Vi segnalo l'articolo Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1970s, di Rajiv Vijayakar, pubblicato da Bollywood Hungama il 9 luglio 2012. È la volta dei leggendari anni settanta. Superfluo specificarlo: Sholay è il film dei film, Amitabh Bachchan è Dio, e il mito dell'angry young man è duro a morire.
'The Top Guns
The '70s saw trends shifting to action and crime, and not as believed because of Amitabh Bachchan, who merely consolidated the genre in 1973. At the peak of the Rajesh Khanna wave itself, we saw the slick crime drama, Vijay Anand's Johny Mera Naam, Dev Anand's career-biggest hit as actor, as the first topper of this decade, trouncing two more crime dramas, Khanna's own Sachaa Jhutha and Dharmendra's Jeevan Mrityu. The remaining nine years' toppers were:
1971 - M.A. Thirumugam's Haathi Mere Saathi, a film about a man's relationship with animals, which trounced the action drama Mera Gaon Mera Desh
1972 - Ramesh Sippy's Seeta Aur Geeta, a romantic comedy, which beat Pakeezah and the crime comedy Victoria No. 203
1973 - Raj Kapoor's Bobby, a teenage love story
1974 - Manoj Kumar's Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, a social
1975 - Ramesh Sippy's Sholay, an action drama
1976 - Madan Mohla's Dus Numbri, a crime story
1977 - Manmohan Desai's Amar Akbar Anthony, an entertainer with everything from crime to romance and family drama and music
1978 - Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, a love story with a social base and a backdrop of crime, and
1979 - K. Viswanath's Sargam, a musical romance.
Vox Populi, Vox Deii!
Escapist entertainment escalated in the '70s as a stress-buster from harsh socio-political realities that included frustration with the system, corruption, unemployment and even the first signs of inflation, and bang in the middle of the Rajesh Khanna wave, a new Raja of Romance arrived - Rishi Kapoor, who was the solo hero of the only two classic musical romances that topped the BO: Bobby and Sargam. In a tangy irony, Kapoor annexed Khanna's short-lived position as the romantic icon, and the Phenomenon (as Khanna was called) in turn married Dimple Kapadia (who was Bobby on screen!) in real life some months prior to the release of Raj Kapoor's blockbuster! Rishi Kapoor also acted in the multi-star Amar Akbar Anthony. Rajesh Khanna's sole claim to a Numero Uno position came in Haathi Mere Saathi, the children-centric entertainer that is the nearest Hindi cinema ever has got to a Walt Disney feature.
Amitabh Bachchan, the new superstar, came in with Roti Kapada Aur Makaan, Sholay, Amar Akbar Anthony and Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, the four multi-star films that highlighted the biggest trend of the '70s - of the audiences' overwhelming preference for films in which they could watching many stars instead of a single lead pair for the price of one ticket! Ironically, Bachchan missed a spectacular feat of having the biggest hits (albeit mostly multi-star bonanzas) for six consecutive years from 1973 to 1978 because, firstly, Bobby generated a mammoth craze in 1973 that beat Amitabh Bachchan's breakthrough film, the cult Zanjeer, by a good margin, and secondly, the 1976 Kabhi Kabhie lost out to Dus Numbri in box-office grading, as traditionally, that is always decided by the proportion of profit to investment and Kabhi Kabhie was a far-costlier film!
Hema Malini starred in four films (Johny Mera Naam, Seeta Aur Geeta, Sholay, Dus Numbri), and producer G.P. Sippy and his director son Ramesh Sippy were the only filmmakers to notch up more than one film - Seeta Aur Geeta and Sholay.
Forever the biggest
Sholay, of course, was the topper of the '70s and remains India's biggest hit ever. Along with Roti Kapada Aur Makaan and Deewaar earlier in 1975, it consolidated the 'multistarrer' (as it was called in ungrammatical film parlance) trend. As long as 12 years ago, it was assessed that the number of people who had watched the movie in theatres had exceeded the total population of India, what with people going to experience the revenge spectacle dozens of times! The 70mm canvas, the Stereophonic Sound (a first in Indian films), the cult villainy of Gabbar Singh, the memorable major and minor characters and the taut screenplay and dialogues by Salim-Javed rightly made Sholay an unparalleled epic that is unbeaten even today. Interestingly, one film almost came to match the scale of its cost-to-profit ratio - the same year's devotional Jai Santoshi Maa that spawned dozens of such films.
Landmark decade
The '70s remains a landmark decade in more ways than one. Johny Mera Naam became Hindi cinema's first film to gross Rs. 50 lakh [1 lakh = 100.000]. (...) 1971's Haathi Mere Saathi smashed Johny's record to become Hindi cinema's first film to gross a crore [1 crore = 10.000.000] - the costliest tickets in any part of the country then were three rupees! Haathi Mere Saathi was the first film scripted by Salim-Javed who in the following year co-scripted Seeta Aur Geeta and finally Sholay and of course created the Angry Young Man persona of Bachchan. Haathi Mere Saathi also was the first-ever music score to notch a Silver Disc (250,000 gramophone records) for outstanding music sales. Bobby was Hindi cinema's first teenage love story that had actual teenagers in the leads. Amar Akbar Anthony took Bachchan to the official Numero Uno position till then held by Dharmendra. (...) Muqaddar Ka Sikandar popularized the Cinemascope format on a large scale in Hindi cinema'.
Vedi anche:
- Numero Unos - A survey of the top hit films: 1950s. Il testo raccoglie i link a tutti gli articoli della serie.
