Amar Akbar Anthony

The story

Amar Akbar Anthony opens with the oldest trope in Hindi cinema and turns it into pure fireworks. On a single fateful day, a driver named Kishanlal (Pran) takes the fall for his crime-boss employer, loses everything, and his three small sons are scattered across Bombay. Their blind mother Bharati (Nirupa Roy) wanders off, presumed lost. Each boy is then raised in a different faith: the eldest becomes Amar, a Hindu police inspector (Vinod Khanna); the youngest becomes Akbar Ilahabadi, a Muslim qawwali singer (Rishi Kapoor); and the middle one becomes Anthony Gonsalves, a Catholic bootlegger with a heart of gold (Amitabh Bachchan).

Director Manmohan Desai stitches their separate lives back together through a cascade of coincidences that the film wears as a badge of honour rather than an apology. The most famous is a blood-donation sequence in which all three grown brothers, still strangers to one another, give blood to the same injured woman at the same time, not knowing she is their mother. It is medically nonsensical and emotionally overwhelming in equal measure, which is exactly the register the movie lives in. The three lovers, Salma, Lakshmi and Jenny (played by Neetu Singh, Shabana Azmi and Parveen Babi), the villains, and the long-lost parents all converge for a climax of disguises, rescues and reunions.

Making of the film

Amar Akbar Anthony crowned a once-in-a-career year for Manmohan Desai, who had four major hits in 1977. Working from a story and dialogue conceived with writers including Kader Khan and Prayag Raj, Desai took the lost-and-found melodrama that Hindi cinema had been telling since Yash Chopra's Waqt (1965) and pushed it to its most joyful, most secular extreme, three sons of one mother literally embodying three of India's faiths. The film was shot at a rapid clip, and legend has it that many of its most beloved moments came together on the floor rather than on the page.

Amitabh Bachchan's contribution became part of Bollywood folklore. His drunken monologue delivered to his own bruised reflection in a mirror, addressing himself in mangled English, was reportedly improvised on set and turned Anthony into the film's breakout figure. Anthony's introduction, popping out of a giant Easter egg, is another piece of Desai showmanship that fans still quote. The combination of Bachchan's clowning, Rishi Kapoor's romantic charm and Vinod Khanna's straight-arrow gravity gave the film three distinct flavours in a single dish, the essence of masala.

The music

The soundtrack, composed by Laxmikant-Pyarelal with lyrics by Anand Bakshi, was as big a phenomenon as the film. "My Name Is Anthony Gonsalves," picturised on Bachchan, gave the character an anthem; "Parda Hai Parda," a rousing qawwali sung by Mohammed Rafi, became Akbar's showcase; and "Shirdi Wale Sai Baba" tied the story's devotional climax to the Sai Baba shrine. The album is often cited among the greatest in Hindi film history.

Its rarest achievement is "Humko Tumse Ho Gaya Hai Pyar," widely reported as the only recording to bring Mukesh, Kishore Kumar, Mohammed Rafi and Lata Mangeshkar together on a single song, one legendary voice for each pair of lovers. Laxmikant-Pyarelal won the Filmfare Award for Best Music Director for their work here, part of a remarkable run of wins for the duo in this period.

Performances

Though it is a true ensemble, the film belongs to Amitabh Bachchan, who won the Filmfare Award for Best Actor as Anthony Gonsalves, a comic role in an era when the trophy usually went to tragedy and intensity. Rishi Kapoor, fresh and boyish, carries the film's romance and its best song sequences, while Vinod Khanna supplies the sober centre of gravity that lets the other two go big.

The supporting bench is just as strong. Nirupa Roy, in perhaps the most iconic screen-mother performance of her career, anchors the melodrama; Pran brings dignity to the wronged father; and Neetu Singh, Shabana Azmi and Parveen Babi give the three heroines real presence. The film also collected a Filmfare Award for Best Editing, a nod to how tightly its sprawling, coincidence-packed plot is actually cut together.

Legacy and box office

Amar Akbar Anthony was one of the biggest earners of 1977, reported to have grossed around 155 million rupees and ranking among the year's top films alongside Dharam Veer and Hum Kisise Kum Naheen. Its success cemented Amitabh Bachchan's superstardom and confirmed Manmohan Desai as the reigning showman of Hindi cinema.

More than a hit, it became the template our editors point to for the lost-and-found masala entertainer, the film every later multi-star, multi-faith reunion drama is measured against. It was remade across the south, as Shankar Salim Simon in Tamil, Ram Robert Rahim in Telugu and John Jaffer Janardhanan in Malayalam, and it remains a fixture on best-of-Bollywood lists and a beloved repertory-screening favourite decades later. Its blend of comedy, action, devotion and unabashed sentiment is still shorthand for what a Bombay masala movie can be.

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