Swarnavel Eswaran
Death Rides a Horse and Its Influence on Indian Cinema
Zanjeer, Yaadon Ki Baaraat, and Revolver Reeta:
Death Rides a Horse, Salim-Javed, Puratchidasan, and the Primal Image
Sergio Leone, one of the most celebrated directors from Italy, is as famous in India for his “dollars” aka “the man with no name” trilogy as elsewhere in the world. A Fistful of Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965), and The Good, Bad, and the Ugly (1966), established him as the most famous director of the Westerns outside the (classical) Hollywood that boasts of legendary directors like John Ford, Howard Hawks, Anthony Mann and Sam Peckinpah, to mention a few. Nonetheless, the Spanish-Italian landscapes of a Leone film are far removed from the Monument Valley backdrop of a Ford Western. The adjective Spaghetti which qualifies Sergio Leone’s (Southern Italian) Westerns, while excluding him from the Hollywood canon, signifies his intricate ties with the East. For instance, A Fistful of Dollars was a remake of Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo (1961). Similarly, many filmmakers in the East were inspired by Leone’s work, particularly in the 1970s and the 1980s. For instance, the Tamil cinematographer/ director Karnan [1]. The popular Hindi cinema’s preeminent writers Salim-Javed have acknowledged Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West (dir. Sergio Leone, 1968), which succeeded the dollars trilogy, as a significant influence on their magnum opus Sholay/Embers (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1975) [2].
In this essay, however, I want to recover a relatively lesser-known Spaghetti Western, Death Rides a Horse (dir. Giulio Petroni, 1967), as an equal if not a more significant film to influence Indian filmmakers. In the case of a film like Sholay, one could argue that the hired-killers theme, which is foundational to the plot, is borrowed from Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai (1954), which has spawned many imitations in the West, for instance, The Magnificent Seven (dir. John Sturges, 1960) and the recent one by Antoine Fuqua (The Magnificent Seven, 2016). Whereas the impact of Death Rides on a Horse, I argue, is not apparent even if it is more profound than the run of the mill syntactic adaptation of the hiring of killers, Viru (Dharmendra) and Jai (Amitabh Bachchan), by Thakur (Sanjeev Kumar), as in Seven Samurai, or the semantic appropriation of the stunt sequence in a running train, as in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, which arguably is his critically most acclaimed Western, though relatively lesser known in India than his dollars trilogy [3]. However, in my opinion, Death Rides a Horse is even more significant in the authorship of Salim-Javed as writers since it informs us of the provenance of two of their significant films: Zanjeer/Chains (dir. Prakash Mehra, 1973), which was instrumental in the rise to stardom of its hero Amitabh Bachchan (as well of its writers, the duo Salim-Javed), and Yaadon Ki Baaraat/Procession of memories (dir. Nasir Hussain, 1973), the multi-starrer which preceded Sholay. More importantly, Death Rides a Horse reveals us the very provenance of the angry young man [4].
Furthermore, I argue for the primal images of death on a horse and the rushing train on the railway track as the primary source of inspiration for such canonical films of the Salim-Javed oeuvre like Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat. My focus is on the specificity of the image in the opening sequence of Death Rides a Horse, wherein a family is decimated by a gang of killers, which provides the base for the vendetta of the only survivor, the young son. Like the Freudian primal scene, the primal image I detail also involves the subjectivity of a child, though not an infant. In Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat, through the eyes of the young son(s), we watch, instead of the copulation of a couple in love, the violent molestation/rape and/or killing of the family members – parents and/or siblings [5]. If we agree that the language of cinema is closer to the way our dreams operate than the impact of such an image during the inaugural sequence of a film, across borders, is understandable. More important, it is also fathomable why the primal image (and sound) driven impact of Death on a Horse has not got its due like the influence of the visual iconography/semantic or the narrative/generic syntax of other famous Westerns on an iconic film like Sholay. For instance, The Magnificent Seven and Once Upon a Time in the West.
It is pertinent to note here image and word dichotomy and the discourse surrounding it. Recently, Richard Brody has our drawn attention to image-word dialectic in Jean-Luc-Godard’s film Image Book regarding the “primal image”:
“This segment of the film, (“La Region Centrale/The Central Region”) which runs for about fifteen minutes, marks a conceptual leap in the notion of cinematic storytelling: the literal recitation of a novel on the soundtrack as the image-track alludes, contrapuntally and associatively, to contextual, geographical, and thematic aspects of that story. The section also highlights Godard’s concept of the conflict between word and image. Godard speaks in the voice-over of the sacralization of text in “the tables of the law, the Ten Commandments, the scrolls of the Torah, the Bible, the Koran, et cetera.” He then adds, cryptically, that there should have been something else instead—an image, a primal image rather than a primal word—and that, if there had been, it would have changed the course of history (Italics mine)” [6].
Godard, in his intellectual flamboyance, recalls Derrida’s vigour in trying to interrogate the primacy of the sound/oral rhetoric over the written word/text. Godard is questioning the privileging of the word over the image [7]. Godard’s meditation illumines us on the trajectory of the word-based investment in the mythological and folklore of an earlier cinema to the attention to form, and the primacy of the image as Indian cinema evolved, particularly in the 1970s with the advent of screenwriters like Salim-Javed, as I detail later in this essay. Did the sociocultural anxiety surrounding the early1970s, in its anticipation of the Emergency, get foreboded by a singular image through its presaging of unjust violence and unexpected death? I am interested in this question, but since the socio-cultural context has been extensively engaged by the Indian cinema scholars [8], I would focus mainly on the image here. I am drawing attention in this essay, therefore, to the idea of adaptation as a consequence of the cultural resonance of the primal image and the possibilities afforded by the tools of transition like the dissolve, which is specific to the language of cinema as an aural-visual medium, in terms of freezing and heightening the trauma by eliding the adolescence of the protagonist. I draw from Corey Creekmur’s astute theorization of the maturation dissolve in popular Hindi cinema to shed light on the significance of Petroni’s Death Rides a Horse and its influence on the trajectory of the angry young man persona of Amitabh Bachchan as imagined/shaped by Salim-Javed in the early to mid-1970s [9]. Furthermore, the last important segment of this essay engages with Revolver Reeta (dir. K.S. Ramadas, 1970), the Tamil B movie dubbed from Telugu to detail the way Death Rides a Horse influenced a highly successful South Indian film much before Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat, and how it provided the rare space for an angry young woman Reeta and her tale of vendetta and, through a song, for the ingenuity of the writer Puratchidasan to be showcased.
