For the love of cinema - Sanjay Leela Bhansali

By FNN | February 25, 2012, 4:04pm IST

Bollywood has very rarely witnessed a purely passionate filmmaker who gives his all while making a film. As Sanjay Leela Bhansali turns a year older today we take a look at what makes him such a maverick.

Humble Beginnings

Belonging to a chawl in Mumbai he has come up a long way to fulfilling his dream of making films. He pays an eternal tribute to his mother whose name Leela is added by him as his middle name.

Slice of Life

Most of his films have been inspired by his own real life incidences. In 'Khamoshi' the scene of Flavy (Seema Biswas) going door to door selling consumer items with her two children was inspired from his own childhood, where he had to do the same thing with his sister and mother. According to SLB, 'Saawariya' is a tribute to his grandmother, who spent her whole life waiting for her son Navin Bhansali to return home. In 'Devdas', the sequence where Paro's mother Sumitra is made to dance at a social gathering is inspired by a recurring nightmare he had that of his mother's humiliation.

And the award goes to.....

He is known to be almost a savior of sorts for heroines whose careers aren't exactly great guns. The biggest example being Aishwarya Rai who post 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' breathed a sigh of relief as her almot finished career was resurrected by his film. Starting his career with 'Khamoshi-The Musical' which was a flop but critically acclaimed. It won various awards and even fetched its leading lady Manisha Koirala the Best Actress Filmfare award. His second film 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' was a box-office success and Ash bagged the Best Actress award at most of the awards.

Even Rani Mukherji emerged as winner at most of the awards for 'Black' at all the award functions. Basically while most of his films do have important male characters its mostly the females who walk away with all the accolades.

He likes it Grand

Apart from his debut 'Khamoshi-The Musical' all of his films are shot lavishly. It shows in every frame in each of his films. Be it 'Devdas' where Paro's haveli was built with 12,200 pieces of stained glass or the massive haveli sets of 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam'. Even though 'Sawariya' was critised for its blue-green tones its had extremely lavish dream like sets after all he spent almost Rs 30 crores on film's set alone. Be it the costumes, make up or jewelery everything in an SLB film screams grandeur. His 'Devdas' which had a budget of 50 Crores was the most expensive Bollywood film of its time.

Controversies

The writers of 'Guzaarish' were accused by Novelist Dayanand Raajan for lifting the theme of his novel Summer Snow for the the movie. According to Raajan, the film's plot line and characters were similar to that of his novel. However, SLB's office refused to accept the legal notice. Another major controversy regarding the same film was caused when during its opening trailer Aishwarya Rai was shown smoking onscreen.

Lover of Colours

Sanjay's favourite colour is Black. But he's heavily used other colours in his films. If 'Devdas' had an overdose of red, 'Saawariya' had heavy tones of blue and green. In fact he was heavily criticised for using only blue and green tones for the film. Both his films 'Black' and 'Guzaarish' have a blackish-brown tone to them. While 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam' has yellow to red tones dominating the frames.

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