Sholay!!!

When it comes to my list of favorite film openings, this one definitely takes the cake:

Labeled as India's 'curry western', a take on the 'spaghetti westerns' from Italy, Sholay was and is one of the biggest films ever to be released. Beyond being India's second 70mm released film (Around the World was the first), Sholay struck big at the box office. Thakur Singh, a retired police officer, now lives in a provincial town with his widowed daughter. The town lives under the regime of a forceful criminal, Gabbar Singh, who takes all assets of the town at his disposal and murders everyone who may threaten his ruling. Through, song, dance, comedy, action, and drama-- the perfect blend for a Bollywood film, Sholay delivers as a prime example of classic Indian Cinema. The film didn't 'explode' at the box office overnight though. According to magazines from the time, people walked out during the first 20 minutes because of the long action sequence that introduced the lead men. The audience figured it was going to be another B action film. The people who stuck around got to see that the film gets better as it progresses and word of mouth spread. Not long after, the film grew in audience numbers and soon was selling out for weeks to come.

The 70mm grandeur didn't hurt things either, although the film wasn't shot on 70mm. In 1975, widescreen was still a fairly new concept in India. While most foreign films that came into the country had adopted the process, most Hindi films were still 1.37:1. Theaters were not about to all switch over to a 2.20:1 format to exhibit a film either due to the financial obligation this would require. So, to compensate, Sholay had two aspect ratios. The film was shot on 35mm at 1.37:1 and printed to 35mm in this aspect ratio, and then it was cropped and blown up to 2.20:1 for the 70mm release. This started a new trend in Bollywood. Because of the rich colors of the image used in Bollywod cinema, blowing up the frame didn't create a jarring effect in regards to grain. If you watch the opening sequence above, you can picture where the mattes exist. Watching this film open matte, one can see that a lot of empty space exists, especially above the heads of the characters. The film is definitely framed for the widescreen format, with many medium shots featuring 3 characters at a time in the frame. I have seen the film in both aspect ratios and love it both ways.

In the early 1990s, evident from a trailer on an Eros VHS for Chamatkar (1993), Sholay was rereleased in theaters. While its legacy lived on from this rerelease, the legacy was not given the same treatment when it came to home video. Various copies of various aspect ratios have made their way to home video. The first VHS I remember seeing was from an open matte print with French subtitles. This copy that circulated around the bootleg home video market had some scenes cut and many video dropouts, but was still rich in color and featured the theatrical ending. Eros issued an official VHS and DVD of the film. Eros is notorious for taking 2.20:1 or 2.35:1 films and cropping them to 1.85:1 letterbox for release. With Sholay, one would have thought they could have taken a 1.33:1 source and matted it if they wanted to go that way. Instead, they took a 2.20 source and zoomed farther in to 1.85:1, making the film barely watchable. Later, MoserBaer took a 1975 2.20:1 print (the year of the element comes from the censor certificate at the beginning of the film) and released it in non-anamorphic form on DVD. This print, while pretty worn, does contain the film as it was meant to be seen in its theatrical cut.

Sometime in the 1990s, with the advent of cable tv, the film received a 'director's cut'. The film had its issues with censors back in 1975 for being too violent and featuring an ending that did not please the government (I'm not a spoiler, but if you really want to know what the differences are, I'm sure IMDB can accommodate). This original ending and some of the gore was reinstated to bring the film up to 204 minutes. Of course, this version was released as a 1.37:1 version. Because it has the highest image quality and is distributed by Eros, who rule the international video market, this is the most common seen version of the film. I'm not down with that. For years, I have been searching for the theatrical cut of the film in its widescreen aspect ratio-- the way people remember seeing it in 1975 if they went to a 70mm screening. Which is the proper way to see the film though? The film really only played in 70mm in a few cities. The big 'crowd' that made the film what it was actually saw the film in the 35mm square aspect ratio version. I can say this though, they did NOT see a 204 minute cut of the film. That's a little too much Sholay for my taste.

And now, of course, something else happens. Sholay has been released in....wait for it...3D! 3D?! Yeah, that's right. 3D. I am sure it looks as bad as it sounds, but this also means that a proper 2D release was done. And it looks BEAUTIFUL! I am not for tampering with old films in the form of gimmicks, but in this case it actually paid off. In order to do a 3D conversion, a 2D high quality restoration needed to be done. I am so happy and proud of the work that went into this. Sholay should be seen and shared with future generations. It is a huge part of Indian history. Not to mention, it is just a badass film. I anticipate the new DVD of this release with great anticipation and hope that when it comes out, you will do yourself a favor and pick it up:

