Yash Chopra has an extra ordinary body of work, but “Deewar” will always be the shining gem in his career as a filmmaker.
“Deewar” is and always be an iconic movie for Indian movies, whether it is the script, the dialogues, the ensemble star cast, the performances or the direction, “Deewar” scored in all the departments.
But what made the movie the huge success, is its strong writing by the duo writer Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar , popularly known as Salim-Javed. The story & screenplay mirrored the sentiments of the masses then who were disappointed due to the unfulfilled promises which were made after independence and the corruption which was brewing, and that struck the right chord with the masses. The story was of two brothers Vijay (Amitabh Bachchan) and Ravi (Shashi Kapoor), one brother Vijay chooses the wrong path to earn his living and becomes a smuggler, on the other hand the younger brother Ravi chooses the path of righteousness and joins the police force. The tussle between ideologies of the two brothers and their mother becomes the crux of the story.
The impactful dialogues were like the cherry on the cake, some of the dialogues are still so famous like the iconic “Mere Pass Ma Hain” or the climax temple scene “Khush To Bahut Hoge Tum”. Each character was written with precision and made an impact on the audience. It is believed that Vijay’s role was loosely based on then Don Haji Mastaan who was also a coolie in the docks initially..
The casting of the movie went through a lot of changes, the original cast comprised of Rajesh Khanna playing the role of Vijay and Navin Nishchol playing the role of Ravi and Vijayantimala was cast in the mother’s role, but writers Salim-Javed insisted on Amitabh Bachchan being cast as Vijay as they had some problems with Rajesh Khanna in the past, so Amitabh Bachchan was signed up for the role of Vijay, due to which both Navin Nishchol and Vijayantimala refused to be part of the movie so subsequently Shashi Kapoor was signed to play Ravi and Nirupa Roy was signed to play the mother’s role. It is said that Yash Chopra almost finalized Waheeda Rehman to play the mother’s role after Vijayantimala exited, as he wanted a strong actor to play the role as it was a crucial character of the movie, but since Yash Chopra was simultaneously making “Kabhie Kabhie” wherein Waheeda Rehman was playing Amitabh Bachchan’s wife, so he thought that the casting Waheeda as Amitabh’s mother would be detrimental for “Kabhie Kabhie”, hence he dropped the idea and finally Nirupa Roy did the iconic role and she is still remembered for this role and later Nirupa Roy played Amitabh Bachchan’s mother in multiple movies.
Music was one of the strong points of any Yash Chopra movie but the plot did not have too much scope for songs, still two romantic songs were included which were shot on Shashi Kapoor and Neetu Singh were included, they were “Maine Tujhe Manga Tujhe Paya Hai” and “Keh Doon Tumhe”, both became popular, but the producer still though that song wise the movie lacked the punch, hence though shooting was over, a mujra song “Koi Mar Jaaye” was added and shot on Aruna Irani. The music was rendered by R D Burman.
The iconic look of Amitabh Bachchan of a knotted shirt was a result of an error by the tailor who made Amitabh’s shirt too long, and in order to camouflage the error it was knotted, which became a rage.
“Deewar” was released on 24th Jan 1975, and was a super hit, and ran for 100 weeks earning 1 crore from each territory and making it the 4th Highest grosser Bollywood movie of 1975..
It earned the highest no. of Filmfare awards for the year beating the iconic movie “Sholay”. It received 7 Filmfare Awards which was record and was broken by “Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge” winning 10 awards in 1995..
“Deewar” remains in the heart of cine lovers till today, and will remain so till eternity….