The Primal Image of Death [as it] Rides a Horse and the Trajectory of the Angry Young Man
After setting up a plot revolving around a family, which is decimated by the ruthless gang of killers except for the surviving son, Vijay, in Zanjeer and sons, Shankar, Vijay, and Ratan, in Yaadon Ki Baaraat and their unresolved trauma leading to a vendetta narrative at the very beginning of the film, the screenplays of Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat depart significantly from the narrative of Death Rides a Horse. Nevertheless, the spectre of the inaugural sequence in Petroni’s Spaghetti Western haunts Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat throughout as exemplified by the characters of Vijay Khanna (Amitabh Bachchan), the protagonist/cop in Zanjeer, and the eldest brother Shankar (Dharmendra) in Yaadon Ki Baaraat, who remain traumatised and exude a sense of discontentment and alienation from their immediate environment till the very end. Salim-Javed transfer “the established iconography of a stark desert landscape traversing the boundary between the Old West and Mexico; bank heists and Mexican standoffs”[10] in Death Rides a Horse to the urban/suburban spaces of a city and jewel heist and encounter with the gangsters in Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat. When you look at Salim-Javed’s trajectory as Hindi cinema’s star screenwriters who could consistently provide critically and commercially successful screenplays, particularly in the 1970s, the spectre that haunted them of the image of the “death on a horse,” from Zanjeer onwards, comes to its catharsis only in Sholay. Consider, for instance, the horses and the messengers of death/Gabbar Singh and his gang of dacoits ravishing the village/villagers in the film. Sholay also offers Salim-Javed the terrain of the vast barren lands and the hillocks surrounding a village, recalling the Spaghetti Western landscape of the Petroni film. The dacoit figure of Gabbar Singh and his men on horses also suit their purpose of reimagining the antagonist cowboys in Death Rides a Horse in an Indian context. The critical moment of the killings of the entire family of the Thakur including his grandson, except the daughter-in-law (Jaya Bhaduri), recalls a similar sequence in Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West, which itself is a re-articulation of the inaugural sequence of Death Rides a Horse.
Thus, the Petroni film could be argued to be the most influential in Salim-Javed’s early career which was also their most productive, resulting in films like Zanjeer (1973), Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973) Deewar/Wall (1975) and Sholay (1975). Deewar’s angry young man Vijay could be read as the reversal of the upright inspector Vijay Khanna in Zanjeer as he is posited in the subterranean world of smugglers and gangsters. Amidst the harbingers of death, as the horse motif is punctuated in the smuggler/gangster Davar’s (Iftikar) key dialogue in the film, “Yeh Lambi Race Ka Goda Hai/This horse is one for the long haul/race.” [11]. Davar refers here to the young Vijay (Master Alankar), who is shining shoes for a living, as he refuses to take the coin thrown at him for his services by Davar’s assistant (Sudhir). Curiously, Davar applauds the self-esteem of the insubordinate Vijay who would later join Davar’s gang as an adult. Thus, from the horse on the chain/Zanjeer which haunted its protagonist-cop, Vijay’s image in Deewar is conflated with that of the horse and, eventually, in Sholay, Vijay is behind bars as an outlaw. He is bailed out by the feudal lord Thakur for his project of vendetta against the gang of dacoits who ruthlessly killed his family members. In Sholay, the death and the horse figures are collapsed in Gabbar Singh, as a dacoit leader on a horse/surrounded by horses, who will deliver Vijay from this world and purge him of the spectres which haunted him from Zanjeer onwards. However, after Sholay, Salim-Javed’s preoccupation with death changed in their attempt to inscribe the Vijay character into larger multi-starrers, often with a contrived happy ending, like Trishul/Trident (dir. Yash Chopra, 1978) and Kala Paththar/Black Stone (dir. Yash Chopra, 1979), which was loosely adapted from the polish film Perla w Koronie/Pearl in a Crown (dir. Kazimierz Kutz, 1972), even if the traces of the trauma of the past involving the family and darkness surrounding a subterranean world continued. As Vijay’s stature grew bigger, along with Bachchan’s cultural capital as a star, he increasingly became the voice of a community, particularly in Salim-Javed’s screenplays, and it is the fear and apprehensions surrounding injustice in society that haunt him thereafter rather than those of his interior world and personal trauma. The only exception was Shakthi/Strength (dir. Ramesh Sippy, 1982). The detailed reading of the parallels between the beginnings of Death Rides a Horse and Zanjeer, and Yaadon Ki Baarat is in order here [12].
The Maturation Dissolve: Death Rides a Horse and Zanjeer
In Zanjeer, as in Death Rides a Horse, a gang of villains come and kill the family of the protagonist Vijay who, as a young boy, is a witness to the event of the shooting of his father and mother by the villain Teja (Ajit). In contrast, the protagonist of Death Rides a Horse, Bill Maceita, as a young boy is a witness to the shooting down of his father and the rape and killing of his mother as well as his adolescent sister by a ruthless gang of five men, with four of them, who have masked their faces with a scarf, having distinct marks like the tattoo of four aces, scar, an earring, and a long necklace with a threatening pendant of the skull, and the fifth revealing his face. These marks help Bill to locate the killers when he grows up (John Phillip Law) and seeks revenge. In Zanjeer, however, the only marker is the pendant of a white horse that hangs from the bracelet on the right hand of Teja. The young Vijay who was playing hide and seek with his father is hiding inside the closet (wardrobe) and witnesses Teja’s shooting of his parents, of his father as he is sitting down and smoking and his mother when she is bringing him tea from the kitchen. The sequences in both the films emphasize the subjectivity of the young son who is guided by the sister to hide away when she sees the gang of villains and anticipates the onslaught in Death Rides a Horse and the mother who directs her son to hide himself from the seeking-father who hides his sight with the palm of his hand. In a way, this scene reveals the essence of the narrative as the whole film thereafter is an expansion of the theme of hide and seek as both Bill and Vijay go after the antagonists and avenge the violent killings of their defenceless parents, though the sequences depart thereafter, and the narrative diverges considerably since Bill grows up to be a skilled shooter after fifteen years, whereas Vijay, who is adopted by the good-hearted police officer who comes to investigate the crime scene at his home, becomes a conscientious cop.
What is significant in the context of adaptation is the image/spectre of the horse and its emphasis in Zanjeer. The image of the horse as the inevitable vehicle of transportation for the civilizing project of the protagonist who has to traverse vast stretches of uneven and barren lands in the Western frontier is central to the myth surrounding the Western genre. Such an archetype surrounding the horse is inverted here as it is projected as a signifier portending death and trauma. In the Indian context, the West is generally associated with the mountainous regions of the (Western) Ghats. Therefore, the journey of the horse could be argued to be not into barren lands outside but the claustrophobic space inside the house. In Zanjeer, the mise en scene meticulously sets up Vijay’s peek from the closet at the white horse on the bracelet of Teja, when he shoots his parents, which would become the cause of his nightmare throughout the film as he is unable to cope with the trauma of suddenly losing his parents on an auspicious Diwali/the festival of lights day. More important, in Death Rides a Horse the young Bill’s transition from the traumatized young boy to a young man is achieved through a dissolve. The shots of his burning house, which is lit up by the shots fired by the final gunman before he leaves, is intercut with the shots of the young boy Bill who is in tears behind a cart outside watching his home burn with his entire family of his dead father, mother, and sister with a spur in his hand as a signifier of the trauma inflicted by the men on the horses as they flee. Ultimately, the shot of the burning house is dissolved to a slight pan to the left as the camera comes to rest on the closeup of the young marksman Bill. This dissolve recalls Indian cinema specialist Corey Creekmur’s theorization of the “maturation dissolve” in Hindi cinema where the adolescence of the hero is elided to keep the focus on the cause and intensify the trauma related to his childhood:
“Characters in Hindi films are persistently wounded yet driven by their childhood pain, drawing a direct causal – and conscious – chain between the suffering of youth and the acts of adulthood, a link figured by formal transitions that instantly transform boys into men. Providing instant maturation, such temporal leaps imply the inconsequence or irrelevance of adolescent experience in shaping both character and narrative.” [13].
