Throwback: Sholay's Climax Was Nothing As Decent For Gabbar As We Saw In The Movie; Watch The Original Ending Here

The Dharmendra and Amitabh Bachchan starrer Sholay released in the year 1975 and since then, it has ordained a cult status especially in the Indian cinema space.

However, when it had initially released, the film was not taken nicely by the audiences. To be succinct, the theatres screening Sholay did not see many footfalls when it released on the 15^th of August of the said year. Another blockbuster film too released in the same year which again became a cult of sorts and it was Jai Santoshi Maa. People were flocking to the theatres screening the mythological film instead of the Kurosawa influenced ‘Sholay’.

The makers of the film became wary about it. According to Mr Amitabh Bachchan, who played the character of Jai in the film, the audiences didn’t like the fact that his character (Jai) dies. It was during a media interaction that Big B had some years ago revealed, “We discussed what could be done with the film so that it does better. Many people felt that the audience was unhappy with my death in the film. There were many sequences in ‘Sholay’ which were attractive. One was the widow remarriage. They felt that just when the woman was getting a better life, we removed that with my death.”

He went on to state that they were ready to re-shoot the climax of the film but it was director Ramesh Sippy who didn’t vacillate and wanted the film to be as is.

Mr Ramesh Sippy, in umpteen interactions with film enthusiasts and film students during myriad film festivals and film school guest lectures, spoke about how and why he had to change the climax.

For the uninitiated, the original climax had Thakur (played by Sanjeev Kumar) crushing Gabbar (played by the inimitable Amjad Khan) with his nailed shoes because he had no hands. Sippy stated, according to the censor board this scene along with some other scenes in the film were too violent and vigilante.

Not to forget it was also the time when Emergency had been declared and therefore, the government was worried about how the film might influence the viewers to take up law in their hands and violate it by punishing people severely. Sippy states that he fought a lot to keep the original scenes but had to eventually re-shoot the climax as directed by the censor board and thus in the altered version of the climax in the film, he had the police arrive just before Thakur can kill Gabbar. Along with the alteration of the climax scene, two other scenes were chopped off from the original version of the film citing brutality. They are 1. The scene in which (A.K. Hangal’s) Imam’s son is killed and 2. The scene where Thakur’s family is massacred.

This censored version of the film was the only one to be seen by the audience in the next fifteen years. It was only in the year 1990 that the director’s cut of the film emerged in a British release on VHS. Since then two versions of the film has released on DVD. The original version preserves the original full-frame (with an aspect ratio of 4:3) and is 204 minutes in length whereas the censored widescreen version (i.e. 16:9 aspect ratio) is 198 minutes long.

So, for everyone who has not had the chance of watching the director’s cut version of Sholay, go watch it right away!

For more such interesting tidbits from Bollywood, keep a close tab on Desimartini.com