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Kembali Saorang
English Title: One Came Back
Language: Malay
Year of Release: 1957 / B&W
Director & screenwriter: Ramon A. Estella (with dialogue by S. Sudarmadji)
From a story by Run Run Shaw
Producer: Malay Film Productions
Cast: Sa’adiah, Ahmad Mahmud, Salleh Kamil, Mariani, Daeng Idris, Supatri, Saamah, Habsah, Malik Sutan Muda, Omar Suwita, M. Rafee, Ali Muhammad, Kemat Hassan, Nyak Osman, Shariff Dol, Ibrahim Pendek, H.M. Busra
Hussain wants to marry his fiancée Aminah and, out of love for her, rejects Zaitun. When Hussain attempts to collect money from a debtor, he finds the latter dead and asks Zaitun to hide him. Aminah’s father searches for Hussain but gets arrested by the police. Meanwhile, Zaitun informs a detective where Hussain is hiding. Hussain flees and jumps into the sea. When the police announce his death, his best friend Yusof comforts Aminah by asking his mother to take care of her and her sister in their home. Believing that Hussain has perished, Yusof begins to develop feelings for Aminah. But Zaitun threatens to expose Yusof’s past with her. The kampung (Malay village) where they live is small enough so that the characters’ personal affairs become public knowledge sooner or later.
Only an excerpt remains of Ramon A. Estella’s 1956 triumph Ang Buhay at Pag-ibig ni Dr. Jose Rizal (The Life and Love of Dr. Jose Rizal), the same condition in which Manuel Conde’s Juan Tamad Goes to Congress (1959) can be found. But where Conde’s Vietnam-set Krus na Kawayan (Let Us Live, 1956) can be fairly described as propagandistic drivel, the output of several Filipino directors for Sir Run Run Shaw in Malaysia is of a generally noteworthy quality, with none more accomplished than Estella’s. Earlier recognized for political controversy over the long-lost Ako Raw Ay Huk (I Was Called a Rebel, later retitled Labi ng Bataan or Remains of Bataan, 1948), only one apparently complete local production of Estella’s remains. Fortunately most Filipino filmmakers’ Malay-language output has been carefully preserved in Singapore, with Estella’s debut contribution, Kembali Saorang, outshining the rest.[1] Estella admirably navigates a surprisingly complex narrative (in addition to finishing in record time, per reliable accounts) and demonstrates why his producers prevailed on him to make several more films before continuing with his peripatetic explorations.[2] For close comparison, Teodorico C. Santos made a charming effort, Taufan (Typhoon), later the same year, in the same locale and with many of the same actors; but even in reprising the melodramatic elements, Kembali Saorang pulls away with more ambitious scope, appreciation of social forces, and psychological complexity, with a resolution that honors Estella’s new sponsors’ culture as much as it reflects the maturity of Philippine film artistry.
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Samseng
English Translation: Gangster
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1959 / B&W
Director: Ramon A. Estella
Screenwriter: Ralph Modder
Producer: Malay Film Productions
Cast: Zaiton, Aziz Jaafar, Jins Shamsuddin, Rosnani, Saamah, A. Rahim, Haji Mahadi, Omar Suwita, M. Rafee, Ali P.G., Mohd. Hamid, Kemat Hassan, Sharif Dol, Ismail Abdullah, Ibrahim Hasan, S. Sudharmadji
Daud serves time in prison after being arrested for forgery. His good behavior impresses the warden, who promises him a job after he is released. His younger brother Ahmad meanwhile deceives his mother by claiming to be a car dealer when he actually engages in extortion and robbery. Their neighbor Kiah sympathizes with the brothers’ mother but Ahmad ignores her and takes up with a nightclub hostess. After Daud has served his sentence, he follows up on the job offered him. It turns out to be undercover police work. Daud is assigned to shadow a troublesome criminal gang, unaware that his own brother is its ringleader.
Samseng exists in atypically poor condition, since it appears to be sourced from a TV-broadcast version. But that also attests to its effectiveness as a film-noir favorite. The primary locales—Changi Prison (now Complex), then fairly new and also featured in Ramon A. Estella’s Kembali Saorang, and the underworld hotspots of Singapore—become as much dramatic players as the performers themselves. A well-regarded member of the Philippine social-realist painters circle, Estella understandably upheld verisimilitude even in shifting to cinema, and the result in this case is a tale firmly rooted in time and place. He also apparently valued memorable resolutions (possibly a consequence of his professional musicianship), which nearly saves his Mata Hari (1958) from masculinist overvaluation. The device works whoppingly for Samseng, where the standard chases, shootouts, and heartbreaks build up to an unforgettable night in the lives of the city’s dispossessed.
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Saudagar Minyak Urat
English Translation: Massage-Oil Merchant
English Title: Love Crazy
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1959 / B&W
Director: Ramon A. Estella
Screenwriter: Ralph Modder
Producer: Malay Film Productions
Cast: S. Kadarisman, Normadiah, Aziz Sattar, Mariani, S. Shamsuddin, Leng Hussin, Ani Jasmin, Ahmad Nispu, Ibrahim Pendek, Mohd Hamid, Zainom, Saloma, S. Sudarmadji, Sharif Dol, Omar Suwita, Kemat Hassan, Ali P.G., Kassim Masdor, H.M. Busra, Omar Harun, Ismail Abdullah
Fatimah, a bossy though still-bodacious wife, has her hands full making sure her hubby stays faithful. The philandering Yusof Hamid asks his assistant to take him to a nightclub, where he meets and falls for Hamidah, even arranging to serenade her one night. Since she already has a boyfriend, she resists Hamid, forcing him to look for a miracle. He approaches a witch doctor, who arranges to cast a spell on Hamidah. When Fatimah finds out, she also asks for help from the same magician.
