“Deewaar Was Made In Just 76 Shifts”: Rajiv Rai On The Legacy Of Trimurti Films

In all the hype surrounding Sholay’s golden jubilee, another cult film, Deewaar, also starring Amitabh Bachchan, has almost been eclipsed. Yash Chopra’s action crime drama opened in the same year, 1975, on January 24, the Republic Day weekend, as against the Independence Day release of Ramesh Sippy’s curry western. However, Deewaar, produced by his father, Gulshan Rai, tops filmmaker Rajiv Rai’s list of favourites even after 50 years. “I can watch the film again and again, it’s beautifully scripted and wonderfully enacted,” he applauds.

Back in the ’70s, Rajiv—who is a writer, director, producer and editor today—was still in college and so didn’t get to see much of the shooting or even the editing. “I wasn’t directly involved, didn’t contribute to the film in any way, but I did watch Deewaar taking shape from the outside. Whenever I was home, I would sit in on the discussions, both at home and at the office,” he shares, recalling how writers Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar would drop by once a week to see his father. There were also meetings with the director and the rest of the team on the budget, the necessary permissions required to shoot at the newly-opened Hotel Oberoi Intercontinental in India’s capital city, even the distribution strategy, among other things.

Deewaar is the story of two brothers, Vijay and Ravi Verma, who find themselves on opposite sides of the law, with their mother, Sumitra, caught in the middle of their ideological conflict. It is real, raw, intense and unconventional for a mainstream Hindi film, particularly in its treatment of romance, with Vijay getting intimate with a sex worker he meets at the bar and impregnating her before marriage. Yet, Rajiv asserts that he was confident it would work. “It looked stunning to me, a breath of fresh air. It was unlike Yash Chopra’s earlier films—less romantic and more action. Despite the super success of Zanjeer (1973), Bachchan was not a superstar yet. Even for Salim and Javed, this script was the clincher, but it had strong writing and performances and I had a feeling Deewaar would do well as I would often tell my father when it was under production,” he recalls.

His father shared his confidence. Rajiv says that once he had made up his mind on a story and greenlit a project, Gulshan Rai knew where it was going, without needing to see the rushes and sometimes, even nodding off during the trial show. “Deewaar was a smooth ride, made within the allotted budget, and completed in just 76 shifts—shifts, not days,” he reiterates. There was only one change. It was planned as a songless film, but since naach-gaana is an integral part of commercial Hindi cinema, RD Burman composed more than half-a-dozen songs. “Keh doon tumhein, ya chup rahoon” and “Maine tujhe maanga tujhe paaya hai” became popular, but both the romantic duets were filmed on Shashi Kapoor and Neetu Singh, with Bachchan as the brooding Vijay getting no songs. “Two songs were cut from the final print, I don’t know if that was dad’s call or the editor’s decision. The three-hour-sixteen-minute film was trimmed down to three hours, six minutes,” Rajiv reveals.

Their production company, Trimurti Films, was founded by Gulshan Rai in 1969 and launched the following year with Vijay Anand’s crime thriller, Johny Mera Naam (1970). This was followed by a hat trick of Yash Chopra directorials—Joshila in 1973, Deewaar in 1975 and Trishul in 1978. While Joshila repeated Johny Mera Naam’s lead pair of Anand and Hema Malini, Trishul brought back Bachchan and Kapoor as brothers again.

“Trishul was my training ground. I was the assistant director on this film—the junior most of eight ADs,” Rajiv smiles, informing that the film was almost completely shot in New Delhi. This time, Bachchan and Kapoor’s lady loves were Raakhee and Hema Malini, with Waheeda Rehman in a guest appearance opposite Sanjeev Kumar. Poonam Dhillon made her debut opposite Sachin and their song “Gapoochi gapoochi gum gum” was a chart-topper.

“Khayyam’s music was good. He brought together three legends, Kishore Kumar, Lata Mangeshkar and Yesudas, for the song ‘Mohabbat bade kaam ki cheez hai’.” Rajiv admits, without wanting to go into details, that some of Trishul was reshot. But he is quick to point out that since Gulshan Rai had been a numero uno distributor before he became a producer and helped many filmmakers fashion success stories with his timely advice, he had a sixth sense about what would work and what needed to be repaired. “Trishul was the second biggest grosser of the year (after Bachchan and Vinod Khanna’s Muqaddar Ka Sikandar).”

Four years after Trishul came another big-budget multi-starrer, Vidhaata (1982), directed by Subhash Ghai, after which Rajiv has helmed all their home productions, from Yudh (1985) and Tridev (1989) in the ’80s, Vishwatma (1992), Mohra (1994) and Gupt: The Hidden Truth (1997) in the ‘90s, Pyaar Ishq Aur Mohabbat in 2001 and Asambhav in 2004. After that, Rajiv went off the radar, returning to the screen recently with Zora, which begins with the murder of a cop by a mysterious woman in black, after which his son tries to unmask her identity. There is a Yash Chopra connection here, too. Rajiv was fascinated by the director’s 1969 murder mystery, Ittefaq, where the prime suspect was a painter played by Rajesh Khanna, who reportedly was the first choice for Deewaar. It was the last film he directed for his producer brother, BR Chopra, which was financed and distributed by Gulshan Rai.

“I must have watched Ittefaq eight to nine times,” says Rajiv, who more than three decades later, wrote, directed, edited and co-produced Gupt: The Hidden Truth with his father. “Many tried to dissuade me from making Gupt, pointing out that the identity of the murderer would be leaked after the first show and no one would go to the theatres to watch it,” he admits. The film was a blockbuster and like Nanda, a top-ranking actress in the ’60s, Kajol, a superstar in the ’90s, was accepted as the murderer, becoming the first actress to win the Filmfare award for a negative role.

Zora was more modest as compared to his earlier extravaganzas. “My dad always said, ‘Son, make a film, not a budget’ and Vishwatma’s Nairobi schedule itself cost me Rs 90 lakh. But the scenario is different today and given that I was returning after a long time, I shot Zora in and around Jaipur, without stars and with a budget of just Rs 2 crores, which even with post-production, print and publicity doesn’t exceed Rs 5 crores,” he informs.

On August 8, after more than two decades, Rajiv Rai returned to the theatres in the 55^th year of Trimurti Films. And he’s already planning to return, early next year, with Zora Zoravar, a sequel to Zora which he shot simultaneously.

Roshmila Bhattacharya is a senior journalist and the author of four books on cinema.