Through the transition of the dissolve, thus, the deeply affected young boy morphs suddenly into an adult without really growing out of the trauma. Such an abrupt truncation of his organic transformation into an adolescent from being a child denies the space for him to live through his memories and come to terms with the spectres that haunt him. As discussed by Creekmur, particularly in the socio-cultural context of the 1970s and the films of Amitabh Bachchan, “childhood in Hindi cinema is staged as a primal scene projecting the adult protagonist’s identity, actions, and fate” (italics mine) [14]. This is true of Zanjeer as well as Death Rides a Horse. In Zanjeer, the transition is punctuated with a dream/nightmare through which the young Vijay matures into an adult. The dream which scares the young Vijay is composed of a series of shots, signifying the passage of time, of a masked man dressed in black clothes whose face is covered with a black scarf, similar to the villains in Death Rides a Horse, on a whinnying white horse that is rushing towards the camera. The mysterious but threatening man on the horse is shrouded in smoke and seems to presage death and destruction. The primal image of “Death Rides a Horse” motif in Zanjeer, which will haunt Vijay throughout his life is, thus, punctuated by bookending it with a stylized dreamy sequence through the maturation dissolve. One could argue the maturation dissolve, which could be seen in canonical Hindi films like Deedar/Glance (dir. Nitin Bose, 1951), Awaara/The Vagabond (dir. Raj Kapoor, 1951), Devdas (dir. Bimal Roy, 1955), and Mother India (dir. Mehboob Khan, 1957), among others, a significant trait which is foregrounded by Creekmur as commonly found in the decades after the Independence, particularly the 1950s in Hindi cinema, should have culturally resonated with Salim-Javed. Thus, the unresolved trauma through the maturation dissolve then unfolds as a narrative of vendetta by means of a gunslinger in Death Rides a Horse and a cop in Zanjeer, even if after the dissolve the narratives diverge. But what is consonant among certain cultures, for instance, among the Global South terrain of patriarchal Southern Italy and the conservative Indian society, could be dissonant for others. Consider, for instance, the review of Death Rides a Horse in the popular column by Roger and Ebert, the popular film critics in the US:
“It’s hard to explain the fun to be found in seeing the right kind of bad movie. Pauline Kael had a go at it a few months ago in Harper’s in an article titled ‘Trash, Art and the Movies,’ but I think she set her sights too high. The bad movies she enjoyed (‘The Scalphunters,’ ‘Wild in the Streets’) weren’t within a hundred miles of the badness of ‘Death Rides a Horse,’ which is a bad movie indeed.” [15].
This begs the question of cultures and resonance and boils down to the specificity of the centrality of maturation dissolve and its attraction in the context of my argument. I would, however, assert maturation dissolve has a significance in the West as well.
Think of the iconic status and the discourse surrounding Stanley Kubrick’s dissolve, although through the technique of the most celebrated/noticed cut in cinema, from the ancient past to the distant future in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). According to Roger and Ebert, “[t]he bone is thrown into the air and dissolves into a space shuttle (this has been called the longest flash-forward in the history of the cinema).” [16]. But here the maturation (cut) is about the coming of age of humanity itself and its efforts to come to terms with (the trauma of) science, and its contemporary Frankenstein – the Hal computer.
Consider, for instance, the allusion to humanity as the subject watching with awe the “longest flash-forward in the history of the cinema.” The erasure of a huge chunk of time begs the question of the subjectivity from which the narrative is structured. In Kubrick’s film, it is us who have evolved from the Stone Age as woman-machine, depending on technology, and are curious about the future. Therefore, the young boy’s watching from behind the window in the adjacent room, or the closet attains its import beyond the quotidian use of the point-of-view shots in cinema as a narrative tool. The moment of the trauma is thus underpinned with image and sound as experienced by the subject. As Salim-Javed’s dialogue in Deewar reflexively indicates, “Jo Bachpan Se Seedha Budape Mein Kadam Rakhte Hain/Those who enter their old age directly from childhood,” the erasure of adolescence by the force of poverty reduces the joy of childhood to child labour and exploitation in an adverse society. The denial of the adolescent years leaves an indelible mark on a child as it is instrumentalized as a tool of labour without enabling the possibilities for growth and the discovery of its true potentials. Such a trauma affecting an entire society could be argued to be behind the singularity of the success of the maturation dissolve, as instanced by not only the canonical Hindi films in the decades after the Independence of India but also the trajectory of Amitabh Bachchan as compellingly detailed by Creekmur.
As he observes, the maturation dissolve seems to lose its hold with the arrival of the “Bombay Boys” signified by stars like Shahrukh Khan and Amir Khan and punctuated by films like Dil Chahta Hai/What the heart wants (dir. Farhan Akhtar, 2001), as it is reflective of the times of its production of globalization and the post-liberalization era in India. The time and context of Death Rides a Horse, released in the late1960s, two decades after the Independence of India, when the euphoria surrounding Nehru’s policies regarding a socialist egalitarian society and economic progress was at its ebb, is crucial for us here[17]. In a way, there is a parallel between the erasure of the adolescence of the child, and that of the young nation itself as both of them suddenly grew to find themselves amidst an overwhelmingly corrupt and conscienceless society. The dream turned into a nightmare as the tryst with destiny became a fatal encounter with the erasure of law in an unjust society leading to the cop, Vijay, in Zanjeer metamorphizing into a leading smuggler and an underworld don in Deewar with his seething anger against the community at large. The maturation dissolve, therefore, as punctuated by the transition in Death Rides a Horse. The primal image of the horse on the bracelet of death (Teja), as underscored by the dream sequence in Zanjeer, I would argue, is at the very provenance of the angry young man and the persona of Amitabh Bachchan as sculpted by Salim-Javed. But we should not forget that before Deewar, there was Yaadon Ki Baaraat, written by Salim-Javed (along with director Nasir Hussain) released in the same year as Zanjeer, after almost six months in November 1973. It would be productive at this point to look at the critique of Salim-Javed’s screenwriting by industry experts/scholars, as they were arguably most famous for their expertise in appropriation and retooling. Arjun Rajubali, one of the leading contemporary screenwriters in Hindi cinema in his entry for the encyclopedia of Hindi cinema, summarizes the methodology of Salim-Javed’s screenwriting skills:
“They took commonplace concepts, most of which had been done to death earlier, and turned them into unique screenplays. The Prevalent belief that only great stories made good films went out of the window with Salim-Javed. For example, the story of Deewar was a combination of two well-known old films Mother India and Ganga Jumna. Though extremely predictable, Deewar is considered one of the finest scripts to date, a landmark achievement … Their keen understanding of the narrative form gave them the freedom to lift large bits – characters, sequences and devices – from other films and make these their own by absorbing them into their screenplay… While earlier, the emphasis was always on the content of the narrative (story), their work proved that the form was as important, if not more in some cases. Or to put it differently, it was not only a good story that mattered; it was how well that story was told. Their crowning effort, Sholay, one of the most successful Hindi films of all time, is a clear case in point. Several critics pointed out that the film contained elements that had been lifted straight from more than a dozen films, yet the film was unique. It wove together all these elements into an extremely intelligently structured screenplay (italics mine).”[18].
