The tyranny of celluloid memories

On a recent expedition to Makati’s Cinema Square, I was thrilled to pick up a grainy DVD copy of Maalaala Mo Kaya, perhaps the most celebrated film of the fabulous Fifties or the Golden Age of Philippine cinema. I was a little boy in Bukidnon when it was first shown and I had never seen it before.

What I saw as soon as I got home pleased and appalled me at the same time; it somehow helped round up my own patchy education about why local cinema leaves many Filipinos with a sense of distorted values and lost opportunities. 

Movie icons Rogelio de la Rosa and Carmen Rosales play star-crossed lovers from the province who fall in and out and in love again before the final fadeout. The young and nimble Dolphy is Roger’s funny sidekick, Patria Plata the rich and evil temptress who steals Roger from the virtuous Mameng. Lilibeth Vera Perez, the studio owner’s granddaughter, is cast as the moppet who reconciles the estranged lovers in the nick of time. 

And yes, there’s the haunting kundiman from which the film draws its title, roughly translated as “Remember when?” The song and the movie obviously inspired today’s eponymous high-rated and long-running TV drama anthology on ABS-CBN, the nation’s media giant.

Almost 60 years have passed and all the MMK principals have long gone to Cinema Heaven. The last to kick the bucket this year, Dolphy, the unchallenged King of Comedy, was given a grand wake and funeral worthy of a president or national hero.

Nobody may have made an official claim, but MMK has long been canonized in the entertainment circles as the closest thing to a Filipino Gone with the Wind. It comes to mind when nostalgic old-timers and impressionable youngsters wax romantic about some bygone era of gentility and innocence in an otherwise impoverished and crisis-plagued society.

Seemingly immune from even the mildest criticism, MMK has been regarded as a national treasure of sorts. No other movie scene has been endlessly recalled with fondness and pride like the one in MMK with Roger and Mameng crooning the theme song he (as aspiring songwriter on the way to city fame and betrayal) composed for her (a would-be music teacher destined for heartaches). They’re under a shady mango tree, exchanging sweet nothings as Dolphy cavorts about them with a drowsy carabao for comic relief.

In the turbulent 1950s, with the Huk rebellion just quashed and politics awash with deafening charges of corruption and impending doom, MMK could not but conjure a vastly separate reality of rural peace and harmony. What plagued the nation amounted to mere personal disappointments and annoyances, never serious national problems demanding no less than effective government and a socially responsible elite.

It’s a no-brainer to cut through the fog of nostalgia and realize that MKK and the movie world of that period played a pivotal part in inducing national amnesia or the calculated trivialization of social inequity and powerlessness.

Filipino movies kept the masses amused or in docile submission, and, above all, kept their consciousness limited to the trivial and the tribal. As if by design, politics and anything intellectual pertained solely to the all-knowing, all-powerful elite and upper classes.

The ordained role of the common folks was to follow their leaders and, if aggrieved, count on the latter’s benevolence; if all else fails, then appeal to the ultimate mercy of God in heaven. Otherwise, continue to suffer in silence.

Just about every film shows dutiful priests or nuns counseling prayers, the more fervent the better, to those who have sinned or been dealt a bad card. Predictably, there are miracles like the lame suddenly able to walk, the cruel landlord losing fortune and power to gambling or bad karma, or the heartless bullies and killers are shot down as they flee from justice.

There are heroes and there are villains, but they are never divided along class lines. Heroes are invariably virtuous landlords or their sons who rail against harsh treatment by others of their loyal and meek farmhands. Villains are demented or greedy rich people or their cohorts who are denounced and eventually punished for abusive acts and wrongdoings. It’s a morality play in which evil is condemned and the poor and pure-hearted are liberated.

Once the evildoers get their comeuppance, struck down by the avenging hero or run out of town by enraged citizens, peace and justice are deemed restored and those unjustly wronged can look forward to a great and prosperous future.

The obligatory happy ending sometimes goes a step farther with victims forgiving oppressors in the spirit of Christian love and charity, both parties facing the dawn or the sunset as the soaring theme music hits a crescendo of bliss.

