Sette Pe Satta, one of many prime grossers of 1982 and the madhouse that gave us some rolling banter and a crazily progressive soundtrack by RD Burman, turns 40 at the moment. Directed by Raj N Sippy, it starred Amitabh Bachchan because the eldest brother answerable for a household of slobs that stay on a ranch with horses, cows and poultry for firm. One tune describes the seven brothers as “seven wonders of the world.” Instead, they’re the blunders of the world, all apparently named after every day of the week beginning with Bachchan as Ravi, Shakti Kapoor as Mangal, Sachin as Shani and so forth. One day, Ravi brings house a bride (Hema Malini as Indu). All hell breaks free. At first, the remainder of the singletons revolt however quickly they settle for their new bhabhi. What’s extra, the brutes have lucked out, as they’ve their very own romantic alliances occurring now. Just once you suppose there is no Nineteen Eighties-style boilerplate antagonist on this completely happy story, in walks Ranjit Singh (Amjad Khan) who sends a Bachchan look-alike Babu to bump off his handicapped niece in order that he can inherit a household fortune.
Sette Pe Satta is narrated and co-written by Kader Khan. And it is easy to see the quintessential KK stamp in dialogues like ‘Daru peene se liver kharab ho jaata hai’ and ‘Agar maa ki mamta ho sakti hai toh kya baap ki bapta nahin ho sakti.’ The movie isn’t unique — it was a spin-off of Stanley Donen’s Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) — but it surely was Indianised effectively holding in thoughts the Nineteen Eighties audiences and their style for kitsch and melodrama. For instance, the character of the protagonist’s twin Babu was a recent component. In the double function, Amitabh Bachchan is a delight to observe as all the time. Whenever audiences conjure Big B’s model of comedy they immediately consider his many drunk vignettes (his profession appears to be stuffed with it), going all the way in which again to Amar Akbar Anthony’s iconic mirror sequence. Here, too, Bachchan manages to drag off some boozy stunts (regardless of holding forth on the risks of alcohol to Ranjit Singh). While a few of the plot’s humor might not have stood the take a look at of time you can not say the identical about its enormously pleasurable songs.
Penned by Gulshan Bawra and composed by RD Burman, Sette Pe Satta’s music stays as timeless and towering as ever. The elaborate choreography provides additional grace notes to the tracks. Considered as a traditional musical, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers was identified for its riveting dance sequences, particularly the barn-raising one, which has charmed Hollywood audiences over the many years. Given this historical past and background, the Satta Pe Satta makers might have designed their musical creations in such a approach as to raised the unique.
Do they succeed? One can definitely say that that is one among Rahul Dev Burman’s most attention-grabbing soundtracks — and in addition one among his final since by the late Nineteen Eighties his profession tumbled downhill. (He stored his absolute best for the final, although, within the type of his masterpiece 1942: A Love Story). All the songs swimsuit their setting and are picturised with aplomb. It helps that in lots of them the comedian instincts of actors like Bachchan, Paintal and Shakti Kapoor shines by means of, taking Burman’s composition to a different madcap degree. Kishore Kumar as soon as once more proves his exemplary vary and modulation in ‘Pyaar humein kis mod pe le aaya.’ He injects dollops of plaintive brooding within the preliminary a part of the tune and because it turns into excessive pitch afterward, you may think about Kumar’s eccentricities hovering within the recording room (for the sake of comparability, watch ‘Ek chatur naar’ from Padosan to see the extent to which Kishore-da may elevate the bar). One of the excessive factors of the movie, this tune takes in all of the brothers and will have so simply belonged in a Hollywood Western with characters having determined and weather-beaten faces. Don’t miss Burman himself uping the ante within the background with ‘Arre dum hai toh unse chheen ke le aayenge/ Arre dee na ghar waalon ne agar manzoori.’ Along related traces is ‘Dukki pe dukki ho,’ solely this time the boys are accompanied by an all-women gang. The first tune, ‘Zindagi milke bitayenge’ captures the camaraderie of the brothers and establishes the movie’s temper. Ravi has simply saved his youngest sibling Shani from being killed by a wild horse. Beneath the powerful exterior, Ravi does have a coronary heart of a softie, in spite of everything. The film’s solely out-and-out romantic quantity is shot on Hema Malini and Bachchan. ‘Dilbar mere’ is the start of a blossoming romance between the movie’s two main protagonists. There’s additionally ‘Jhuka ke sar ko puchho’ that options Indu educating her brother-in-laws some well-needed manners and niceties of gentlemanly conduct.
Amitabh Bachchan, Hema Malini and Sudhir in Sette Pe Satta. (Express archive photograph)
The movie, nevertheless, belongs to Bachchan. Not simply that, it was made for him. Bachchan, who was practically 40 through the filming of Sette Pe Satta, labored by means of the 70s as that period’s dominant star. Come the 80s and he was nonetheless ruling the roost, because the success of Satta Pe Satta proves. The identical yr, he gave us Bemisal, Desh Premee, Namak Halaal, Khud-Daar and one among his career-best performances in Shakti alongside his private favourite Dilip Kumar. The Bachchan magic went on effectively into the 90s, fading solely after Hum and Khuda Gawah. Many of those 80s and 90s movies boasted a few of Bachchan’s most memorable songs, together with ‘Jumma chumma’ from Hum, ‘Manzilein apni jagah hai’ from Sharaabi, ‘Dekha ek khwab’ from Silsila, and ‘Pag ghungroo bandh’ from Namak Halaal. Even in a later profession filled with such gems, Sette Pe Satta stands out. It’s all due to the likes of Kishore Kumar, RD Burman, Bhupinder Singh, Gulshan Bawra and principally, director Raj N Sippy’s distinctive imaginative and prescient for reimagining them with a light-weight contact. And in fact, a shout out to the forged for his or her manic vitality and dialing up the enjoyable sevenfold.
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With inputs from TheIndianEXPRESS
