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

My cinefile moment through Yaarana

Welcome to my brand new blog. I have been thinking about starting one for a long time, but today, the power of the Madhuri Dixit Youtube frenzy I got stuck in inspired me to actually start jotting down a few words. Who knows where it will take me? If this starts to ramble, apologies.

Let me introduce myself. I call myself the Celluloid Avenger. I have been working in the film and video preservation world for roughly 10 years. Film and video images mean the world to me. There is nothing like the moving image as a historical document to take you into a specific time and place. And it all started with Bollywood.

My grandfather owned two second-run movie theaters in Pune, India. My mother would go to the theaters every day and catch whatever films were running in the theater and knows more about Indian cinema than most people would, as she has seen practically every Hindi film that has come out from the 1950s to today. While I was growing up, most of my friends were renting VHS tapes from Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. Mom, insistent that my sister and I get in touch with our Indian roots, would rent Bollywood films from the local Indian store. Of course, these films would not be subtitled. My mom would sit next to us on a Sunday afternoon, after working a 50+ hour week as an OB/GYN, and with very little sleep, would translate the films to us line for line as the actors spoke them on the screen. Now that, my friends, is dedicated motherhood.

Of course, there was the occasional Bollywood screening at the local theater. My mom would take us and whisper through the lines of the film, my sister sitting on her left and me on her right. I will never forget these precious memories, and the night we went to see Yaraana was one of the most influential evenings of my life, paving the road for what would eventually become my profession. I remember distinctly that when the film started, the projectionist had put the wrong lens on the projector (1.85 instead of 2.35) and my mom was the first to notice. Soon, other people noticed and a near riot started in the middle of the theater (thanks Mom). An important moment in my film education, however, as it taught me the difference in aspect ratios and what anamorphic prints look like. Tweaking the focus throughout the film, the projectionist obviously had no clue what kind of audience he was dealing with. Indian film audiences are known for their loud interaction with the film...cheering after epic monologues, whistling and dancing in the aisles during songs, and shouting randomly at the screen for no apparent reason. Rocky Horror Picture Show has nothing on a Bollywood audience.

The number that you see at the top of this post had a huge impact on me. Hindi films are shot on a cheaper film stock than Hollywood uses. The film gets scratched and worn quite easily as a result. In addition, it is not uncommon, to this day, for 70mm blowup prints to be made. To compensate for the grain of the blowup, plus the fast deterioration of the prints, Indian filmmakers will use EXTREMELY bright colors in the costumes and sets. When the "Mera Piya Ghar Aaya" song came on the screen, it was unlike anything I had seen before. The colors on Madhuri Dixit's orange dress and the dreamlike quality of smoke against the neon pink outfit she wears jumped out on the screen. It was unlike anything I had ever seen before. That sharp image quality seemed so 3D, and the music was blaring through the speakers, making my soul dance. Years later, I would learn that the quality of watching a film print, when shot with the perfect exposure and color saturation, can do this. At the mere age at 11, though, all I knew was that I was seeing something special.

The video included above cannot do it justice. Watching it actually pisses me off because I remember what it was like to see a mint print, compared to the shoddy faded piece of crap I included. Sadly, being nearly 20 years old and a B picture, I doubt that the film has been preserved to its glory and that memory will stay as that....a faded memory. Indian cinema is not treasured as much as American cinema. While there is a national archive in Pune, many negatives are stored with the original producers and directors. Every time a print is made, it is taken directly off of the original negative, as confirmed by my sources from the Association of Moving Image Archivists. You can see it too, if you look carefully. The splice marks are always present on every shot on a Bollywood film if it's shot on 35. A proper preservation of internegatives and dupe negatives is never done, which is probably why the colors on the print I saw were so sharp.

While Yaraana is far from a perfect film, it would be a joy to see it on film once more, if anything just to catch this beautiful dance number. Video releases, which we'll discuss on another day, were horrendous before DVDs hit the market, and when they did, a lot of older films were already on the road to decaying. I cannot stress enough how important it is for people to invest in helping the Indian film market in saving their films. From talking to representatives of restoration facilities, it appears that people aren't going off of prints and negatives for restorations. An SD video source is touched up for an HD video release, and the product is then schlopped on the market with no regard to how the image is supposed to look. I hope and pray that an intervention is done at some point, or those of us who treasured these images when they first came out are in serious trouble.

Signed,

The Celluloid Avenger