Amar Akbar Anthony (1977)

1977
Directed by: Manmohan Desai
Music: Laxmikant-Pyarelal
Starring: Pran, Nirupa Roy, Jeevan, Rishi Kapoor, Amitabh Bachchan,
Vinod Khanna, Parveen Babi, Shabana, Neetu Singh, Azmi, Mukri

Like Sholay, this is another of the movies from the 70s that has not only weathered well, but has became so famous that I’m sure everyone knows some of the dialogues, if not the story (now that can be confusing!). 

Amar Akbar Anthony was inspired madness. This was entertainment at its silliest best. Three brothers, three girlfriends, three religions; two villains (well, one not-so-villainish), a blind mother, a suicide letter; multiple blood donations and Easter eggs. Throw in a cobra, a miracle, a locket, and more than enough plot twists to fuel an entire year of masala films. Add cart loads of fun. Forget the plot – there wasn’t any. Or perhaps, there was too much of it. It had a little bit of everything for everyone, and Manmohan Desai pinned it all to the anchor of Amitabh’s Anthony Gonsalvez (if you will forgive the mixed metaphor). 

Kishenlal (Pran) is released from jail and goes home to find his children hungry and his wife Bharati (Nirupa Roy) suffering from tuberculosis. He had taken the rap for his boss, Robert (Jeevan at his stylised best), with the latter promising to take care of his family. When he goes to Robert for restitution, he is humiliated and rebuffed. Infuriated by the callousness, Kishenlal tries to kill Robert but is forced to run for his life. When he comes home, he finds that Bharati, unwilling to be a burden on him, has left their three children behind and gone away to commit suicide. (She does leave him a note, though.)

Kishenlal has no time to mourn her; he picks up his children and using one of Robert’s cars as a getaway vehicle leaves home. Leaving his children in a park (under Gandhiji’s statue, on August 15 – nice touch!) in his eldest son’s care, he tries to lead his pursuers away from his children. In the ensuing chase, the car crashes, and Kishenlal is presumed dead.

In the meantime, the children have separated – the eldest, Amar, knocked down by a car, is adopted by a police inspector (Kamal Kapoor); the middle one, Anthony, running through the rain to seek help, finally faints outside a church, and is taken in by the large-hearted Catholic priest (Nasir Hussain); the baby left under the statue in the park, is picked up by a kind Muslim tailor (Shivraj), who also rescues Bharati, who had been struck by a tree in the storm and is now blind.  When Kishenlal, who has escaped the crash, comes back to look for his sons, the park is empty. The disintegration of the family is complete. 

Cue to twenty two years later (Idle comment no.1: No one seems to be sure just how many years have passed. Kishenlal says 20, Anthony (and the priest) say 22, and Jenny says 25 - I suppose it is not important!): Bharati, now a flower seller, has fainted outside the church and is taken by Anthony (Amitabh Bachchan), the bootlegging Robin Hood of the neighbourhood, to hospital, where Akbar (Rishi Kapoor) is busy romancing Dr Salma Ali (Neetu Singh). Inspector Amar (Vinod Khanna) comes to the hospital to check on the accident case, and we see all three giving blood (at the same time!) to the woman who is their mother… only none of them know her, or each other.

 

And all this happens pre-credits! (Probably the longest pre-credit sequence in the history of cinema.)

If you have been confused by the story so far, just wait, and you will be confused a lot more.

Akbar and Anthony are friends, and Anthony is invited to the former’s quawwali programme. He comes along bringing Bharati with him. And we are treated to the energetic Purdah hai purdah. Salma is there with her father and his harem. Akbar takes the opportunity to proudly and publicly declare his love for her, much to her father’s annoyance.

 

Meanwhile, Inspector Amar, tracking a highway robbery case, comes across Lakshmi (Shabana Azmi) who is being forced by her stepmother (Nadira in a guest appearance) and stepbrother Ranjeet (Ranjeet) to act as decoy.

 

The wheel of fortune has turned for both Kishenlal and Robert; the former gets his start in life with the smuggled gold that was in Robert’s car; the latter, his daughter having been kidnapped by Kishenlal has now come down in the world. But it doesn’t take long for fickle fate to change sides; the police arrive on the scene and in the ensuing chaos, Robert escapes with a crateful of Kishenlal’s gold. (Idle comment no.2: Why are people so casually careless with their property? Everyone seems to be misplacing a crate or two of gold all the time. And why is it that the gold is so awfully light that they can just tuck a crate under their arms and run?) 

While escaping, he runs into Anthony, who insists that he has only seen men run in this fashion for two reasons. 

Inspector Amar is on the lookout for the man who shot his foster father; word comes in that Robert was seen with Anthony. And so Amar goes to visit Anthony. 

 

Alas, that doesn’t end well for Anthony.

 

On the way to court, Anthony is kidnapped; he meets a man who asks him about Robert. A handful of chilli powder, a whirring fan, a quick fight later, Anthony is back in jail. But he is puzzled. 

 

Learning that Robert had shot the Superintendent of police (Amar's foster father) Anthony is quick to take Amar to his hideout under the Church. Only, Robert has flown the coop, and the Father is very angry with Anthony. He advises Anthony to find a good girl and settle down. Even as Anthony is telling the priest what sort of a girl he would like to marry, Robert’s daughter Jenny, who has been brought up by Kishenlal, is arriving in Bombay. 

And Anthony, meeting her in church, falls head over heels in love with her.

