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At the beginning of Amitabh Bachchan’s career, many consecutive films flopped, due to which he became almost unemployed. Then the film ‘Zanjeer’ became the turning point of his career.
Recently, in an interview to ‘Hook Global’, Javed Akhtar said that he and Salim Bachchan cannot take credit for making ‘Angry Young Man’. He definitely believed that he had to fight a lot to take Bachchan for chain, because at that time he was considered commercially weak.
Javed Akhtar said,
There were very few people who respected him very much, even when 11 of his consecutive films were flopped, such as Jaya, who was not his wife at that time, but at that time Jaya knew bravery what Amitabh could do. He had full faith in his talent. Rishikesh Mukherjee also had great faith in Amitabh’s talent, so he kept giving him work again and again.
Apart from Amitabh in ‘Zanjeer’, Jaya bravery, Pran, Ajit Khan were also there.
Javed Akhtar also said,
We saw him in a flop film, but we saw that it is a volcano, which can ever burst. He was also very good in his worst films. The film was bad, the script was poor, dialogues and screenplays were also weak, but their work was fantastic. We were confident that this is a big star who was just looking for the right opportunity.
‘Zanjeer’ (1973) was directed and produced by Prakash Mehra. The story of the film was written by Salim-Javed.
Javed Akhtar said that at that time Amitabh Bachchan was playing a gentle character like Doctor, Shire, but he played a dark character in the film ‘Parwana’. In a scene, when he gets angry at Om Prakash, the fire in his eyes was shocked to him. Seeing that intensity, he understood that he is the real victory of ‘Zanjeer’.
Telling the story of reciting the script of Zanjeer, Javed said,
I was confident that no one could do this role better than them. We met only once. I called them and said- ‘There is a script, I want to recite together.’ He immediately got ready because he did not have work. I heard the whole script. He started looking at me with surprise and said- ‘Do you think I can play this role?’ I said- ‘No one can do this better than you in this country.’
The film shows the story of an honest police officer Vijay, who fights against the crime.
The film Zanjeer proved to be a big hit film of Amitabh’s career. After this, Salim-Javed wrote films like ‘Wall’ and ‘Sholay’ in which Amitabh appeared and became the big star of Hindi cinema.