As Rajubali points out, the form in Salim-Javed’s screenplay is as important as the content. Still, unfortunately, their celebrated role as the dialogue writers of their films subsume their investment in form, particularly their attention to devices like the maturation dissolve which cannot be planted by the director into the narrative unless it is meticulously designed as part of the screenplay. In Salim-Javed’s case, transitions matter as they are part of the story they are telling and for them, dissolves are not merely signifiers of the passage of time. The comparison of Deewar with Mother India (Dir. Mehboob Khan, 1957) and Ganga Jumna (Dir. Nitin Bose, 1961) is limited to the narrative regarding plot and character development, but Salim-Javed were equally if not more attentive, as revealed by the maturation dissolve sequences in Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat, to form. The transitional sequences in these films seem similar on the surface but are vastly different, as you will notice in my analysis. Besides Salim-Javed’s dialogue had its own style and specificity. Consider, for instance, Javed Akhtar’s invocation of contemporary American writers as the inspiration for the brevity of his sharp dialogues in the action-reaction mode of (the Classical) Hollywood:
“I was influenced to some extent by the modern American novel. Not great literature to be honest, but bestsellers, paperbacks. They taught me one thing: precision. One-liners. Saying things in a few words, making an art of understatement—saying less than you want to and leaving the rest to imagination … Exaggeration is even traditionally accepted in literature …
But we did not do that. Our dialogue was intense but usually crisp.” [19].
As cinematically driven writers, they were informed of the significance of the genre, particularly its formal possibilities. In my personal conversations, Javed Akhtar has acknowledged his investment in the B-movie Westerns from the South, particularly of the collaborations between the director/cinematographer Karnan and the Tamil cinema star Jaishankar which were inspired by the Spaghetti Westerns and the scores of the music director of Death Rides a Horse, the iconic Ennio Morricone[20]. Scholars like Jyotika Verdi, Vijay Mishra, Ranjani Mazumdar, Priya Joshi, and Vinay Lal among others have detailed the socio-cultural milieu, the political context of the Emergency, and the Oedipus Complex to shed light on the emergence of the angry young man persona in the mid-1970s [21]. My effort here is to recover the primal image that triggered his birth by being at the intersection of the sudden loss of family/parents and home-the space for healing and solace. The primal image, therefore, of death riding a horse in Zanjeer, presaging the unexpected violence/loss precedes the text of the retooling of anger or vendetta; the existence of the traumatised young boy precedes his essence as an angry young man.
Death and Its Horsepower: Death Rides a Horse, Yaadon Ki Baaraat, and the Train Motif
Yaadon Ki Baaraat opens with Gulzar (Nazir Hussein) celebrating his birthday with his wife Kamla (Ashoo) and his three sons, Shankar (Master Rajesh), Vijay (Master Ravi), and Ratan (Master Aamir Khan), along with their housemaid (Sanjana), by cutting a cake and asking his wife to sing his favourite song. She sings the eponymous title song which would become the leitmotif of the film as it is repeatedly sung through the narrative by the youngest son Ratan during his gigs at a hotel in his efforts to connect with his two elder brothers. The inaugural scene and the melodious music (mus. R.D. Burman, lyrics. Majrooh Sultanpuri, singer. Lata Mangeshkar) exemplifies the authorship of Nasir Hussain, the director/producer of the film. The title credits announce the names of his regular collaborators which mark the film right at the beginning as a musical – his most favoured genre. Although by default most Indian films could be argued to be musicals, few directors, like Vijaya Anand and Nasir Hussain have left an indelible mark on the genre through the specificity of their style and finesse. For instance, Nasir Hussain’s particularity lay in the youthful energy of his dynamic song picturizations and its romantic lyrics; for example, songs in films like Baharon Ke Sapne (1967), Pyar Ka Mausam (1969), and Caravan (1971), which preceded Yaadon Ki Baaraat, wherein Hussein had already collaborated with the prodigious R.D. Burman and the illustrious Majrooh [22]. Nonetheless, the establishing shot at the very beginning of the film which is a (right) pan from a moving goods/freight train in the vicinity to Gulzar’s house, emblematizes Salim-Javed’s intervention as co-authors.
Like the title song, the motif of the train, through the goods as well as the “local/electricity-run” train in Bombay, of the early 1970s, and the railroad/railway track and the bridge over it, during the key moments in the narrative mark it as an equally significant leitmotif [23]. The primal scene of Death Rides a Horse of the parents getting repeatedly shot and killed is slightly delayed in Yaadon Ki Baaraat as it is not the inaugural sequence. The scene after the birthday of Gulzar reveals that he is a painter when he goes to deliver his paintings to his rich patron. This scene again begins with a freight train moving on the railway track near Gulzar’s home as we see the closed railway gates while his car is moving away from the camera and towards them from a distance. On reaching his client’s home, at the entrance, Gulzar encounters three men who are rushing out of the bungalow in a hurry and one of them dashes against him, and the paintings in his hands fall on the floor. The guy with a hat who collides with him looks at the painting and gestures his other two associates to follow him as they run toward the waiting car outside. Gulzar, who is shocked by the ominous action of these men, is informed by the servant about the murder of his master inside the house. Thereafter, as the villain Shakaal (Ajit) ruminates and expresses his uneasiness of having encountered a painter who saw his face at close quarters to his mates Ranjit (Shyam Kumar) and Jack (Satyen Kappu), we see Gulzar at the police station talking to a cop about his conviction that he can paint the murderer’s face as he could get a clear view of him while he escaped. The following scene opens with the closeup of the painting of the killer, and we see a splash of red paint tarnishing the well-crafted portrait. Then we see the three antagonists with two of them (Shakaal and Ranjit) having covered their faces with a black scarf, recalling the antagonists in Death Rides a Horse, and the third (Jack) with his beard. The leader (Shakaal) cynically showers praise on Gulzar’s skill as a painter and his ability to draw from his memory. In the meanwhile, the elder sons Shankar and Vijay, who were apparently playing outside, approach the window and peek inside and are shocked to see their father being threatened, recalling a similar situation that the young Bill was in Death Rides a Horse. Shakaal shoots Gulzar, who tries to talk sense to him, as well as his wife Kamla when she comes out from the adjacent room on listening to the gunshot. As Kamla slides down to her death near Gulzar, we see from the other window inside the drawing-room, the maid with the youngest brother Aamir who also witness the violent and tragic happening. All the brothers and the maid are shocked when they see Gulzar being shot again as he dies while falling and trying to reach his dead wife. At this point, Shakaal notices the elder kids and shoots in their direction, but Shankar and Vijay run away and escape with the help of the benevolent Jack who invokes a similarly sympathetic Ryan (Lee Van Cleef), who lifts the young Bill out of the burning house and places him near the cart, in Death Rides a Horse [24].
