Amitabh Bachchan is a huge Bollywood star who has appeared in more than 180 films. This article examines his early career in the 1970s, the events taking place in India at that time, and what effect he had on the Bollywood star system.
Bollywood Stars
The Bollywood star system is very different than Hollywood. In India, film stars tend to capture popular imagination more, and they are treated like Gods. B. Gandhy notes that, “The star system in India developed alongside, and with awareness of, the Hollywood star system. However, the conditions that prevailed in India led to a phenomenon of star power unmatched by any other cinema industry in the world.”
Bachchan the Film Star
Bachchan’s star persona made him a social phenomenon in India. ‘The Big B,’ as he is also known, is the biggest star to have come out of the Bollywood film industry. He is an extremely popular actor who has a God-like status among those in India and also many around the world. He represented previously unseen aspects of movie heroes such as anger, violence and rebellion, and broke down the limits of Hindi cinema.
Amitabh’s roles in his early films redefined Indian cinema, creating a new likable anti-hero, one who was unafraid to show his emotions. Vijay Mishra proposed three main reasons for his success, firstly because he is the “first post-partition major star who came from the Hindi-speaking heartland of Uttar Pradesh and who was thoroughly conversant with standard Hindi as well as its dialects, notably Avadhi.”
The second reason is because his film persona “challenged the figure of the noble...model of the hero,” and also because he “projects his antiheroism onto the very modern notion of the angry young man in rebellion and grafted this onto the figure of a subaltern hero ‘as an agent of national reconciliation’.”
Hero of the People
The period when Amitabh Bachchan was at his peak in terms of success and popularity corresponds to the years that Indira Gandhi was Prime Minister in India. In the 1970s the films that he starred in and the roles that he played seemed to reflect the social and political turbulence that was occurring in the country at that time.
M. Prasad believes “The popular cinema… went through a phase of uncertainty before regrouping around a figure of mobilisation, a charismatic political-ideological entity embodied in the star persona of Amitabh Bachchan.”
At that time Amitabh was the cinematic parallel of Indira Gandhi. She was the most important force in politics, making dramatic changes to society, and he became a significant figure on screen, transforming the way conventional protagonists were perceived. It was no wonder that the public identified with him so much. This was an important time in India’s history, and Amitabh was a figure the public could identify with. He came to visually represent how they were feeling.
Not Your Typical Movie Star
It is also important to point out that Amitabh Bachchan is not the ideal image of a movie star. He is rather unconventional in terms of his looks and behaviour, and he is not the best actor the world has seen. Off-screen he also had trouble with gossip columns and his involvement in politics.
Some of the roles he is most famous for, and that added greatly to his star persona, were first offered to other actors, including the character of Vijay in Zanjeer. His biography on ApunKaChoice reveals that “The role, which fetched him the title ‘The Angry Young Man’, came to him by default. A host of actors like Dharmendra, Dev Anand and Raj Kumar refused to do the role on account of some apprehension.”
So he was fortuitous in terms of casting, but it cannot simply be said that he was in the right place at the right time in terms of the roles he was given and the effect he has had on the people of his country. There is a lot more to it than that.
Amitabh Bachchan’s star power was amplified by the conditions prevalent in India in the 1970s. The films he starred in at this time were platforms for him to develop his persona as a defiant rebel. He may have been a slightly unconventional actor, but many sources believe he made a huge impression in terms of the star system and succeeded in changing the face of Bollywood forever.
Sources
- B. Gandhy, ‘Unit 6: The Star System’ in Wendy Earle [ed], Bollywood and Beyond: A Guide to Teaching Indian Cinema, London: BFI, 2002.
- V. Mishra, Bollywood Cinema: Temples of Desire, London: Routledge, 2002.
- M. Prasad, Ideology of the Hindi Film: A Historical Construction, Oxford: University Press, 1998.
- ApunKaChoice: Bollywood at your Fingertips! Amitabh Bachchan Biography, ApunKaChoice.
Emma Hutchings - Film Studies graduate, freelance writer, movie reviewer & blogger who writes for PSFK, Flickering Myth, Flickfeast & Suspend Your ...
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