Retro Express | When Bollywood Knew How to Make An Entrance

Start-a? My baby brother would ask, in his Tamlish, standing, clutching onto the chair in front of him in anticipation, as the lights in the cinema dimmed and one ad film rolled after the other. As a five year old, he was not being able to tell the difference between the censor certificate for the ads and the feature film, as they basically looked the same, and hence his anxiety and FOMO.

Even as my father grumbled about a wasted ticket, we endured Vicco Vajradanti , Cherry Blossom and HMT watch commercials, glued to our seats in the hope that the next one may be the last one and then we can get on with what we actually came to the cinemas for—the feature film. 

And more often than not, my brother wouldn’t get the memo and we would be well into the middle of the title sequence before he understood that the movie had already started and he would be annoyed that no one told him. 

We laugh about it now, but it reminds me how much excitement the title sequence generated. If you were watching Shaan (1980), the titles with their James Bondesque opening credits and Usha Uthup’s looming voice as she sings “Doston se pyar kiya...” set the stage for a high octane and highly stylised drama. The language was modern; the mood euphoric, grand, much like the name of the movie. 

In an age of “skip intro”, this grand Bollywood opening feels like a lost pleasure. 

There was a time when Hindi films did not simply begin; they arrived—with music, typography, montage, mood, the works. The title sequence was a ceremony in which a film introduced not just its cast, but its own sense of self. In the Hindi cinema of the 1960s, 70s and 80s, some of the best filmmaking happened even before the story properly started.

Take Waqt (1965). Even before the famous earthquake-induced “lost and found” machinery of the film unfolds, there is a sense that destiny itself is taking the stage. The titles in such films often did more than excite you about star cast; they prepared you emotionally. You almost had a sense of the universe you were entering, even as Balraj Sahni sings to his wife and their three kids look on—you knew that from here on, coincidence would be cosmic, suffering would be on an operatic level and families would cross paths several times before they were finally together again.

Then there is Yaadon Ki Baaraat (1973). The film opens with a family reunion and Lata Mangeshkar’s version of the title song. There is a happy family where the husband and wife adore each other, there are kids and a nanny is very much part of the fabric. We know already that when there are three kids, they are bound to be lost and found. And what do you know, by the time the song ends, the parents are killed off and the kids shoot off in different directions to reveal the opening credits.

If you missed the title sequence, you missed the anchor of the film. That opening is a declaration of what Hindi popular cinema would become—emotionally excessive and musically saturated. Critics and historians have repeatedly identified it as a landmark in the masala tradition. 

And then, of course came the great showman intros. When Amitabh Bachchan was announced “In and As” Don (1978) —with his big explosive entry to Kalyanji Anandji’s soundtrack and a montage in negatives—we were promised extreme showmanship, swagger and true value for our money.

Sholay (1975) unveiled a whole different world. The scale, the sound, the landscape, the confidence—even the credits seemed to know they were part of something larger than a movie. As my father beamed loudly at R.D. Burman’s clever lift of Hollywood Westerns, the tone was set for something spectacular. You were simply expected to submit. 

In Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), the evergreen lost-and-found formula by Manmohan Desai, all the kids and the family are conveniently lost before the title credits. They are a revelation of their identities as the three brothers begin their new lives with their new families. It is a perfect example of an era when the title sequence could carry the whole ideological charge of the film. The tone is already set: plural, noisy, affectionate, larger than life. This was cinema as feast, and the opening credits were the first course. 

One title sequence that speaks Bollywood in bold capitals is The Burning Train (1980), a perfect example of Bollywood mainstream. Dazzlingly psychedelic, the sequence uses the train motif and image ghosting to set us up for the exciting thriller. The low angle shots of oncoming trains are set in a high contrast of blues, reds, pinks and greens.

With The Burning Train and Shaan, title sequences became almost architectural. They announced scale, ensemble, danger, glamour. These were films that wanted to impress you before they entertained you; there was no contradiction between the two. Even the font choices seemed to say: we have money, stars and at least three subplots waiting for you.

A title sequence creates a threshold. It nudges the audience to leave one world and enter another. It says: we’re not in a hurry; come with us. To see a name bloom on screen—Amitabh Bachchan, Dharmendra, Vinod Khanna—was an event. What made those openings memorable was not just nostalgia or camp. It was that they understood something we have partly lost—that anticipation is part of pleasure.

Because a great title sequence did something that today’s algorithmic storytelling simply cannot: it created expectation without anxiety. It let a film flirt before it performed. Perhaps that is why those old openings linger. They assumed that we had time, that we could wait a little before the plot “started.” They understood that cinema is not only about what happens; it is also an invitation, a promise. 

And unlike today’s intros, you never wanted to skip it.

Unfortunately, we live in a doomscrolling era and streaming platforms have trained us to treat opening credits as “not necessary”. Even theatrical films often rush into the plot as if they fear abandonment. We are expected to be hooked in seven seconds else we are ready to abandon. Storytelling has become oddly embarrassed by preamble.

It is a cultural mood. It reflects how we consume stories now: faster, more efficiency, less ceremony. We do not enter stories or live in stories anymore; we access content.

And maybe that is the real loss.