Sholay poster / Wikipedia

It is said that some films are made so perfect that they can never be remade. One such film was director Ramesh Sippy's Sholay - a masterpiece which remains a cult classic even today. To think, when the film was released in 1975 it did not garner any attention on the opening weekend. It was only after Monday that the audience thronged the theatres to watch the film. It fetched a lot of praise by word of mouth and went on to do tremendous business at the box office. Sholay continues to be known as one of the highest grossing films in the history of Indian Cinema. Let's see what it took to make this iconic film, way back in the 70s...

Successful films in the 70s and 80s were called jubilee films. To think, Sholay was the first film in India to celebrate a silver jubilee at over 100 theatres. Way before the new age love story, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge created history by playing continuously in Maratha Mandir theatre. It was Sholay that held the record for being showcased in Mumbai (then Bombay)'s Minerva for five continuous years.

For the uninitiated and the select few who prefer living under a rock, Sholay was touted as action-adventure film directed by Ramesh Sippy and produced by his father G. P. Sippy, written by the hit-jodi Salim-Javed. The film is about two criminals, Veeru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), hired by a retired police officer (Sanjeev Kumar) to capture the ruthless dacoit Gabbar Singh (Amjad Khan). Hema Malini and Jaya Bhaduri also star in the film as the love interests of Veeru and Jai, Basanti and Radha, respectively. The music was composed by RD Burman. It is said that director Ramesh Sippy created a village set on a rocky terrain of Ramanagara, a town near Bengaluru, Karnataka. They had to make a highway to access the sets. After the shoot, the sets were not demolished as the villagers requested him to leave it as it is and it came to be popularly known as Sippy Nagar. It is now a popular tourist destination.

Sholay was released as a 198-minute long film. It was shot over a span of two years but Director Sippy was asked to edit the film and was asked to cut 20 minutes of the film as the length had increased. So Sippy and Salim Javed had lengthy discussions and decided to do away with the popular comic sequences of comedians Asrani and Jagdeep. Even the climax was reshot later as people didn't appreciate the death of their hero Amitabh Bachchan. However due to public demand the original scenes were incorporated in the movie.

The film was also an overseas success in the Soviet Union. It was ranked first in the British Film Institute's 2002 poll of "Top 10 Indian Films" of all time.

Director Ramesh Sippy had revealed that writer duo Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar had narrated a four line story to the filmmaker in 1973 and that was all it took, Sippy loved the concept and decided to make the film. The original idea of the film involved an army officer who decided to hire two ex-soldiers to avenge the murder of his family. The army officer was later changed to a policeman because Sippy felt that it would be difficult to get permission to shoot scenes depicting army activities.

The director shared, "we worked on the character of Gabbar Singh which was loosely modeled on the real life dacoit Gabbar Singh Gujjar who had pillaged villages around Gwalior in 1950's. We approached Danny Denzongpa for the role but he was busy shooting for Feroz Khan's Dharmatma in Afghanistan and his dates were not available. Actors Amitabh Bachchan and Sanjeev Kumar were keen on playing Gabbar too, and even asked me to consider them for it. I happened to see Amjad Khan in a play and something about him just fit so we approached him. I didn't want a typical dacoit character so we changed his look in the film." Amjad Khan knew he had been presented with an opportunity of a lifetime, so he decided to go to the sets well prepared. His go-to prep was reading the book Abhishapta Chambal, which spoke of the exploits of the dacoits in Chambal.

Gabbar was not the only character that took a long time to cast, it has been alleged that Sippy wanted Dilip Kumar to play the role of Thakur Baldev Singh but Dilip Kumar refused. Pran, too, was considered to play the role of Thakur, Dharmendra felt he would be able to do justice to the role of Thakur too but Sippy finally felt that Sanjeev Kumar was the apt choice. So the only way to dissuade Dharmendra was to play a little bit of politics and that's exactly what Ramesh Sippy did.

The filmmaker cheekily revealed it all saying, "Dharmendra was extremely insistent that he should be the one playing Thakur's role, but at the same time he was also trying to woo over the gorgeous Hema Malini who was signed to play the role of Basanti, the tangewali. Dharmendra was head over heels in love with her, and had recently done Seeta Aur Geeta with her. On the other hand, his co-actor from Seeta Aur Geeta, Sanjeev Kumar, was also interested in Hema Malini. I told Dharmendra that Sanjeev Kumar would come close to Hema Malini if he was cast as Veeru. Dharmendra thought about it and finally said he wanted to do Veeru's role. Initially Hema Malini was also reluctant to play the role but I told her that the role was very meaty and would give her a lot of success, she agreed. She had already done Seeta Aur Geeta and Andaaz with me earlier. I had also approached Shatrughan Sinha to play the part of Jai. But Amitabh Bachchan asked Dharmendra to personally put in a word for him."

Hearing Ramesh Sippy speak about the ultimate casting coup, one feels there has to be a lot of credibility to the rumour that Dharmendra would often pay the light boys to spoil the shot, thereby ensuring there are many retakes which would allow him to spend more time with the lady who he was swiftly falling head over heels in love with. The couple married five years after the film's release.

Filming began on location on 3 October 1973 a few days before Amitabh Bachchan's birthday. Few know that by the time the shooting for the film started Bachchan and Jaya Bhaduri were married. The shoot got further delayed because Jaya Bachchan became pregnant with daughter Shweta. To think, by the time the film was released she was pregnant with their son, Abhishek - making sure that the entire Bachchan family was a part of the film.

Delays or no, the film was way over budget from the word go, director Sippy reminisced, "We started the film with a budget of Rs.1 Crore but the film went over budget as we shot, I wanted the perfect lighting of sunset and noon sky for the scenes. There were other hitches as well. The hit number, "Yeh dosti...". a five minute song sequence, took 21 days to shoot. The train robbery sequence took seven days to complete. I told my father who was the producer that we will be going over budget but he was calm and cool. Also we had the stereophonic soundtrack which we used with the 70 mm widescreen format and that was expensive during those days. Also the censor asked to cut down on the violence of the film so parts had to be reshot." Said the filmmaker justifying the extended budget.

It is said that the original, unedited cut of the film finally came out in a British release on VHS in 1990. Since then, Eros International has released two versions on DVD. The director's cut of the film preserves the original full frame and is 204 minutes in length; the censored widescreen version is 198 minutes long. Either way, it is one entertaining film that lives on in the hearts and minds of all cine-lovers. "It was one of the biggest challenges I have taken up but I enjoyed it," quipped Ramesh Sippy. the mastermind behind the masterpiece.