The maturation dissolve is deferred in Yaadon Ki Baarat, and it is not a part of the above primal scene, unlike in Death Rides a Horse and Zanjeer, and it does not happen immediately after the consequential scene of the killing of the parents, as the trope of lost and found formula, a popular one in Hindi cinema, is set into motion when the brothers are separated from each other right after the murder of their parents. The youngest one is taken away by the maid, and the other two are separated from each other when the younger Vijay is not able to run and catch the moving train that Shankar has hopped onto. When the train with Shankar moves away from Vijay who gradually disappears, the motifs of the train and the music merge poignantly. Thereafter, as Shanker tries to steal Batata Vada/potato fritters when he is hungry, the shopkeeper chases him, and thus the momentum for maturation dissolve is set up. But unlike the normative transition during the running of the boy through dissolves on the feet into an adult, Yaadon Ki Baaraat’s narrative draws Shanker to the flyover bridge above the railway tracks where he rests for a moment and eats the potato fritters that he stole. Then the camera tilts down to his sneakers and in a long duration shot it pans 360 degrees to reveal the train which is running down under toward the camera/bridge and comes to rest on a pair of formal shoes and then tilts up to reveal the adult Shankar in a mid-shot. Thus the motif of the train becomes central to the maturation of Shankar, the first in the lineage as the eldest brother in a patriarchal society, who is understandably posited as the most traumatized and, therefore, the one who has to bear the burden of vendetta, unlike his romantically involved (Vijay) and musically invested (Ratan) younger brothers who, nonetheless, offer the space for Nasir Hussain to engage with his authorial themes. Later in the film when Shankar plays the title song in harmonica, it not only brings the diverse themes of vendetta and romantic longing/nostalgia together but also recalls the music of Ennio Morricone in Death Rides a Horse and pays homage to Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns.
Shankar, who is always dressed in black prefigures Vijay of Deewar in his steadfast holding onto the past and its trauma and his unwavering pursuit of revenge over the men who destroyed his family. The characterization of Shankar in the film is an extension of the cop Vijay in Zanjeer in his imperatives of vendetta. However, unlike the protagonist of Zanjeer, he transgresses law as a thief and in his entanglements with the underworld, but without becoming an outlaw like Vijay in Deewar. In the end, he admits to his crimes and acknowledges that he would submit to the law after his mission of avenging Shakaal and his gang for their crimes. If we look at his trajectory as the mythic Hero’s Journey, as explicated by Joseph Campbell and detailed by Christopher Vogler for screenwriters, there are two significant stages on the way which are crucial for Shankar in Yaadon Ki Baaraat, and both have to do with Jack[25]. According to Campbell, initially, when the hero is reluctant to embark on his journey as he feels the task is too daunting, it is the mentor who inspires him. Think of the Sean Connery figure, the cop Jimmy Malone, in The Untouchables (dir. Brian De Palma, 1987), written by David Mamet, the legendary screenwriter.
Similarly, towards the end, it is the elixir that the hero could gather through his journey to Hell and return that enables him to settle the score with his arch enemy. In The Untouchables, it is the accounting ledger of Al Capone which allows the young Cop Elliot Ness (Kevin Costner) to book him and bring him to court on the charges of tax evasion. In Yaadon Ki Baaraat, Jack plays a crucial role in both of these important stages. He is not as much a mentor as a sympathizer who guides and helps Shankar (and Vijay) to escape. It’s a pivotal moment in Shankar’s journey as he keeps looking for Jack as the link to the murderer of his parents after he grows up. It is Jack who gives him the details regarding Shakaal–the elixir which would provide the clue to Shakaal’s identity and help Shankar avenge his parents’ brutal murder is the fact that Shakaal wears two different sizes of shoes: number nine on his right and number eight on the left foot. Jack also provides this crucial detail to Shankar, and it recalls through the peculiar trait of Shakaal, the specificity of the (overt) markers of the villains in Death Rides a Horse.
The train motif could be read as the (reimagined) spectre of the Western (Death Rides a Horse/Train on a railroad) as it haunts the narrative of Yaadon Ki Baarat and the writers Salim-Javed. It prefigures their investment in Once Upon a Time in the West and anticipates the well-choreographed action sequence on a running train in Sholay. Apart from the vast deserted lands, the dominant semantic in the visual iconography of the Western is the railroad, the spine to the commerce and the (presumed) civilization of the society. But in Yaadon Ki Baaraat, the train becomes a spectre as every time Shankar sees the train or hears its sound it reminds him of his home from the past, and it traumatizes him not only with the memories of the loss of his parents but also with the separation from his brothers. The railway track and the train on it as the primal image and its movement/sound provides the impetus for Shankar to reach Shakaal and purge the spectres which haunt him during the climax when Shakaal meets with death as his foot gets caught between the rails as they close in for redirecting the engine of an oncoming train. More importantly, the figure of Jack who, despite having been an accomplice of Shakaal in the past, plays the benevolent guide to Shankar loses his life because of the sound of the train behind the telephone booth from where he makes a call which enables Shakaal’s men to trace and kill him when he comes there to call the next morning. Thus, train and the railroad as generally signifying modernity and progress in the Westerns is reversed in Yaadon Ki Baaraat as the primal image/spectre which punctuates/forebodes/leads to death by insightfully integrating it as central to the maturation dissolve/passage of time itself. Salim-Javed’s attention to form, especially the primal image, is corroborated here.
Diptakirti Chaudhuri in his monograph, Written by Salim-Javed: Indian Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters, informs us of the critical reception of Yaadon Ki Baaraat, which “was the fifth highest grosser of 1973.”:
“Screen called it a ‘crime thriller of familiar sort’ and went onto say ‘its main handicap is the close resemblance … to the current hit Zanjeer in the matter of story idea and development which in any case have their debt to foreign sources’. The impact of Yaadon Ki Baaraat, however, goes beyond the lukewarm reviews or the box-office success … Film scholar Kaushik Bhaumik calls it ‘the first masala classic as well as the first Bollywood film’.” [26].
The potency of the primal image of Death [as it] Rides a Horse and the train on a railway track of the Western has, thus, inspired two of the most significant films, which in turn have spawned their own remakes and regional adaptations, in the history of Indian cinema[27]. Now let us look at the influence of Death Rides a Horse on one of the dubbed film in Tamil (Revolver Reeta, dir. K.S. Ramadass, 1970) from Telugu (Rowdy Rani, 1970), which was subsequently remade in Hindi as Rani Mera Naam (1972).
Revenge of Revolver Reeta: Vijayalalitha on the Horse and Villains on the Run
While Tamil cinema has a rich tradition of dubbed films from other languages, Revolver Reeta remains emblematic of the success of B movies dubbed from Telugu. Vijayalalitha, who played the lead in Revolver Reeta in 1970, would continue to reign as the queen of such B movies through the subsequent success of films with similar eponymous titles like Gunfight Kanchana (K.S.R. Doss, 1971) and Sabhash Lalitha (dir. P.V. Acharya, 1972), entrenching her popularity and pull at the box-office as a B movie icon. Vijayalalitha’s stature also enabled her coconspirators like Jyothi Lakshmi to follow suit with similar successful B movies exported from Telugu to Tamil, like Bullet Rani (K.S.R. Doss, 1972). While Konda Subbarama Das aka K.S. Ramadass or K.S.R. Doss was involved in most of these films as a director, Puratchidasan wrote the dialogues and songs for all the above dubbed-Tamil versions.
