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Roles with a difference
When it was no longer imperative to
prove his worth at the box-office, Amitabh
Bachchan could pick roles that seemed
interesting or different to him. As a result,
age did not stop his quest for continuing
relevance and for filmmakers who knew
they could not compete in the commercial
race, could still hope to work with a
superstar. It was like the early years of his
played Iqbal, a coolie with the badge career, when he weighed potential success
number 786, is remembered as the film against a challenging role and chose the
that almost got him killed in a freak on-set latter.
accident. His legions of fans, stunned by the
incident, prayed for his recovery. The film 11 Anand (1971):
was completed, and released to blockbuster
success. Not one of Bachchan’s best, but one
of a handful of mainstream Bollywood films
in which the main characters were Muslim
and it was not a clichéd social drama.
10 Shakti (1982):
This Hrishikesh Mukherjee gem was before
he became the Angry Young Man. In the
sweetly melancholy film he was the solemn
Babumoshai to Rajesh Khanna’s exuberant
It would have been difficult for any patient, Anand, dying of a terminal
filmmaker to beat his own success record illness. This film and the director’s 1973
after a film like Sholay, but Ramesh Sippy Namak Haram in which he starred again
paired up with Salim-Javed again for a with Rajesh Khanna, was like a symbolic
powerful drama in which an upstanding passing of the baton from one superstar to
police officer (Dilip Kumar) is up against the next. It was clear that this tall, brooding
his embittered son, who grew up believing actor was destined for greatness.
his father had left him to die. He throws
in his lot with the gangster who saved 12 Parwana (1971):
him, and hates his father. Rakhee, his love An almost-forgotten film by Jyoti Swaroop
interest in many films, played his mother, was a slow-burn thriller about an artist
thus effectively ending her career as a who is unable to bear rejection from the
romantic lead. woman (Yogeeta Bali) he loves, and plots an
SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #27 | SEPTEMBER 2021 11
