The Angry Young Man: how Amitabh Bachchan changed Hindi cinema

At the start of the 1970s Hindi cinema was dominated by romantic heroes and gentle melodrama. By the end of the decade it belonged to a tall, intense actor with a deep voice who played men fighting injustice. That actor was Amitabh Bachchan, and the screen persona he created became known as the “Angry Young Man”.

A slow start

Bachchan made his debut in Saat Hindustani (1969). He was praised for his role opposite Rajesh Khanna in Hrishikesh Mukherjee’s Anand (1971), but a string of films failed and he was close to giving up.

Zanjeer, 1973

The turning point was Zanjeer (1973), directed by Prakash Mehra and written by the screenwriting duo Salim–Javed (Salim Khan and Javed Akhtar). Several established stars had turned down the role of Inspector Vijay Khanna, a police officer who rarely smiles and seeks revenge for his parents’ murder. Bachchan took it, and the film became a huge hit.

Audiences saw something new: a hero whose anger reflected their own frustrations.

Why the anger connected

India in the early and mid-1970s faced high inflation, unemployment and political unrest. Many young people felt let down by the system. Bachchan’s characters — often named Vijay — were outsiders who took on corrupt officials, smugglers and landlords. They were not perfect; they were hurt, proud and often lonely. That made them believable.

Deewaar, 1975

Yash Chopra’s Deewaar (1975), again written by Salim–Javed, is often considered the defining film of the era. Bachchan plays Vijay, a dock worker who becomes a smuggler, while his brother (Shashi Kapoor) becomes a policeman. The film’s exchange between the brothers, ending in “Mere paas maa hai” (“I have mother”), is one of the most quoted lines in Indian cinema.

Sholay, 1975

The same year brought Ramesh Sippy’s Sholay, in which Bachchan played Jai, the quiet and witty partner of Dharmendra’s Veeru. Sholay ran in Mumbai’s Minerva cinema for five years and is still regarded as one of the greatest Indian films ever made.

The golden run

The following years produced a remarkable series of hits:

• Amar Akbar Anthony (1977) — a comedy-drama about three separated brothers, directed by Manmohan Desai.
• Don (1978) — a crime thriller with a double role.
• Trishul (1978) and Kaala Patthar (1979), both with Yash Chopra.
• Muqaddar Ka Sikandar (1978) and Laawaris (1981).

Bachchan became so dominant that the French director François Truffaut was reported to have called him a “one-man industry”.

The Coolie accident

In July 1982, while filming a fight scene for Coolie in Bengaluru, Bachchan suffered a serious abdominal injury. For weeks he was critically ill, and people across India prayed for his recovery. When Coolie was released in 1983, the scene was frozen with a caption marking the moment of the injury. The episode showed how deeply audiences cared about him.

Lasting influence

The Angry Young Man changed Hindi cinema in several ways:

1. Action moved to the centre. Fight scenes and crime stories became mainstream.
2. Writers gained status. Salim–Javed became stars in their own right, with their names on posters.
3. The hero became complicated. Later stars, from Shah Rukh Khan’s early villains to modern action heroes, owe something to Bachchan’s flawed, brooding men.

Beyond anger

Bachchan later moved into very different roles — a teacher in Black (2005), a child with a rare ageing disorder in Paa (2009) and a cranky father in Piku (2015) — and won National Awards for all three. But for many fans the image of Vijay, standing alone against an unfair world, remains the purest expression of his stardom.