This was the unrelenting fairy tale or deliberate fiction defying harsh realities that was churned out  year in and year out by the Big Three studios of the period — Sampaguita, LVN and Premiere.

“It’s amazing,” says one jaded writer who’s seen it all, “how those three matriarchs practically defined Philippine culture with their silly films and shopworn story lines. So much of the drivel in people’s heads comes from or was derived from the movies they saw when they were growing up. Today, it could be worse with television and telenobelas, the lineal descendants of the old dream factories.”

He was referring to Sampaguita’s Mommy Dolores H. Vera, LVN’s Dona Sisang de Leon and Premiere’s Dona Adela Santiago. This local cinema triumvirate advanced the zarzuela tradition that Jose Nepomuceno, Father of Philippine Movies, brought into the new medium of film at the start of the American colonial period in the early 20th century.

Devout Catholics, politically conservative and of proud landlord origins and connections, these matriarchs ran tight ships and never brooked ideas more radical than assigning people’s redemption or good fortune to a sudden burst of conscience or timely divine intervention.

“The Filipino mind was imprisoned in the convent,” says the author of sharply critical social essays, “or held hostage by naïve do-gooders. Most of the time, this barren mind was tickled pink by slapstick jokes and banal witticisms. From Tugak and Pugak to Dolphy and Panchito to Tito, Vic and Joey to Ai-Ai de las Alas and Vice Ganda represents a long history of toilet humor and zany banalities that kept people laughing in the midst of miseries. Serious politics and ideas were never considered, perhaps on the ground that these are airy stuff way above the heads of common people or, like matches or lighters, too dangerous for immature children to play with.” 

Whatever nationalist or socialist longings that Spanish-influenced zarzuela absorbed from the glorious but aborted 1896 revolution were discarded in favor of Hollywood-inspired themes like boy-meets-girl-gets-boy, keeping up with the Joneses, and everybody living happily ever after. These tried-and-tested formulas were simply Filipinized in terms of casting, costumes and settings.

In America, prestige and relevance would occasionally be paid lip service with blockbusters drawn from the Bible (The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur), classical literature (Julius Caesar, Romeo and Juliet) and top modern writers like Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms), Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby), Pasternak (Dr. Zhivago) and Williams (A Streetcar Named Desire). But lavish spectacle and production values like excellent actors (Garbo, Bogart, Brando), great directors (De Mille, Hitchcock, Cukor, Huston) and exotic locations (India, Arabia, Egypt, Mexico) would be thrown in to insure that huge financial investments would pay off.

In the Philippines, standard formula and the tightest of budgets prevailed. The studios stuck to surefire scripts derived from comic books peddled on the streets or soap dramas on air, leading stars fanatically worshipped by their fans, and tawdry sets and costumes recycled ad nauseam. Think of the Vera-Perez residence with the spiral staircase used in five of every 10 Sampaguita films and get the point of how the producers pinched pennies and made vast profits during the studio’s heyday.  

Enduring colonial mentality beholden to Spain and America diluted any and all nationalist or anti-imperialist aspirations on film; these ideas were disdainfully left out as seditious or box-office poison.

Only as late as 1991 would a major star-cum-politician, Joseph Estrada, get involved in an anti-US bases project and get away with it. But the otherwise forgettable potboiler was made for calculated propaganda (he later became president), not artistic reasons, and the industry quickly reverted back to accustomed idiocy and escapism.

What the market supposedly wanted, the dream factories provided in spades. Indeed, everybody was happy: the public drugged with harmless illusions and thrills, the industry fat cats whistling their way to the bank.

Thus it was that MMK starred Roger and Mameng, survivors of pre-war cinema who outlasted less-incandescent contemporaries like Angel Esmeralda, Rosa del Rosario and Mila del Sol. The duo was nearing cinematic middle age and soon to be displaced by the younger love teams of Gloria-Luis, and Nida-Nestor. Later tandems of Susan-Eddie and Amalia-Romeo would come next and the winning gimmickry reached its peak in the 1970s with Nora-Tirso.

Thereafter, independent and longer-lasting idols (Fernando Poe Jr., Joseph Estrada), solid performers (Charito Solis, Hilda Koronel, VilmaSantos) and more iconoclastic directors (Lino Brocka, Ishmael Bernal) would emerge to give the local industry the pretext of standing up to Hollywood in occasional displays of Filipino bravado and self-respect.