Signed,
The Celluloid Avenger

Bouncin' Back to Bollywood: Hum Aapke Hain Koun

It was a snowy February Sunday night in 1995 in Brookfield, WI. My usual bedtime was 9pm, but on this very special night, my mom let me go with her to a very special screening: a film that had been buzzing all over the Bollywood gossip magazines: Hum Aapke Hain Koun. An hour later than scheduled, the lights dimmed, and the loud sold-out crowd cheered in delight as the following title sequence hit the screen:

This was actually what we saw. There are a few logos that are supposed to come before this title sequence, but the print we saw had traveled all over the US, and had come to us incredibly worn, starting with the logos cut, and this number incredibly scratched. Still, green emulsion lines dancing and all, it was a night to remember. Hum Aapke Hain Koun was considered a landmark film in Bollywood for so many reasons. I particularly can take or leave the film today, but do applaud its reverence because of what it did for the Bollywood industry. To see its deterioration over the last 20 years in different releases and to see that it has been beautifully restored in HD and released on home video makes my heart smile, even if I don't agree with it being a particularly good film.

The synopsis of the film is quite simple. Two wealthy Hindu families arrange a marriage between a boy and a girl, and in the process of the lavish traditional Indian wedding, followed by the wife becoming 'expectant', the bride and grooms siblings fall in love, keeping their coy feelings from the family. When tragedy strikes (the bride, finding the two are in love, joyously runs down a flight of stairs, trips into a concussion and dies in a coma), their love is jeopardized as her sister must now marry the bride's widow to care for her nephew instead of marrying the man she loves. Full of over-the-top humor, 14 songs, and incredibly cheesy dialogue, the film may not hold up as well as it did when it hit screens in 1994. But at the time, it was a saving grace for an industry that was starting to fall apart.

Still chugging out roughly 900 films a year, India's film market had a new focus...it seems that all films I remember of this era were romantic-drama-action-comedy-musicals that involved drug lords, cops, scorned love by family members, and a rape scene thrown in for good measure. I kid you not, while kissing on the lips was not seen for another year in Raja Hindustani, a staged rape scene happened more times than it needed to. Hum Aapke Hain Koun (HAHK) decided to be different. It broke box office records selling out for weeks in advanced on a simple story about love and family. If it weren't for this film, so many other classics that followed (Dilwale Dulhuniya Le Jayenge, Dil To Pagal Hain, and Rangeela, to name a few) wouldn't have been made, even in an industry that did release so many titles at a time.

There are three main versions of this film, to date. The first release, not remembered by most, had only 10 songs in it, and ran about 20 minutes shorter than the most common version. A groundbreaking marketing technique, Rajshri films waited until attendance had started to tamper down, and rereleased the film with 4 new songs: "Chocolate, Lime Juice", a reprise to "Diktana, Diktana", "Mujse Jodha Hokar", and "Lo Chali Main", the latter before the climactic coma inducing stair fall. This was the version I remember seeing in theaters as the film traveled around the US, running roughly 3 hrs and 5 min. Beautifully restored, here is the "Chocolate, Lime Juice" number, courtesy of Youtube:

Alas, there is one more version of this film that ran roughly 3 hrs and 20 minutes. For a long time, a person had two choices when purchasing the film. There was the first release, which cut the four numbers I mentioned above, and this long version that was almost unbearable to watch. Included were a number of extra short scenes that had nothing to do with the plot and were obviously put back into the film to market it for perhaps a third release, or one for home video or television broadcasts. Most annoying in this version was the alternation of "Ye Mausum Ka Jadoo". In the first and second versions of the film, the last shot of the number involved Madhuri Dixit ringing a bell at a temple and Salman Khan attempting to do the same but flubbing the process. They both sit to pray as the last line of the song is overheard, before the intermission card appears before the screen. The print we saw which toured the US did not have the original intermission card, being such a worn shabby print, but an inappropriate replacement title card, where a dramatic lightning bolt struck the frame and the word 'intermission' shot out at the audience. I remember my mom, sister, and I being a little disturbed by this. The third extended cut of the film featured a closeup of Madhuri looking on at Salman Khan while the song is heard in the background at a picnic, followed by a full scene at the temple, done a la An Affair to Remember. This was the first addition of scenes in the third version. The majority of them happen in the second act of the film, which is a shame because most people will admit that the second half of the film is what makes it drag.

