Chandra Barot

Chandra Barot Biography

Chandra Barot is a Bollywood director remembered for his single hit in Bollywood – Don, starring Amitabh Bachchan in double roles. This single movie changed director’s fate forever. This movie is one among Big B’s all-time great action thrillers and the movie has received a cult classic status in Indian cinema. The movie has been remade to many Indian languages including Malayalam, Telugu and Tamil and has also made in Hindi with Shahrukh Khan reprising the role of Don once again on screen. Its sequel too was a great success. Madam X, Dav Pech (1989) and Duplicate (1998) are also inspired from Don, though the movies couldn’t replicate the success of Don. In fact Don was inspired from Shammi Kapoor's China Town directed by Shakti Samanta in 1962.

Among other language remakes, Tamil version has been most successful. Its Tamil remake titled Billa was one of the earliest solo hits of mega star Rajinikanth and placed him among the established stars of Tamil cinema. Similar to Shahrukh Khan’s Don, same movie has been made in Tamil and its sequel with Super star Ajith reprising the original role. Its Malayalam version was titled Shobaraj with Mohanlal doing the main role. Its Telugu versions are Yugandhar and Billa.

Barot's father had moved to Dar-es-Salam, South Africa in 1930s and both his sons were born there. In 1967 due to race and communal riots, there existed political uncertainty and for the same reason Barot decided to leave the country and settle at London like his brother. He was working at Barclay's Bank at Tanzania then. He came to India to meet his sister, singer Kamal Barot. Very soon he forgot to go to London and got involved with Bollywood instead.

He worked as assistant director to Manoj Kumar for many movies including Purab aur Paschim, Yaadgar and Roti Kapada Aur Makaan in the early 1970’s. Don was his debut movie as a director and this movie is still remembered for its powerful script of Salim-Javed duo and power packed performances. The movie still remains everyone’s favourite. Apart from Big B, the movie starred Zeenat Aman, Helen, Iftekhar, Om Shivpuri and Pran in pivot roles.

Surprisingly Don was written off a week after its release and declared a flop. It was during the same time when Yash Chopra’s Trishul, Prakash Mehra's Muqaddar Ka Sikandar, Raj Kapoor's Satyam Sivam Sundaram and Satyajit Ray's Shatranj Ke Khiladi were released. Naturally Don was less noticed during the releasing date as it was directed by a new director. But collections slowly picked up and it went on to become third-highest grossing Bollywood movie of 1978, and was also declared a Golden Jubilee hit. Surprisingly the director of this classic movie is still remembered for his debut movie. Though he has directed movies like Pyar Bhara Dil, Hong Kong Wali Script and Neil Ko Pakadna....Impossible, no one remembers them! In fact many of his projects got shelved and things did not take place mainly due to financial reasons, an amazing fact indeed!!!

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Updated: July 29, 2014