SINGAPORE - Bollywood icon Shashi Kapoor died on Monday (Dec 4) after a long illness. He was 79. As tributes continue to pour in for the screen legend, The Straits Times takes a look at some of his best movies.
New Delhi Times (1986)
In this acclaimed film about corruption in the media, Kapoor played newspaper editor Vikas Pande, who set out to unearth the details behind a political assassination, but repeatedly halted in his attempts thanks to corrupted deals between politicians and powerful media tycoons.
Kapoor won a National Film Award for Best Actor for the highly controversial film, which reportedly almost never aired as film distributors were afraid they might get into trouble.
Jab Jab Phool Khile (When The Flowers Bloom, 1965)
This looks like a fluffy romantic film, but Kapoor was very serious when it came down to playing his role of a poor boatman who falls hopelessly in love with a rich tourist (played by actress Nanda). He spent days with boatmen in Kashmir to study the way they behaved and spoke in order to pull off the most convincing performance.
The film was a hit and was the second highest-grossing film at the Indian box office in the year of its release.
Deewar (The Wall, 1975)
This classic crime drama film tells the tragic story of two brothers who eventually find themselves at opposite sides of the law, with Kapoor playing a cop and actor Amitabh Bachchan his rebellious older brother. Pitting Kapoor against Bachchan - who has become a screen legend in his own right - was a huge success, and the movie was a hit with audiences and critics alike for its complex themes of honour and family values.
The film is so iconic that it has seen several remakes in other Indian languages such as Telugu, Tamil and Malayalam, and even a Cantonese remake titled The Brothers by the Shaw Brothers Studio in 1979.
Chor Machaye Shor (Cry Of A Thief, 1974)
Wealth politics are at play again in this romantic musical, in which Kapoor played an engineer named Vijay, who falls in love with a girl girl named Rekha (played by actress Mumtaz). Rekha's father is so angry at the notion of the two getting together that he schemes to frame Vijay for a crime he did not commit.
One of the songs featured in this film, titled Le Jayenge Le Jayenge, became a huge hit, and would also go on to inspire key lines in the 1995 blockbuster film Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge starring Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol, one of the most popular Bollywood films to ever be made.
Junoon (The Obsession, 1978)
Based on Ruskin Bond's novella A Flight of Pigeons, this film set in the Indian Mutiny of 1857 has Kapoor in the role of feudal chieftain Javed Khan, who is married but has his eyes for a British girl named Ruth.
Interestingly, Kapoor's late wife in real life, Jennifer Kendal, had played Ruth's unrelenting mother Miriam in the film, who refuses to let Javed pursue her young daughter.
Kapoor produced the film and took home the Best Film awards at the National Film Awards as well as the Filmfare Awards.