What is unique about Revolver Reeta is its open acknowledgement of its debts to the Spaghetti Westerns not only in its staging of the inaugural sequence which is similar in many ways to the opening of Death Rides a Horse and, thereafter, its sustained focus on the vendetta of its protagonist who wants to avenge the brutal murder of her entire family, but also in the recycling of the themes of the legendary Ennio Morricone for its background score. But there are marked differences as well. The primary one being the female hero Reeta and her maturing into an avenging adult from childhood without a mentor to guide her through. In Death Rides a Horse, Bill, as a child, witnesses his father being killed and mother and sister getting raped and murdered by a gang of four outlaws, who had arrived at his home on horses at the beginning of the film. They are marked distinctly, by the tattoo of four aces on the chest, a scar, an earring, and a necklace with a skull. Similarly, in Revolver Reeta too, we see the villains arriving on horses at the outset. They are also distinctly marked, but there is a difference here too: the one who kills her father, who is a judge, is wearing a necklace with a skull, the one who molests and kills her mother has an artificial eye, the one who tries to rape her sister and shoots her down on the staircase has three aces tattooed on his chest, and the one who kills her elder brother, who tries to defend himself by pulling out a gun from the drawer under the nearby table, has a distinct bulge on his head. Thus, unlike Bill, Reeta loses her brother too. She, therefore, has to avenge four outlaws for the loss of four of her beloved family members.
In a similar vein, Bill’s rite of passage to become an able avenger takes fifteen years as his mentor Ryan comes out of prison and helps him channel his anger and vendetta in the right direction and become a skilled marksman, whereas Reeta has no mentor in that sense and, just as in Zanjeer and Yaadon Ki Baaraat, suddenly grows up to be an adult from a child through a maturation dissolve without any lapse of time. Through this transition that takes place near the tombstones of her parents and siblings, only the faithful and affectionate watchman of her house from her childhood is by her side as a father figure. Thus, Reeta suffers from the trauma of having watched her family slaughtered and house burnt right in front of her own eyes, like the young Bill. However, unlike him, she does not find a release/dilution/detour of trauma through the passage of time and encounter with a mentor. The spectre surrounding the four distinct markers, symbolizing the death of her family members, continues to haunt Reeta as she begins on her heroic journey of vengeance that will wreath havoc throughout the rest of the film till her mission is accomplished. One of the significant moments in the film is the shot epitomizing her transformation from a child to an adult, the one immediately after the maturation dissolve: an adult Reeta comes riding on a horse in slow motion to a popular Ennio Morricone theme (music dir. Sathyam), associated with Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns. Here the foreboding theme of the Death on the Horse is reversed: the image of Reeta on the galloping horse becomes the harbinger of death to her foes-the outlaws, who came hunting for her father’s and family’s blood, on the horses. Thereafter, we see Reeta practising her targets, who are pinned to a rope as four illustrated portraits with their distinct marks or terracotta pots, with various revolvers and guns, which informs us of her savviness and expertise as a gunwoman. She is not only able to shoot her targets with ease in various postures, including while horizontally lying down, but also when the targets/bottles are flying in the air. Thus, unlike Bill, she is a self-made woman who as a lone ranger bristles with confidence and is focused on her mission.
Thereafter, she takes leave of the compassionate old watchman and sets out alone on a long journey in a car, followed by the running horse. The car marks her entry into the city from the wilderness where she had lived and honed her skills ever since her family was slaughtered and the house burned down during her childhood. Thus the trope of staging most of the key encounters, particularly the climactic face-off, in the wilderness in the westerns is reversed to showcase the hero as having her training in a barren landscape, seemingly at the outskirts of a city, and then entering into the city where the outlaws are thriving in (illegal) businesses and/or masquerading as respectable men. After the shot of Reeta leaving in the car, the initial title sequence begins with a bang: the dubbed version in Tamil begins its titles with “Puratchidasan Presents”. Puratchidasan was a well-known lyricist of Tamil cinema whose popular songs include “Kandu Kondaen/I Have Seen” from Mangayar Thilagam/Jewel Among Women (Dir. L.V. Prasad, 1955) and “Vennila Raja/White Moon Beloved” from Aavathellam Pennale/Women Rule! (Dir. E. Apparao, 1965). Besides, he credited Rajnikanth with the sobriquet of “Superstar” in the film he wrote and directed, Naan Potta Savaal/My Challenge (1980). He also wrote, produced, and directed Tharasu/Weighing Scale (1984) under his original name Rajaganapathy. He was a native of Sivagangai, near Madurai. Under his pseudonym Puratchidasan, he edited the journal, Isaithamizh/Tamil Music. The erudite Puratchidasan, nonetheless, is most famous as the dialogue writer/lyricist of the highly popular Tamil B movies dubbed from Telugu, particularly during the 1970s [28]. Puratchidasan worked as a lyricist for more than five decades in Tamil cinema.
Thereafter, the main credit titles have the adjective “Sex Queen” qualifying the name of the heroine Vijayalalitha. Similarly, “Golden Fish” precedes Jyothi Lakshmi and “Twinkle Star,” the Malaysian starlet, Kiss Miss. However, unlike in the iconic Karnan’s popular B movie western Kalam Vellum/Time Will Win released, three months prior to Revolver Reeta, in September 1970, Vijayalalitha is fully clad as the female protagonist since the film is less invested in sexploitation in its reinvention of Death on a Horse as a B movie for a predominantly Telugu/Tamil audience. The dance numbers and ritualistic gyrations are mostly relegated to Jyothi Lakshmi, Kiss Miss and other dancers. In contrast, Vijayalalitha’s song/dance numbers aim at propelling the narrative forward with her singular mission of vengeance. One of the key sequences in the film is the song number “Murasolippol /Like the Drumbeat.” In this song, Puratchidasan’s authorship, as a Dravidian ideologue and a B movie lyricist/dialogue writer comes to the fore. It underscores this Tamil B movie version as unique among the three adaptations of Death on a Horse with Vijayalalitha in the lead. The song also epitomises the significance of the writer in dubbed versions.