The film became a landmark in a bad way, too. Video Sound, Asian Video, and Eros Video handled the official international video releases of Bollywood films in their respective territories. These releases weren't without flaws, of course. There would be commercial breaks in the official video releases and the transfers were low quality telecine transfers, usually matted from 2.35 to 1.85, but still of watchable quality and widescreen to a certain degree, nonetheless. When HAHK hit screens and became such a blockbuster, nobody wanted to pay for the rights to officially release the film on video before the crowd was ready to see it, and pirated videos in the US were born. These were common in India already, but a foreign idea to international audiences. It became clear that people were okay with renting pan and scan videos with numbers and sequences cut, advertisements flying across the bottom third of the screen, or films taped at private screenings in theaters with whatever sound was booming in the theater that would hit the camera microphone. It was a pleasure to see the film without the commercial breaks that official video releases had at the time, but this was the only advantage. Most films would, months later, get an official release, but a new precedence was set. A film would be released in India, a bootleg from a theater would hit the home video market, a home video from Pakistan with advertisements on the bottom of the screen would follow, and lastly, sometimes up to a year later, the official release would come out. Thankfully, this film was released in 1994 and the Bollywood industry started going to DVD around 1998, at which point everything was of a better quality. At that point, even the bootleg DVDs were better looking than the VHS releases that came out from the official distributors.

Every time this film got a video release, it seemed more worn out. The sound would get grainier and more muffled, the colors would be more faded, and there would be more pesky splices. I am so thrilled that the familiar hybrid version of the film is now released in HD, so all can see its splendor and glory. Looking back, I can say that while I don't care for the film as much as I did when I was 10, I do still feel that it should be preserved and treasured in that it holds an important part in Hindi film history. Now, let's work on getting a 20th anniversary rerelease theatrically!

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger

Ultra is a Chor when it came to the colorization of Chori Chori

Okay. Avenging with a vengeance when it comes to this blotch job. The film is called Chori Chori. Here's the backstory. In Indian Cinema, technology didn't develop as fast as it did in the United States...understandably so as the budgets weren't there. Widescreen experiments were done but weren't common practice until the 70s, and it took until the 1960s before color film was commonly used (Indians preferred to use Eastman Color, although one would never guess it watching a DVD today, as the color correction done represents ANYTHING but Eastman Color).

Chori Chori was a 1956 film and a musical remake of It Happened One Night. The film was shot mostly in black and white with the industry's common aspect ratio at the time, 1.37:1. I first saw Chori Chori on VHS. My parents had a copy they had purchased from a vendor on Devon Street in Lincolnwood, IL. Looking at it recently, it looks to be at least 2 generations of VHS transferred from a Umatic 3/4", indicated by the frequent dropouts on the source tape. This film holds a special place in my heart as it has one of the most beautiful music numbers in a Hindi film, called Aaja Sanam. Take a look:

Now, while the VHS we owned was atrocious in many ways compared to the DVD rip above, it did have two musical numbers that, as I mentioned before, were shot in color. One is Pancchi Badun Urit Phiron, which takes place in a park (our main female lead, Nargis, decides to venture off there during her bus layover, which results in her tagging along with Raj Kapoor for the rest of the trip) and another is when the two leads are hitchhiking and come across a puppet show. In 2009, when I was studying at UCLA, I started a project trying to find out what happened to these color elements. The VHS we owned, which included the numbers, was from the early 80s, and it appears that every DVD release that had come out up to that point had them in black and white! Did these color elements still exist? Where was this magical print that was used for this horrendous video transfer? No one knew. But a thorough search found that no DVD included them in color. Here is the puppet number in black and white:

Then, one magical day, a press released was announced. The ENTIRE film was to be colorized and matted to 1.78 for a new HD release. Whaaa? I.....just......wow. That's all I can say to that. Personal opinion only, I believe in keeping things as true to form as they can. And this goes for all ends of the spectrum; upmixing a film to 5.1 is no better than colorizing it. You are tampering with the director's work. For years we nagged about pan and scan being an issue, and now people are cropping because a wider image will appeal to modern audiences. If the people in charge of this project had done a little research, they would have seen how terrible colorization projects were received in the United States and eventually abandoned because of the backlash on how terrible they looked. But, no. They felt that their colorization ways were 'magical'. Now, if this wasn't bad enough, here's where my real beef is. In NO WAY do the colors of the new colorization match the colors of the original sequences as they were shot in color. Take a quick peak at this:

I wish I could upload the original color sequence of this film as a reference. One day I will when I get my VHS to DVD unit working again, but just to give you an idea, I think we can all agree that Nargis did not have purple skin. Whose leg is being pulled into believing this was shot in color? Nor did she wear a pink and purple sari in this number. The blouse was red, the dupata was white. As I mentioned before, it's possible that there aren't any more copies of the original color sequence to use as a reference, but I am sure that there are press photos, reference stills, or something of the sort that could have been used. It's such an insult to the original film-making team to release something like this, and to market it as an impressive project.

One day, hopefully, the color elements will be found, the film will be returned to its original aspect ratio, and a reasonably decent release that would do Raj Kapoor and Nargis proud will hit the market. Until then, I hope people enjoy watching the beautiful noir like number I posted above looking like an Easter extravaganza, as seen in the newly restored colorized clip below:

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger