I’ve been watching Bollywood movies for a few years now. For the most part I’ve focused on recent films, but a certain classic from the 70s has come up in conversation on a routine basis: Sholay.
Wildly popular and starring the great Amitabh Bachchan it is often credited as being the first Bollywood western. It takes place in a remote community, where an ex-police officer hires a pair of charismatic train robbers to kill bandit.
This is an epic movie, filled with desperate human struggle and grand landscapes.
Aside from the location and the language it is a near perfect imitation of the American western. It has so incorporated the tropes of a Western that it even has a horse and buggy chase.
Here the buggy startles a herd of goats.
And here the buggy continues to flee, despite losing a wheel, which is straight out of a Roy Rogers flick.
And then we go straight into the scene with the Hitler impersonator.
Okay, maybe that’s not something you’ll find in your average western, but this next shot is a direct reference to Chaplin’s The Great Dictator, and that earns a little bit of sympathy.