Om, Amjad, Dilip and Amitabh The Thespians of India

The greatest era in hindustani movies was from roughly 1950-1980.

The 50s/60s saw the last flower of India’s composite culture which had been developed in the centuries preceding where hindus like Prithviraj, Balraj Sahni, Guru Dutt and Raj Kumar could play the archtype muslims with impeccable urdu in Mughal e Azam, Pakeezah, etc. and muslims could make the definitive movies on the hindian heartland: Mother India and Ganga Jamuna (it doent matter what the credits say, the latter movie was directed by Yusuf Khan infact people strongly advised him not to use braj bhasha since it would be economic suicide).


Many have listed Guru Dutts movies and who can argue with that, but people forget that in India where solo method acting is not popular because of the investment of time and effort the greatest movies are those where one thespian is pitted against the other, the competition and desire not to be overshadowed drives their peak performances. Such great movies are Andaz (Dilip-Raj), Shakti (Amitabh-Dilip), Mughal-e-Azam (Dilip-PrithviRaj, infact when someone said how nice it would have been had Raj been taken for MeA, Prithvi Raj replied Raj could not have done what Dilip did, this despite the fact that it is actually Prithviraj who has all the best dialogues !!). among the females it has to be Hemas virtuoso in Lal Pathther as the thakurian and Rekha’s as Umrao Jaan Ada

the exceptions are Sholay where Amjad Khan put in some method acting and took the cake unopposed, leave aside a debutant never has any thespian put in such a convincing and original performance. He invented Gabbar, he made him despicable, he made him menacing and he made him real with all his small nuances of speech and action. Though amitabh put in a outstanding comic performance as he usually did.

The hallmark of a great actor is versatility and according to Sir Lawrence Olivier the greatest actors are those who can excell in comedy such actors have been three in India: Om Puri, Amitabh Bachchan and Amjad Khan. To a lesser extent Dilip Kumar. The out and out comedian who can stake a claim in this pantheon of thespians is Mehmood and to a lesser extent Govinda (yes you read it right)

My favourites movies are comedies:

Jaane bhi do Yaron
East is East
Do aur Do Paanch (Amitabh at his comic best)
Pyar kia jaa/Haseena man jayegi (i dont remember which had mehmood (the king of comedy) and shammi kapoor, especially the scene where mehmood narrates his horror movie script to Om Prakash )
Aankhen (the govinda - chunky pandey one)