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This film was written by the all-time writing pair Salim-Javed and features the mighty cast of Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Hema Malini, Jaya Bhaduri, Sanjeev Kumar, and Amjad Khan in the role of a lifetime as Gabbar Singh. Influenced by Western and samurai movies but deeply Indian in spirit, Sholay is about two small-time crooks, Jai and Veeru, who are commissioned by a retired jailer to hunt down a ruthless bandit who has terrorized the fictional village of Ramgarh.
The restored film, at 204 minutes, will be shown in Bologna's open-air Piazza Maggiore — one of Europe's largest cinematic spaces. The closest to it is this restoration, and it's the faithful version, bringing back the film's original climax of Thakur killing Gabbar Singh with spiked shoes that were censored in 1975 for being too violent and for showing a former police officer taking the law into his own hands.
Behind the Restoration: Lost Negatives and Worldwide Hunt
The mission to bring back Sholay started in 2022 after Shehzad Sippy, the son of Ramesh Sippy, reached out to the Film Heritage Foundation. The 70mm prints were gone, and the negatives were badly degraded. But a surprise find in a Mumbai warehouse revealed the original 35mm camera and sound negatives that had been dumped in unlabelled cans. Additional reels were later found in the UK with the help of the British Film Institute.
These materials were shipped to L'Immagine Ritrovata, a leading restoration facility in Bologna. With the help of experts from around the world, the researchers were able to restore the film, including finding the original camera that was used. Their struggle has finally paid off, and the result has been an edition of Sholay that's closer to the vision of the makers than it's ever before.
When first released, Sholay struggled. It was the desire to be loved, and it was not. Early critics rejected it, and audiences were silent. Others called it a failed attempt at mixing a Western with Indian storytelling. But word-of-mouth gradually spread. Within weeks, people were going back, quoting lines and purchasing dialogue records. The villain, Gabbar Singh, was turned into a cultural icon and the movie played for five years in Mumbai's Minerva theatre, receiving acclaim like "Film of the Millennium."
Legacy and Timeless Appeal
Sholay is not just a film, it has become synonymous with India. Its lines are recited at weddings, in political speeches and in advertising. The soundtrack by RD Burman sold well over half a million copies, and its characters are now legendary.
Yet there is something about Sholay that endures even as it was released in 1975. In 2015, it was released in Pakistan and did better than most recent blockbusters. Indeed, as the film distributor Shyam Shroff once remarked, "The sun does not set on Sholay."
Contemplating the movie's lasting appeal, Amitabh Bachchan described the ageless attraction of Sholay: "Good defeating evil and … perhaps even more significantly, poetic retribution within three hours! You and I will never get it in our lifetime."
