Amar Akbar Anthony became a legend and by far the most successful entertainer of its time. Released in 1977, it was a super hit and is considered the best film made by Manmohan Desai, the undisputed king of the lost and found formula. A typical Manmohan Desai 'masala', it had the apt quantity of the necessary ingredients like action, emotion, drama, comedy and tragedy. The film's highlight apart from its story, screenplay, dialogue and direction was the character of Anthony Gonsalves played by Amitabh Bachchan. The film undoubtedly sees one of Amitabh's best performances ever. It gave him immense popularity and catapulted his position and career to unmatched heights and to super stardom. It also gave a whole new dimension to his acting career and the success of the film showed that he was more than just being the Angry Young Man of Indian Cinema.
The character was that of a local Christian of Bombay and it became immensely popular because of his language and mannerisms and was a rage through out the country. In fact it made the Bambaiya Hindi popular all over the country. An interesting fact to know was that Anthony Gonsalves was actually inspired from a man of the same name who used to live in Khetwadi, an area in Mumbai where Manmohan Desai also lived. His unique mannerisms had always impressed Manmohan Desai, who decided to incorporate this in his film.
According to Desai, the film was inspired by a news item about an alcoholoic who regularly beat up his wife. One day, the disraught woman, abandoning her three small children on the kerbside disappeared. This gave Desai the idea to show each one growing up in three religious households, Hindu, Muslim and Christian. From this germ of an idea, the film grew into an incredibly implausible yet highly absorbing tale. Escapism is part of experience when viewing a Manmohan Desai film, and this film is filled with it.
There is many a moment that makes this film so memorable. The scene where Amitabh is drunk and is applying the medicine on the mirror to his reflection is by far is the best potrayal of a scene of this kind and continues to inspire many actors till today. The action sequence between Amitabh and Vinod Khanna with both of them in their vests, resulting in Amitabh getting thrashed are some of the few nostalgic moments. The wearing of vests by the two of them was largely merchandised through press and hoarding form of advertising and was visible all over the country. Apart from this, the scene where Amar Akbar and Anthony are introduced as they simultaneously donate blood to their mother, highlights the vision of the director and his ability to successfully carry off even the most illogical situation convincingly. One also can't forget the scene where Amar re-unites with his father while digging out his toy, a pistol given to him by his father when he was a kid.
The dialogue of Anthony are however the icing on the cake. The language had become an integral part of every home then and continues to be widely spoken and remembered even today.
The film also has Vinod Khanna, an honest police officer and Rishi Kapoor, a qawwali singer in the other lead roles of Amar and Akbar respectively; both of whose characters lent able support to the script. The film does bring out a sense of communal harmony with the brothers being brought up as followers of different religions. What's more the brothers constantly keep running into each other every second scene but are unaware of the fact that they are blood brothers.
The actresses in the female lead are however placed as mandatory requirements to the film, Parveen Babi, Shabana Azmi and Neetu Singh basically fulfil the requirements of glamour and romance. Among the supporting artists, Mukri playing Neetu Singh's father stands out.
The music of the film was fairly successful with all the tracks topping the charts. Parda Hai Parda, My Name is Anthony Gonzalves, the title song and Tayaballi Pyar ka Dushman are hummed till today. In fact the music fetched Laxmikant - Pyarelal the Filmfare award for the best music that year, despite the tough competition from RD Burman (Hum Kisi se Kum Nahin (1977)) - an award they won after a span of eight years. Incidentally talking of awards, it also won Amitabh his first Filmfare award for the best actor.
Amar Akbar Anthony remains a cult favourite in the minds of the people and still attracts housefull audiences whenever it is screened. This film also marked the beginning of the immensely successful team of Manmohan Desai and Amitabh who went onto do films like Parvarish (1977), Suhaag (1979), Naseeb (1981), Desh Premee (1982), Coolie (1983), Mard (1985) and Ganga Jamuna Sarawati (1988).
