Page 7 - Seniorstoday April 2022 Issue

remembered as the Parallel or Art Cinema in between:
movement. This was the time when cinema Aradhana (1969):
was clearly divided into Art and Commerce
and Middle-of-the-the-Road, and each had
its followers.
This was also the decade which saw the
birth of the first superstar Rajesh Khanna,
and his dethroning by Amitabh Bachchan.
It is the decade of Hema Malini, Rekha,
Rakhee and Zeenat Aman—after them,
leading ladies ceased to be divas, and were
reduced to playing second fiddle to the The end of the Sixties, the birth of Rajesh Khanna the first
superstar, and Kishore Kumar as the voice of the hero of
macho ‘hero,’ over the next many years. that generation
It was the decade of the Emergency It was just before the Seventies started,
and stringent censorship, during which that the actor who had been dismissed as
the climax of Sholay had to be changed, ‘gorkha-looking’ by so many producers
Gulzar’s Aandhi about an ambitious female made a splash with Aradhana (directed
politician (clearly based on Indira Gandhi) by Shakti Samanta, co-starring Sharmila
was banned and prints of political satire Tagore). The fabulous SD Burman music,
Kissa Kursi Ka mysteriously vanished. and Rajesh Khanna being given the voice
It was the age of the actioner, the multi- of Kishore Kumar made for a superhit.
starrer, the emergence of FTII stars who When this film was followed by a series
defied glamour, end of the power of the of successful films like Bandhan, Ittefaq,
screenwriter, after a brief burst of Salim- Do Raaste, Safar, The Train, Kati Patang,
Javed stardom. By the time the Seventies Anand, Haathi Mere Saathi and he has
ended, Hindi cinema had definitely 17 consecutive hits, the word ‘superstar’
changed…for the worse. Television and was coined for him, and the first half the
video slowly killed the movie-going habit Seventies belonged entirely to Rajesh
among middle-class families, so films had Khanna and he was dethroned a few years
to become bigger, noisier and increasingly later by an Angry Young Man.
nonsensical to survive. It took two
particularly bad decades –the Eighties, Johny Mera Naam (1970):
Nineties and most of the 2000s for a
resurgence to take place.
That’s why the Seventies are the cusp
between the Golden Age and the Modern
Age, the bridge between two distinct eras,
and hence memorable. Seventies’ films cast
such a strong influence on Hindi cinema to
follow, that tributes—direct and indirect--
are still being paid to that decade.
A few milestones of that era studded with
gems—commercial, artistic and everything The big masala film, with the lost and found formula

SENIORS TODAY | ISSUE #34 | APRIL 2022 7