Gangs of Wasseypur - Part 1 (2012)

 ●  Hindi ● 2 hrs 40 mins

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Spanning from the early 1940s to mid-1990s, this multi-faceted crime drama that revolves around the convoluted power struggles, rivalry and cycle of hatred and violence between three crime family. Shahid Khan is exiled after impersonating the legendary Sultana Daku in order to rob British trains. Now outcast, Shahid becomes a worker at Ramadhir Singh's colliery, only to spur a revenge battle that passes on to generations. At the turn of the decade, Shahid's son, the philandering Sardar Khan vows to get his father's honor back, becoming the most feared man of Wasseypur.
See Storyline (May Contain Spoilers)

Cast: Manoj Bajpayee, Nawazuddin Siddiqui, Richa Chadda

Crew: Anurag Kashyap (Director), Rajeev Ravi (Director of Photography), GV Prakash Kumar (Music Director), Sneha Khanwalkar (Music Director)

Rating: A (India)

Genres: Action, Crime, Drama, Thriller

Release Dates: 22 Jun 2012 (India)

Hindi Name: गैंग्स ऑफ़ वास्सेपुर पार्ट - १

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Did you know? In an unusual move for India, the movie was released in two parts, separated by a few months. The script was written to appear as two standalone stories when seen separately, but appear as a single story when seen together. The trailer for part 2 is shown after credits finish rolling in part 1. Read More
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as Sardar Khan
as Faizal Khan
as Nagma Khatoon
Special Appearance
Special Appearance
as Perpendicular
as Mohsina
as Shahid Khan
as Asgar Khan
as Nawab Khan
Supporting Actor
as Nasir Ahmed
as Shamshad
Supporting Actor
as Ramadhir Singh
as Danish Khan
as Ehsaan Qureshi
Supporting Actor
Supporting Actor

Direction

Director

Production

Co-Producer
Executive Producer
Production Manager

Writers

Story Writer
Dialogue Writer

Camera and Electrical

Director of Photography

Art

Art Director
Production Designer
Assistant Art Director

Casting

Casting Director

Editorial

Makeup and Hair

Special Effects Makeup Artist
Film Type:
Feature
Language:
Hindi
Colour Info:
Color
Sound Mix:
Datasat Digital Sound, Dolby Digital
Camera:
ARRIFLEX 435 Xtreme, ARRIFLEX 535
Frame Rate:
24 fps
Aspect Ratio:
2.39:1 (Scope)
Stereoscopy:
No
Archival Source:
QubeVault
Tracklist
03:25

Music Director: Aishwarya Sneha Movies
Playback Singer: Manoj Tiwari
01:34

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Lyricist: Varun Grover
Playback Singer: Vedesh Sookoo
04:49

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Khushboo Raaj, Rekha Jha
03:15

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Lyricist: Piyush Mishra
Playback Singer: Sneha Khanwalkar, Amit Trivedi
05:09

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Bhupesh Singh, Manish J Tipu
05:28

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Piyush Mishra
03:06

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
00:41

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Ranjeet Baal Party
03:54

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Lyricist: Varun Grover
Playback Singer: Khushboo Raaj, Rekha Jha
02:52

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Usri Banerjee
02:52

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
04:17

Music Director: Sneha Khanwalkar
Playback Singer: Deepak Kumar
Movie Connection(s):
Reference: Dil To Pagal Hai (Hindi)
Referenced in: Trishul (Hindi)
Reference: Karan Arjun (Hindi)
Reference: Sabse Bada Khiladi (Hindi)
Referenced in: Boss (Hindi)
Filming Locations:
Goofs:
Miscellaneous
Moharram, a Shia rite is celebrated in the Sunni dominated Wasseypur. But the celebration of moharram procession passes from a lot of areas in and around the city, and for that matter a lot of sunni dominated areas also celebrate moharram as much as Shias do.

Miscellaneous
(at around 28 mins) When Danish goes to Rajhans Mansion to kill his father's murderer's apprentice you can see "EZYPAY" poster on the left side of the screen with Mobile's picture in it. At that point of time as per movie even pagers were not around in India it was some years later that pagers were introduced and Faizal comes to know about it and it took some more years for mobile to be known in India.

Miscellaneous
Number plates on car are shown to have black numbers written on white plate. However, till year ~2000, it was other way round in India i.e. white numbers on black plate.

Miscellaneous
When Shamshad chased down Definite through the streets of Wasseypur & Dhanbad, auto rickshaws in green-and-yellow are shown, which use gasoline as fuel. This kind of vehicle has been used only since 2011 in India, not in the time as shown in film.
Trivia:
Major portions of the film were shot at villages near Bihar. Shooting of film also took place in Chunar, and ancient town situated in the Mirzapur District of Uttar Pradesh.

During filming in Varanasi in December 2010, film's chief assistant director Sohil Shah was killed on shoot while performing one of the stunt shot scene which was an accident. The movie has been dedicated to Sohil Shah as is seen in the opening titles.

According to Bajpai, the role of Sardar Khan is the most negative role he has done till date. His motivation for doing this role came from the fact that there was "something new" with the character of Sardar Khan.