The song “Murasolippol Munnetram,” while announcing the contemporary munnetram/progress made through the murasoli/drumbeat, directly references Murasoli-the name of the official daily of the DMK party, and the then Chief Minister Kalaignar M. Karunanidhi, during the release of Revolver Reeta in 1970, who was famous for his editorials/columns in Murasoli, which was edited by his nephew Murasoli Maaran. Puratchidasan is alluding to the progress made during the last three years after the DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam/Federation for the Progress of Dravidians) came to power in 1967. However, by crediting the song and dance performance of Vijayalalitha and her troupe as “the Celebration of Arignar C.N. Annadurai, the Bernard Shaw of Tamilnadu’s 62nd Birthday,” Puratchidasan complicates the scenario. In fact, Annadurai, the founder of DMK, was the Chief Minister for less than two years from 6th March 1967 till his death on 3rd February 1969. Thereafter, Karunanidhi came to power as his successor. Annadurai was born on 15th September 1909; therefore, he would have been 61 years old by the time of Revolver Reeta’s release in December 1970. However, Vijayalalitha’s troupe Kalaivaanar Kalai Mandram/Kalaivanar Arts Club, named after Kalaivaanar N.S. Krishnan, who had earlier collaborated with Annadurai in his film Nallathambi (Dirs. Krishnan-Panju, 1949), refuses to acknowledge Annadurai’s passing away by celebrating his 62nd birthday which was to come almost nine months into the future [29].
Further gesturing towards Annadurai as the one who is still leading by juxtaposing the archival footage of Anna, during the isai natakam/musical play “arasiyalum makkalum/politics and people” which begins with the line: Pirantha Thainadu Tamizhagame/Tamilnadu, the Motherland Where I was Born.” Right at the beginning of the song, Puratchidasan’s investment in Dravidian ideology is explicit in his challenging of the idea of India as the motherland of all Indians. He hints at the earlier idea of the Dravida Nadu as a separate nation, which was expansive to include all the four states in the South, now superimposed over and limited to Tamilnadu due to the consensual politics of the DMK, particularly after entering electoral politics and coming to power. But the well-lit Indian map on the stage points to the original song in the Telugu version as the stereotypical celebration of the Indian nation and its unity in diversity, as exemplified by the variations in the costumes and styles of singing and dancing, which punctuate the diverse regions and cultures. The ingenuity of Puratchidasan is evident as he superimposes a huge portrait image of Annadurai over the Indian map to draw attention to his claims regarding the progress made in Tamilnadu under Anndurai’s leadership. Nonetheless, Vijayalalitha’s lips inform us of the slippage between the mouthing of the Telugu lines during the song and the deftly layered Tamil lines, which were written later and mixed with the original music. As Vijayalalitha extols the egalitarian ideals of the DMK through Puratchidasan’s lines, we see Annadurai, and his deputies Nedunchezhian and Karunanidhi, behind the mics on the dais and addressing the people in the archival footage. On the dais behind them are the ministers and ideologues/stars, like MGR.
Puratchidasan uses the rest of the song to express his anxieties surrounding the Dravidian movement. He is pulled in opposite directions since, on the one hand, he is happy with the progress made, but on the other, he points to the corruption that has set in. We see the archival shots of a smiling MGR and Karunanidhi separately as they step down from a plane and a car, and then together in a mid-shot, as the song sings their praise as leaders of the masses. Then we see Annadurai in a longer mid-shot, walking from right to left, on the line, “Aha Moothavar Vagutha Vazhi Kappom/Let’s Respect the Path Carved by the Elder.” This line forebodes the splitting of the DMK later when MGR was suspended in October 1972, leading to the formation of ADMK (Anna DMK), later renamed as AIADMK (All India Anna DMK). MGR’s AIADMK would contest and win the election, and he would become the Chief Minister in June 1977. Stunningly, almost two years prior to MGR’s suspension from the party, Puratchidasan anticipates the trouble, surrounding corruption and questioning, brewing in the party through the lines:
Pattam, Pathavi, Panam Cherthachu,
Engo Poyachu …
Thiruttu Kanakku Etho Mudivachu …
Accrued Position, Power and Wealth
Attained Unreachable Heights …
Evaded the Tax and Balanced the Sheets!
… … …
Thatti Ketkum Aalai Vidakoodathu
Thalayil Adichu Pidikka Vendum
Murasolippol Munnetram!
The One Who Questions
Must Be Brought to Book
Let’s Beat the Drum to Our Progress!
(Trans. mine)
Today, it has become quite common for parties to split based on corruption. Often senior politicians question the integrity of the party when they leave it to join the opposition party, often for selfish gains. But almost fifty years back, in 1972, when MGR was suspended from the DMK, it came as a shock to the masses and was entrenched in Tamil public imaginary as a retaliation for his honesty: he was thrown out because “he asked for the account.” Besides, MGR was a successful and wealthy actor with no need for money from politics. Later, however, AIADMK would set its own records as far as corruption is concerned. Nonetheless, fifty years back, it would have been a cause of great concern and unthinkable for a Dravidian ideologue like Puratchidasan that Anna’s beloved party could split so soon, just like the untimely and unfortunate demise of Anna himself. Therefore, the spectre of death (of the egalitarian ideals of Annadurai) haunting Puratchidasan as a creative writer and a Dravidian ideologue could be argued to find a space through his abilities as an ingenious lyric writer of a dubbed B movie in Tamil, where words and meanings must cohere with the length and duration of the lip-synch in the original, from Telugu. His extraordinary abilities to mourn the death of his leader by disavowing it and celebrating his ideals of egalitarianism and integrity instead, make Revolver Reeta a unique film in the history of dubbed films in India. As foreshadowed by the song “Murasolippol,” written by Puratchidasan, last fifty years of the Dravidian party rule in Tamilnadu showcase progress, through their adhering of the goals of Periyar E.V. Ramasamy, the founder of the DK (Dravida Kazhagam/Federation of Dravidians) and Annadurai, as well as the roadblock/speed breakers to it through the spectre of split/divide and gratification through personal power, position, and wealth.
To conclude, I would like to draw attention to the use of archival footage during the denouement in the canonical Tamil film Parasakthi/The Goddess (Dirs. Krishnan-Panju, Dialogues. M. Karunanidhi, 1952): we see archival footages of all the prominent leaders of the DMK as well as Periyar and Rajaji, who was the Chief Minister then from the Congress Party, juxtaposed with the shots of the protagonists and their family members as they welcome the above special guests along with their relatives and invitees to the Shanthanayagi Orphanage. The song “Ellorum Vazhavendum/Everyone Should Live Well!” (Mus. R Sudarsanam, Lyrics. Bharathidasan) plays as the backdrop. The archival footage in Parasakthi is juxtaposed with narrative towards the end after the conflict has been resolved, and the family of the protagonist Gunasekaran (Sivaji Ganesan) has come together. Thus, it could be read as one of the ways the film navigates to appease the ruling government and bypass any problems regarding censorship. However, as M.S.S. Pandian’s seminal essay on the film informs us, that was not to be the case [30].
But in the case of Revolver Reeta, the use of archival footage, particularly the recycling of the same footage of Annadurai walking as in Parasakthi, is not post facto. The live materials of the leaders walking and talking, though muted to the song in the background, are used to punctuate the promises and hopes of the Dravidian leaders and ideologues, particularly the dreams of (the elder) Annadurai for the wellbeing of Tamil people and an egalitarian Tamil society. Similarly, the film finishes on the mid-close shot of the handcuffed Reeta, after she surrenders to the police on accomplishing her mission of vendetta. Reeta’s lone ranger persona recalls Periyar’s words regarding an independent woman who would be willing to be courageous and subvert the regressive values in a patriarchal society, and more importantly, ready to tread a path less travelled. Though Revolver Reeta has all the attractions, expected of a B movie in terms of action, glamour, and cliched situations regarding comedy, it towers above many of the A movies because of Puratchidasan’s interventions as a creative writer who looks for opportunities and the persona of Vijayalalitha as Reeta, the avenging woman driven by a sense of purpose. Periyar, therefore, might have questioned the hierarchy of labelling of such a film as Revolver Reeta as a B movie. Revolver Reeta is also emblematic, through its eponymous title, of how there was an angry young woman from the South much before Salim-Javed’s angry young man of the North, inspired by Petroni’s highly influential Spaghetti Western Death Rides a Horse.
