The Colors of Masala, Bombay Cinema of the 1970s

As can be seen the entire space of the poster for Manmohan Desai's Parvarish (1977) is suffused with the colours of violence- blood and flame orange-red.

The character in the left (Vinod Khanna) tots a gun at the audience, almost jumping out of the frame into our space. The character on the right (Amitabh Bachchan) emits the tension of violence through his tense sweaty face, while the lower half of the poster is anchored in the buxom sexuality of the female character in the right corner denoting an excess of in-your-face sexuality.

Explosive (sex+violence)=masala.

Note the psychedelic coloration of the Urdu wording 'Don' in this poster for Chandra Barot's Don (1978). Various characters point guns from corners of the poster in all directions.

Amitabh Bachchan is depicted in the lower centre of the poster through a rifle view running towards us pointing to the life-threatening thrills in the movie.

Dharmendra's bloody hands reach out as much for the villain as for our throats in this poster for Mohan Segal's Raja Jani (1972).

Dharmendra's face denotes explosive murderous violence in red while at the upper centre of the poster he is shown bare-bodied and chained ready to receive an unbelievably violent beating from the villains.

The famous poster for probably what is till the biggest film in Bombay film history – Ramesh Sippy's Sholay (1975) – simply put the power-packed star cast in a row at the top.

The logic of the blockbuster- from left to right we have- Dharmendra (cut out of frame), Sanjeev Kumar, Hema Malini, Amitabh Bachchan, Jaya Bhaduri and Amjad Khan (cut out of frame). All are roasted and fried in the inferno of violence denoted by the explosive fiery orange that blazes across the face of the poster.

An interesting rerun poster for Manoj Kumar's Roti, Kapada aur Makaan (1974) which shows Amitabh Bachchan as the main protagonist of the film...which he was not.

But the poster denotes the film re-release at a time when Bachchan had become superstar No.1 of Bombay cinema, hence the historical distortion. However, it retains the multi-starrer flavour of the film, one of the first big multi-starrers of the 1970s.

A clear hierarchy is maintained between the major characters who tower over those at the bottom left- Zeenat Aman, Shashi Kapoor and Moushumi Chatterjee denoting who the film's dynamic centres are and who are the support characters. A multi-starrer like Roti, Kapada aur Makaan thus forced the poster makers rethink poster design to convey the complexity of casting by dynamizing the distribution of characters across the poster surface in interesting ways.

This cinema was not one of a stable symbolic universe of tradition but that of a thrilling one of continuously shifting configurations of bodies, objects and sceneries around us, always alive in the here and now and moving on towards newer destinies. The poster for Yash Chopra's Deewar (1975), one of the all-time great classics of Indian cinema, shows the violent unstable world emanating from Amitabh Bachchan's towering but frazzled and destructive pose at the centre of the frame.

He protrudes out of the poster along the z-axis to establish his presence in our midst, in society. All inside the frame seem to be reacting dynamically to his restlessness while he seems to be saying - the society you live in is all exploding all around you.

Zeenat Aman, holding central glory here in the poster for Feroz Khan's Qurbani (1980), was one of the most important sex symbols of Bombay cinema of the 1970s.

Qurbani was a milestone in the bold and explicit depiction of the 1970s Indian woman's assertion of sexual desire.

Reena Roy anchoring this other poster for Subhash Ghai's Vishwanath (1978)...

...with a modernized version of the courtesan's dance fused with a gypsy feel. Yet again the heroine looks at us frontally forcing us to take in her voluptuous sexual appeal and acknowledge its piquant challenge to society.

Lobby card for KS Sethumadhavan's Julie (1975) which caused a scandal through its explicit allusion to the sexual act.

Julie could be considered as taking the sexual charge of 1970s free youth sexual romance of Raj Kapoor's Bobby (1972) into the 'middle cinema' that was an important 1970s film genre dedicated to a realist depiction of middle class lives.

The 1970s saw an explosion of sexploitation cinema in Bombay. The poster for Feroz Chinoy's Do Raha (1971), starring graduates from the Film and Television Institute of India (including Shatrughan Sinha in a special appearance).

The Do Raha poster gleefully flaunts its 'A' (for adults only) censor certificate to indicate its forbidden content. A voyeuristic suite of images of bodies deshabillés and sexual intimacy pepper the poster surface but the centre of attention is the girl in a transparent negligée.