Piyush Mishra and Tigmanshu Dhulia were given the discretion to decide who, among them, would perform the roles of Nasir and Ramadhir. Mishra chose the role of Nasir and Dhulia portrayed Ramadhir Singh.

Chadda revealed in an interview that this role helped her bag 11 film roles.

This is Huma Qureshi's first film, and she characterised this as her "dream debut". Qureshi landed this role after director Anurag Kashyap spotted her in a Samsung commercial he was directing.

Due to its small budget, the movie was commercially successful, but it received quite a bit of critical acclaim and won many awards including four Filmfare awards. It is considered a cult film by many.

'Gangs of Wasseypur' was screened at the Sundance Film Festival in January 2013.

Part 1 was released on 22 June 2012 in more than 1000 theatre screens across India. It was also widely screened abroad in countries like France and the Middle East but was banned in Kuwait and Qatar.

Both parts of the movie were originally shot as a single film measuring a total of 319 minutes and screened at the 2012 Cannes Directors' Fortnight. However, since no Indian theatre would volunteer to screen a five plus hour movie, it was divided into two parts (160 mins and 159 mins respectively) for the Indian Market.

The movie continues the trend of Anurag Kashyap paying tribute to Quentin Tarantino's directorial style. One particular example is of a person getting shot while the shooter is not in the frame, often unexpectedly. Shahid Khan, the main protagonist of the first third of the movie, gets shot unexpectedly while on Ramadhir's duty. Two generations later, his grandson, Faizal Khan and the protagonist of the last third, gets shot in the same fashion. Sardar Khan, Faizal's father, is the only protagonist not to be killed in this way. Instead in his case, the audience sees all four shooters but never see him actually getting shot. Anurag Kashyap had earlier made use of this effect in his movie Gulaal.

Anurag Kashyap: [long take] The first shot contains a long take lasting about 10 minutes, where a group of shooters walk through alley-ways to attack a house.

In a pre titles credit, Anurag Kashyap expresses his gratitude to the "Madurai triumvirate" of Bala, Ameer Sultan and M Sasikumar, for inspiring him to get back to his roots.

Anurag Kashyap: [hidden camera] Multiple chase sequences on crowded streets, among ordinary people and not hired extras. Anurag Kashyap uses hidden cameras to capture raw ambiance of the location in many of his movies, such as the slum chase in Black Friday

Instead of the usual olive leaves to represent the film festivals participated in, the festivals are enclosed in two inverted pistols.

The slaughter house scenes were actually shot in a slaughter house in Allahabad. The back story of Sultan Qureshi (played by 'Pankaj Tripathi') of a fearsome butcher who at the age of 12 could slaughters and skins 1 buffalo in a single day was developed on actually seeing a boy do it. Similarly, Sultan in the contemporary time scale of the film could cut 60 buffaloes in a day. This too was developed seeing an actual person.

Sardar Khan's son Perpendicular and his friend Tangent are seen watching "Munnabhai MBBS", a popular Bollywood movie released in 2003 starring actor Sanjay Dutt. Nawazuddin Siddiqui, who plays Faizal Khan Perpendicular's elder brother, played a blink-and-you-miss-him role in the same film when he was an unknown actor.

The scene featuring a flooded coal mine (just before Sardar Khan is born) is shot in a real coal mine that was actually dry. Using the sound of water dripping and people wading through water, and actors walking as if struggling to cross water, they created the illusion of flooded mine in the darkly lit shot. For the safety of crew, there is not a drop of water inside the mine.

This is Bollywood's first commercial film to feature at the Cannes Film Festival during the Director's Fortnight segment at the festival (2012).

Feature director Tigmanshu Dhulia's acting debut.

In an unusual move for India, the movie was released in two parts, separated by a few months. The script was written to appear as two standalone stories when seen separately, but appear as a single story when seen together. The trailer for part 2 is shown after credits finish rolling in part 1.

Most of the slaughter house scenes were single shot takes. After every shot, the actor 'Vipin Sharma' (who acted in the role of Ehsaan Qureshi) would come aside and throw up. The AD 'Anubhuti Kashyap' (sister of director Anurag Kashyap) would hold back a crowd of almost 50 by standers, more than half of whom were actual butchers, during the shoot by holding her arms wide. A lot of these butchers actually had knives and choppers hidden in their clothes and would joke among themselves "shall we plunge it stab it this way?" which she could hear, and had to ignore since she had to concentrate in the shoot

Assistant director Sohil Shah died in a freak accident during the shoot of the film in Banaras. He fell with a jeep off a bridge. Sohil hit his ear against a metal rod and suffered an instant hemorrhage.

The music composer Sneha Khanwalkar started work on the soundtrack over a year before filming began. She traveled to places such as Trinidad in the West Indies to record Chutney music, a fusion of Caribbean and songs of Bihari migrants that were taken there in 1830s as slaves. "Hunter" is one such song, there were two more "Dumper loading unloading" and "British" that did not make it to the film.
'Gangs Of Wasseypur' to release In America now
09 Jul 2014, by One India Entertainment