Notes
1. For details see, Swarnavel Eswaran Pillai, “Tamil B Movie Westerns: The Global South and Genre Subversion,” Mary Ellen Higgins, Rita Keresztesi, and Dayna Oscherwitz eds., The Western in the Global South, Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge, 2015, pp. 165-179
2. Ref: Diptakriti Chaudhuri, Written by Salim-Javed: The Story of Hindi Cinema’s Greatest Screenwriters. New Delhi: Penguin Books. Kindle Edition (2015).
3. For the details on semantics and syntactics of a genre, see: Rick Altman. “A Semantic/Syntactic Approach to Film Genre.” Cinema Journal, vol. 23, no. 3, 1984, pp. 6–18.
4. For details on the young angry man, see: Jyotika Virdi, “Deewar: The ‘fiction’ of film and ‘fact’ of politics, Jump Cut, no. 38, June 1993, pp. 26-32.
5. For details on the Freudian primal scene, see: Ned Lukacher, Primal Scenes: Literature, Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1986.
6. Richard Brody, “The Front Row: ‘The Image Book,’ Reviewed: Jean-Luc Godard Confronts Cinema’s Depiction of the Arab World,” Newyorker.com, 25 January 2019, Accessed 29 March 2019. <https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row>
7. For details, see: Hugh J. Silverman, Derrida and Deconstruction. New York: Routledge, 1989.
8. Jyotika Virdi, ibid.
9. Corey K. Creekmur, “Bombay Boys: Dissolving the Male Child in Popular Hindi Cinema,” in Where the Boys Are: Cinemas of Boyhood, ed. Murray Pomerance and Frances Gateward. (Detroit: Wayne State UP, 2004), pp 350-376.
10.Danica van de Velde, Death Rides a Horse (Giulio Petroni, 1967), Sensesofcinema.com, June 2018, Accessed 30 March 2019, <http://sensesofcinema.com/2018/cteq/death-rides-a-horse-giulio-petroni-1967/>
11. Vinay Lal, Deewaar: The Footpath, The City and The Angry Young Man, Harper Collins Publishers (2011), Kindle Edition.
12. For details on Trishul, Kala Paththar and Shakthi, see, Diptakirti Chaudhuri, ibid.
13. Creekmur, ibid, p. 350.
14. Ibid.
15. Roger Ebert, “Death Rides a Horse,” Rogerebert.com, 14 Oct. 1969, Accessed 31 March 2019, <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/death-rides-a-horse-1969>
16. Roger Ebert, “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Rogerebert.com, 27 March 1997, Accessed 31 March 2019, <https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-2001-a-space-odyssey-1968>
17. See for details, R.C. Dutt, Retreat of Socialism in India: Two Decades Without Nehru, 1964-1984, Delhi: Abhinav Publications, 1987.
18. Anjum Rajubali (1), “The Unimportance of Scriptwriting.” Encyclopaedia of Hindi Cinema. Eds. Gulzar, Govind Nihalani, and Saibal Chatterjee. New Delhi: Encyclopaedia Britannica and Mumbai: Popular Prakashan, 2003, 309-17: p. 314-315.
19. Nasreen Munni Kabeer, Talking Films and Songs: Javed Akhtar in Conversation with Nasreen Munni Kabeer, New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2018. Kindle Edition.
20. Javed Akhtar, Personal Communication, 14 April 2011, during the “The 1970s and its Legacies: A Workshop on India’s Cinemas,” at Temple University.
21. Ref: Jyotika Verdi, The Cinematic ImagiNation: Indian Popular Films as Social History, New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003; Vijay Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, New York and London: Routledge, 2002; Ranjani Mazumdar, Bombay Cinema: An Archive of the City. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2007; Priya Joshi, Bollywood as Public Fantasy, New York: Columbia University Press, 2015; Vinay Lal, ibid.
22. Even Hussain’s earlier films like Tumsa Nahin Dekha/No one like you (1957), Dil Deke Deko/Fall in love and see (1959), Jab Pyar Kise Hota Hai/When you fall in love (1961), Phir Wahi Dil Laya Hoon/Back again with the same heart (1963), were known for their songs and romance sequences.
23. The local trains, which transport people living in and around the metropolis, in Bombay is marked by its yellow and brown colors. They are, thus, noticeable from a distance.
24. For Lee Van Cleef’s roles in the Spaghetti Westerns, see: Christopher Frayling, Spaghetti Westerns: Cowboys and Europeans from Karl May to Sergio Leone, New York: I.B. Tauris, 2006.
25. Joseph Campbell, Phil Cousineau, and Stuart L. Brown, The Hero’s Journey: The World of Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell on His Life and Work, San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1990; Christopher Vogler, The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Writers, Studio City, CA: M. Wiese Productions, 1998.
26. Diptakirti Chaudhuri, ibid.
27. For instance, Zanjeer/Shackles (dir. Apoorva Lakhia, 2013), which is a remake of the original Zanjeer (1973), and Netru, Indru, Naalai/Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (dir. Pa. Neelakandan, 1974), the Tamil remake of Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973).
28. See for details on Puratchidasan’s career as a lyricist/filmmaker: P. Kavithakumar, “Marakkappatta Puratchidasan/Forgotten Puratchidasan,” Keetru.com, 29 Nov. 2017, Accessed 27 July 2020. http://www.keetru.com/index.php/2018-01-12-06-00-39/2014-03-08-04-36-23/2014-03-14-11-17-57/34224-2017-11-29-06-25-09; Kavignar Muttulingam, “Sila Padalgal Sila Paarvaigal/My Takes on Certain Songs,” Dinamani.com, 29 Oct. 2018, Accessed 27 July 2020. https://www.dinamani.com/weekly-supplements/dinamani-kondattam/2018/oct/29/%E0%AE%AA%E0%AE%BE%E0%AE%9F%E0%AE%B2%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%B3%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%9A%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%B2-%E0%AE%AA%E0%AE%BE%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%B5%E0%AF%88%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%B3%E0%AF%8D–%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%B5%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%9E%E0%AE%B0%E0%AF%8D-%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%A4%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%A4%E0%AF%81%E0%AE%B2%E0%AE%BF%E0%AE%99%E0%AF%8D%E0%AE%95%E0%AE%AE%E0%AF%8D-3029377.html.
29. S. Narayan, The Dravidian Years: Politics and Welfare in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi: OUP, 2018.
30. M.S.S. Pandian, Parasakthi: Life and times of a DMK film. Economic and Political Weekly, 26(11–12), 1991, pp. 759–770.
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