Award bodies, too, mushroomed and some stars boasted of being “multi-awarded,” simply because trophies were a dime-a-dozen and artistic merit was more often than not a big joke. Blatant cheating sometimes marred these awards as in the 1990s, but the industry and its fans have short memories and the cheaters have moved on to more lucrative heights.  

For that was the grim reality: there were two cinemas in the land, 1) Hollywood imports catering to the English-speaking elite and the rising middle class, and 2) local productions geared solely to the vernacular masses or the so-called bakya (barefoot but for the wooden clogs) crowd.

A system of apartheid defined cinema in the Philippines. Each sector was apart and oblivious of the other. The rich disdained anything local; the poor did not know any better and lapped up the cheap gruel thrown their way.

All the best air-conditioned movie palaces on Rizal Avenue and the Escolta  (Ever, State, Ideal, Odeon, Lyric) were appropriated by MGM, 20th Century Fox, Warner, Universal and others. Only three or four dingy and down-market houses like Life (Sampaguita), New Dalisay (LVN), Center and Globe (other studios) served as first-run theaters for the locals.

In the provinces, the disparity was worse: Hollywood films claimed the better houses and the locals shared part-time or were shunted to nipa-roofed, dirt-floor, bedbug-infested and foul-smelling derelict structures and cockpits masquerading as entertainment palaces of the people.

To be fair, there would be some fusion between the two schools by the 1970s, notably with sex-oriented or “bold” themes. Some films were shot abroad, mainly unabashed travelogues masquerading as drama. Annual filmfests were held to showcase “prestige” movies, but with no earth-shaking results other than the lucky entries raking in millions at the box office because imports were, by special law, blocked out for the duration. 

How then can we explain the enduring mystique of MMK and the Roger-Mameng tandem?

What comes to mind is the magical, if self-deluding, power of nostalgia. We gift the past not only with the absolution of forgiveness but also across-the-board editing of inconvenient truths and memories.

The turgid plot lines, the hackneyed dialogue, the stilted acting, the contrived bucolic settings are all excused because the handsome Roger in his mature years looks so romantic and even credible enough be a leader of the nation; Mameng cannot but tug at the heartstrings as the wronged woman of saintly virtues whose undying love bears all suffering and tribulations unto eternity.

For all the limitations of their profession and the times, the two stars in real life did manage to come up with class acts evoking Reagan and Garbo. Roger was elected senator, ran unsuccessfully for president, and became a rather distinguished ambassador to Cambodia and the Netherlands. After she quietly ended her career, Mameng never again appeared in public nor allowed any photograph of  her in her declining years to see print. By the time they passed away, the latter only a year or so ago, their standing in the cinematic pantheon had been cast in cement for all time.

What do we care about agrarian unrest in Central Luzon that ought to have formed the background for the MMK story? Would hungry folks anxious to forget their miserable lot spend precious centavos (at that time) to be reminded of centuries-old oppression and the imperative to take charge of their destiny if they expected a better future?

We can’t exactly blame Mommy Vera or her starmaker son-in-law Pinggot Perez for dishing out MMK as a charming horse opera of naïve dreams, shattering betrayal and staged reconciliation.

Is there any hope for Filipino cinema to make a great leap towards maturity and relevance without, as pragmatists insist, losing basic entertainment values?

I would like to believe the industry has not reached the end of the road. The current crop of independent filmmakers has challenged long-discredited assumptions and blazed new paths to measure up to world industry standards. But I do share reservations with other concerned observers about “poverty porn” (the more violent and debased the better) as an obsessive gambit to catch 12 seconds of fame in Cannes, Berlin or, worse, every picayune country boasting a so-called film festival.

How the crusading indies and, hopefully, the present industry giants like Star Cinema and Regal will generate the synergy to sustain box-office revenues and generate some long-awaited self-respect and a sense of social responsibility on their part, nobody can tell. But I am glad enough to know there appears to be no lack of trying and the future looks brighter than several bleak years ago.

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Email the author at noslen7491@gmail.com.