ACTOR FOR ALL AGES

AMITABH BACHCHAN

(1942—)

The evergreen megastar of Indian cinema. He was, and is, in tune with every era

More ink has been spilt discussing Amitabh Bachchan’s part in the change that occurred in Indian cinema in the 1970s than vegetable carts have been overturned in filmi fight scenes. The received wisdom goes something like this: up to 1973 and the release of Zanjeer, which saw Amitabh Bachchan playing a police officer with unusual levels of self-doubt, Indian cinema had skipped along merrily in a carefree fashion for decades. First through a post-Independence self-conscious mission to help everyone be better citizens and then through the confident outward-looking 1960s, when being an Indian abroad was celebrated in glorious technicolour and increasingly tight salwar kameez.

Legend has it that one shot of Bachchan’s red-rimmed tortured eyes staring balefully from the screen was supposedly all it took to trigger a national awakening to the possibility of the self-defining male. In Bachchan’s movies, society’s chafing at the failed promises of Independence, the protests and the Emergency are seen as mirrored and refracted in a rare intersection of popular art and popular sentiment. Through the 1970s and into the ’80s, Bachchan ruled supreme; he bestrode the Indian film industry like a disco colossus in his tight white flares, sporting inevitably red-rimmed tortured eyes. He was the bad son, the favourite son, the prodigal son, played out in his films with scoops and scoops of pathos.