to cinema, with love

Director:Yash Chopra
Producer:Gulshan Rai
Story/Screenplay:Javed Akhtar,Salim Khan
Cinematography:Kay Gee
Editor:Pran Mehra
Music Director:R.D Burman
Lyricist:Sahir Ludhianvi
Cast:Amitabh Bachchan,Shashi Kapoor,Nirupa Roy,Neetu Singh,Parveen Babi
Length: 174 minutes
Release Date:January 24,1975
Country:India


Plot:Two brothers, Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi(Shashi Kapoor) grow up in a working-class urban area. As they enter adulthood, their lives take two entirely different directions.Vijay, who starts out as a boot polisher and becomes a dockyard worker in his youth, becomes a smuggler and a leading figure of the underworld.Vijay sacrifices his own education so that his brother Ravi can pursue education.Vijay posing as a businessman helps his family through hard times. He meets and falls in love with an exotic dancer, Anita (Parveen Babi). Meanwhile Ravi joins the police force, where he gets assigned to a case tracking down a smuggler. It turns out to be his brother.What follows is a drama of conflict between the brothers backed with terrific performances by the cast.

Take: Deewaar(Wall) came at a time when the country was disappointed and restless and the people were ready to lash out.So when Amitabh Bachchan donned the robs of Angry Young Man who turns to crime out of angst and pride, the audience was more than ready to cheer him on.And the phenomenon was born.The '70s signaled the end of the tragic hero.No one wanted a weak protagonist and strong romantic tracks.The audience wanted action,swift and deliberate.Deewar provided them just that, with a strong script and great dialogues with punch lines that became iconic words of Bollywood.While earlier writers used the language of films, writer duo Salim-Javed lifted street language from the nooks and crannies of Mumbai and put them on screen.Vijay, a driven man who becomes the big crime boss, is able to find refuge in his mother's embrace only when he dies.For the first time, the audience was willing to accept such a character. Earlier, when you had Ashok Kumar playing a thief, he was still a thief, though with a heart of gold.Not so in Deewar, which found the audience rooting for him rather than his policeman younger brother.

• Amitabh was offered the role after Dev Anand apparently turned it down because the character had no songs, which was a must for any actor in those years till Deewaar took Bollywood by storm.

• Amitabh Bachchan's character, Vijay Verma, is loosely based on famous Bombay smuggler Haji Mastan. To give the role authenticity, Amitabh Bachchan reportedly met Haji Mastan to study his mannerisms.

• Gulshan Rai,the producer, read the movies script twice, and both the times he got so emotional that tears burst from his eyes.

• Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar originally intended that the film be songless and only relented upon the director's insistence that songs be accommodated.

• The screenplay minus the dialogues was written in just 18 days.

• Zanjeer was the other film that patented Amitabh as the Angry Young Man, which he turned into complex moral territory and is the cornerstone of an extraordinary career.

• Amitabh Bachchan shot 'Sholay' (1975) and ‘Deewaar’ simultaneously. Since most of his scenes feature him indoors or during the dark, he used to shoot ‘Sholay’ in the morning and ‘Deewaar’ during the night.

• Though this is consider to be one of the best performances of Indian films, Amitabh Bachchan didn't win the best actor Filmfare award that year.That year Filmfare Best Actor award went to Sanjeev Kumar for Aandhi.

• After the release of the movie, Amitabh's favourite screen name became Vijay, used in over 20 movies.

• Mere paas maa hai - "I've got mom." is considered to be most recognized dialogue from any Indian film.
  

• Indiatimes Movies ranks Deewaar amongst the Top 25 Must See Bollywood Films