Bollywood in the 1970's / 80's

Bollywood
By 1970, Hindi cinema was thematically stagnant and dominated by musical romance films. The arrival of screenwriting duo Salim-Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar) was a paradigm shift, revitalizing the industry. They began the genre of gritty, violent, Bombay underworld crime films early in the decade with films such as Zanjeer (1973) and Deewaar (1975). Salim-Javed reinterpreted the rural themes of Mehboob Khan's Mother India (1957) and Dilip Kumar's Gunga Jumna (1961) in a contemporary urban context, reflecting the socio-economic and socio-political climate of 1970s India and channeling mass discontent, disillusionment and the unprecedented growth of slums with anti-establishment themes and those involving urban poverty, corruption and crime. Their "angry young man", personified by Amitabh Bachchan, reinterpreted Dilip Kumar's performance in Gunga Jumna in a contemporary urban context and anguished urban poor. 
By the mid-1970s, romantic confections had given way to gritty, violent crime films and action films about gangsters (the Bombay underworld) and bandits (dacoits). Salim-Javed's writing and Amitabh Bachchan's acting popularised the trend with films such as Zanjeer and (particularly) Deewaar, a crime film inspired by Gunga Jumna which pitted "a policeman against his brother, a gang leader based on real-life smuggler Haji Mastan" (Bachchan); according to Danny Boyle, Deewaar was "absolutely key to Indian cinema". In addition to Bachchan, several other actors followed by riding the crest of the trend (which lasted into the early 1990s). Actresses from the era include Hema Malini, Jaya Bachchan, Raakhee, Shabana Azmi, Zeenat Aman, Parveen Babi, Rekha, Dimple Kapadia, Smita Patil, Jaya Prada, and Padmini Kolhapure. 
The name "Bollywood" was coined during the 1970s when the conventions of commercial Bollywood films were defined. Key to this was the masala film, which combines a number of genres (action, comedy, romance, drama, melodrama, and musical). The masala film was pioneered early in the decade by filmmaker Nasir Hussain, and the Salim-Javed screenwriting duo, pioneering the Bollywood-blockbuster format. Yaadon Ki Baarat (1973), directed by Hussain and written by Salim-Javed, has been identified as the first masala film and the first quintessentially Bollywood film. Salim-Javed wrote more successful masala films during the 1970s and 1980s. Masala films made Amitabh Bachchan the biggest Bollywood star of the period. A landmark of the genre was Amar Akbar Anthony (1977), directed by Manmohan Desai and written by Kader Khan, and Desai continued successfully exploiting the genre. 
Both genres (masala and violent-crime films) are represented by the blockbuster Sholay (1975), written by Salim-Javed and starring Amitabh Bachchan. It combined the dacoit film conventions of Mother India and Gunga Jumna with spaghetti Westerns, spawning the Dacoit Western (also known as the curry Western) which was popular during the 1970s. 

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