Good fans of Indian Hindi movies will immediately recognize what I am talking about. Amitabh Bachchan was voted the superstar of the millennium by viewers around the world. Most people watching movies around the world would have heard of this man. But little would they know about the writing duo who created this personality in the 1970s. They were called Salim-Javed although their full names are Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar. Indian movies since their release in 1913 slowly became romance. They have songs to date and were still based on love stories in the early seventies. When India became independent in 1947, her audience began to dream of the future. And after a couple of centuries, frustration set in. His dreams were not being fulfilled. Independence was not what they expected it to be. This caused a wave of anger in the audience. And the personality of the angry young man was a way to vent this frustration. I think the phrase originated from the “Angry Young Men” group of middle-class British playwrights and novelists during the 1950s and 1960s.
Bollywood as it is widely known is the largest film industry in the world and this is because it has a huge number of Indian fans across the globe. The romantic themes that were created to entertain the masses during the 1930s onwards created romantic heroes who looked ridiculous in the climactic action sequences of the movie because they weren’t designed for action movies. There were a few exceptions, like Dharmendra and Sunil Dutt, who made good action movies during the period.
In 1969, a thin and very tall man who, by the way, did not seem romantic or attractive to women, entered the film industry. He struggled to land roles for a couple of years and only made low-budget movies that mostly flopped at the box office. What little success he had was due to other artists associated with the films. The writing duo of Salim Javed launched their successful career in 1971 with the romantic hit Andaz and went on to write successful films like Seeta Aur Geeta afterwards. Salim Khan wrote the screenplay for Zanjeer and after several top actors refused to play the revenge-seeking cop, the role went to Amitabh Bachchan. The trend-setting film directed by Prakash Mehra brought a revolution in Indian cinema with Big B breathing the angry young man of the nation. Amitabh was called Vijay in the movie and this name was also repeated many times later in the Angry Young Man movies.
The era of romantic movies was definitely over. What followed over the course of 10 years were several brilliantly written action-revenge movies by the pair creating a database like no other in movie history. The emergency that occurred in 1976 further drew the ire of the public and more such films followed. To Bachchan and Salim-Javed’s credit, the other creators were unable to create the same magic, especially during that period. Both Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar are gifted scriptwriters and have a keen sense for effective dialogue writing. So not only were the stories different each time, the dialogue was exceptionally well written, and then delivered effectively on screen by the angry young man! You cannot look anywhere else while looking at this person. The 6’2″ man with a booming voice was a perfect casting for these movies.
So a series of movies that followed include Deewar, Sholay, Shaan, Shakti, Kaala Paththar etc. Although it is true that not everyone had Amitabh as the angry young man. I call them noir films because they were elegant, a bit gloomy, and brilliant.
As is the case with great unions, the trio broke up in the mid-1980s and went their separate ways creating several major hits independently proving their skill and popularity with the Indian public. But the angry young man will never again be touched by so many movies created over a long period of 10 years! A great actor combined with two great writers who worked together with the best directors and actors of the time rightly supported the person giving him an intensity that was unmatched before and since!