan Times pointed out.