 

He even woos her with a song; only she is guarded by Zebisco, a man who takes ‘body' guard a bit too literally. Leading to what is possibly the best comedy scene of all time…

Soon the brothers are singing and romancing their respective lady loves – in a boat, in a horse chariot, on a train, on the beach, in the garden…

 

But Taiyab Ali has Akbar beaten up by thugs; Zebisco is intent on marrying Jenny, and is willing to broker a deal with Robert toward that end; and Ranjeet is still at large; in fact, he has joined Robert’s gang. Meanwhile, Bharati is under the impression that her husband and sons are dead; Kishenlal presumes Bharati is dead, and his sons missing. Jenny, Robert’s daughter, considers Robert her father’s murderer, but learns that the man she is marrying is one of Kishenlal's missing sons. The brothers are merrily crossing paths with each other, and with their parents without knowing who they really are.

Anthony gets to become a scarecrow and a fake priest, while Akbar gets to pretend to be his own uncle. And Amar stands in for an entire wedding band. Confused much? (Idle comment No.3: It says much for Manmohan Desai's firm grip over the direction and Prayag Raj's writing ability that the many disparate strands eventually became a cohesive whole.)  

 

Will Kishenlal reunite with Bharati and his sons? Will Jenny go back to her real father and hate Kishenlal for abducting her? Will Taiyeb Ali allow Akbar to marry Salma? Will son punish his father for his foster-father's death? And will someone tell me who thought up the plot line (such as it is)?  

This was a film that demanded that you not only suspend disbelief, but also forget what ‘logic’ meant. With a frontline cast of Vinod Khanna, Rishi Kapoor and Amitabh Bachchan (the heroines, Parveen Babi, Neetu Singh and Shabana Azmi were mere eye candy), Manmohan Desai took the audience on a rollicking rollercoaster ride of implausibility. But it was so quick-paced, and the editing (Kamlakar) so controlled, that you had no time to say ‘Huh, what?!’ before all hell breaks loose in a madcap finale, to the musical accompaniment by Akbar – talk about Nero fiddling while Rome burnt.

Vinod Khanna had the most sedate role as Amar, but it was important because his sobriety balanced Amitabh’s over-the-top Anthony. However, he gets to exhibit his fun side in the climax when he proceeds to show up as a one-man band, playing in accompaniment to the brothers' song. 

Rishi-Neetu’s Akbar-Salma pairing was probably the cutest love story in the mix. Akbar, as the entertainer, also had the pick of the film’s songs – from the foot-tapping quawwali Purdah hai purdah to the (real) eunuch-accompanied Taiyeb Ali pyar ka dushman  to the mellifluous Sai Bhajan Shirdi waale Sai Baba. (Idle comment no.4: Please watch the twin flames emanate from Saibaba’s eyes and proceed toward Bharati’s without falling over laughing.)

Akbar wore colourful lungis and floral shirts and prayer caps with such insouciance that he made it fashionable. A thread-like mouche and chewing paan had never looked so cool before.

But the film truly belonged to Amitabh Bachchan. He legitimised, nay, celebrated the use of Bambaiyya Hindi, and his characterisation gave Hindi films one of its most enduring (and endearing) characters – Anthony Gonsalvez. Whether it was his jack-in-the-box impersonation out of an Easter Egg (dressed in a caricature of formal tails and white gloves) or his Father Anthony, complete with grey beard, cassock and rosary, his loud wooing of his Jenny (a beautiful Parveen Babi) or his sympathetic bandaging of his reflection in the mirror – Amitabh was beyond awesome! No one ever scaled those heights of slapstick quite so seriously before. And he fought well (and only lost to his older brother), and danced, and romanced, and cried a little bit too.

The film crowned Amitabh Bachchan as an ‘One Man Variety Show’ as Ramesh Sippy called him. He was no longer the ‘Angry Young Man’ alone. His flair for comedy had been exploited before, most notably by Hrishikesh Mukherjee, but it was Manmohan Desai who gave him a vehicle that revealed his flair for absurdity. Amar Akbar Anthony was a comedy of errors – on high speed. 

Add Pran, Nirupa Roy, Jeevan, and Helen in a cameo, a plethora of hummable songs, including the completely absurd My name is Anthony Gonsalvez interspersed with even more absurd English dialogues, and you had a ‘to-tul taime pass’ film on your hands. 

Call it improbable, implausible, impossible even, but the absolutely escapist fare left the audience gasping breathlessly in the aisles – if this was mindless entertainment, then ladle out some more!

Trivia: Rishi Kapoor shopped for his famous see-through shirts and netted vests at Bombay’s Fashion Street, and for chappals from Linking Road, Bandra, to become the young Muslim quawwal Akbar Illahabadi. 

Parveen Babi was in splits when a journalist, accompanied by a photographer from Filmfare went to interview her during the shooting. A combination of his first name and the photographer’s last name was the name of Mukri’s character in the film – Taiyeb Ali.

Amitabh’s comic monologues in the middle of My name is Anthony Gonsalvez were his own creation, and his idea. The original character was named Anthony Fernandez, and based on a man whom director Manmohan Desai knew in his youth. Somehow the name didn’t catch anyone’s fancy, and when Laxmikant-Pyarelal were scoring the music, it was their suggestion that the last name be changed to Gonsalvez – thus paying tribute to Pyarelal’s old violin teacher, and an important, but unknown film musician, the real Anthony Gonsalvez.

ps: I’m sorry to inform bollyviewer that Nirupa Roy was at the heights of carelessness in this film; she misplaced not one, not two, but three children!

pps: Some shots of the eyecandy; sorry, heroines. 

 

And some of the glorious yesteryear men’s fashions. (Did I mention they were ‘cool’?)