Only the lost Caprichosa (Whimsical Woman, 1947) and possibly Kenkoy (1950) in Ramon A. Estella’s previous film record suggest that he might have dabbled in romantic comedy. After assigning him a series of genre exercises—melodrama, horror, war, and gangster films—with generally satisfactory results, Sir Run Run Shaw must have marveled at how he came up with his best Malay-language product at that point. Saudagar Minyak Urat is a silly, rambunctious outing from start to finish, with occasional use of slapstick and sped-up footage, but like the best comedy directors, Estella ensured that a dramatically valid foundation was fully developed beforehand. He displays impressive skill in blocking and choreographing groups of performers so that the lines of action crisscross but never result in confusion, and stages a charming open-air musical interlude midway (an effervescent beach number titled “Hula Hoop” that cleverly rationalizes hip-grinding women in skimpy wear), succeeded in later scenes by a feverish song-and-dance number featuring Saloma. He also shows smart gender reversals that may have drawn on the contemporaneous full-scale treatments of Gregorio Fernandez. But until the emergence of the talents behind Juan de la Cruz Productions in the 1970s, nothing we have in available Philippine film samples has as queer a figure the way that Normadiah (as the domineering missus) is configured in SMU: garrulous, hotheaded, swaggering pugnaciously, yet winning her battles via judicious deployment of the womanly masquerade. So the great Manuel Conde movies are lost? We have this entry from Estella, and it will fulfill expectations of accomplished old-time Philippine comedy, even if it’s set in neighboring territory.
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Pusaka Pontianak
English Title: The Accursed Heritage
English Translation: The Pontianak Heritage
Language: Malay
Additional Language: English
Year of Release: 1965 / B&W
Director & Screenwriter: Ramon A. Estella
Producer: Malay Film Productions
Cast: Saadiah, Ahmad Mahmud, Dayang Sofia, Salleh Kamil, Normadiah, Mariam Baharum, Aziz Sattar, Ahmad Daud, Ibrahim Pendek, Ahmad Nisfu, Haji Mahadi, Jah Hj. Mahadi, Omar Suwita, Kuswadinata
Related individuals from various walks of life keep sighting a distant uncle whom they all regard as wealthy, but the apparitions either disappear or turn scary. They then read a newspaper report that identify the man, Datu Pengiran Sutan Kudus, as having perished in a fiery automobile accident and wishing to gather all his relatives for the reading of his last will and testament. They travel to his estate on a rubber plantation where tigers roam, and await the reading at midnight. The lawyer introduces a young woman as the late datu’s wife, who should be his rightful heir. But in acknowledgment of his many descendants, he makes a revelation along with a condition: his ancestors were pontianaks destroyed by his human family and cursed thirteen generations of the human descendants, with the datu as the last of the accursed. Those wanting their share of inheritance must remain on the plantation for four weeks, with those who leave or die forfeiting their share. A few other characters introduce themselves as investigators who find the datu’s own death suspicious.
The question of how much closure Ramon A. Estella provided for the most productive phase of his career, in Malay-language cinema, must have been on his producer’s mind as well: he was given his third pontianak assignment, but with a treatment reminiscent of his most memorable achievement, the musical comedy Saudagar Minyak Urat. The further question of how far he was allowed to subvert his material might be impossible to determine by now, except from the historical record that no other pontianak movie was produced afterward until well into the next decade. Estella was also making films in Vietnam and Japan around this time, and would continue working in New York, Puerto Rico, and Italy, until finally retiring in Florida with his Japanese wife. The pontianak may be considered the Indo-Malayan counterpart of the Philippines’s manananggal although the also-female entity possesses the tragic backstory of childbirth trauma. Estella updates his narrative by introducing rock and roll music, with the theme song (translatable as “Rhythm of the Pontianak”) performed in doo-wop style by Ahmad Daud and the Swallows, consequently rationalizing the sharia-proscribed arrangement specified by the characters’ forebear. As described by film expert Amir Muhammad, the pop brashness “brought the pontianak out into the harsh modern light of parody and cynicism, away from the shadows of whispered superstition and taboo where she thrived” (120 Malay Movies, Matahari Books, 2010). The characters and their relationships are developed as a drawing-room drama, although the narrative resolution expands the setting in an unexpected yet apposite manner. An aura of gloom nevertheless suffuses the proceedings, derived as much from the nighttime settings as from our awareness that agricultural wealth will not be able to hold its own against a fast-industrializing economy.
Notes
[1] Available internet information on Ramon A. Estella is reflective of the negligence with which he has been treated in general, since he always seemed ready to move from place to place in search of work. As of this writing, the Internet Movie Database does not list this film as well as Saudagar Minyak Urat (Love Crazy, 1959), Darah-Ku (My Blood, 1963), and Bunga Tanjong (Cape of Flowers, 1963), and lists the earlier version of Raja Bersiong (The King with Fangs, 1963) in his name rather than K.M. Basker’s; it also misidentifies Pusaka Pontianak (The Accursed Heritage, 1965) under the credit of its assistant director, S. Sudarmaji. The Singapore Fillm Archives contains a comprehensive listing, including an Estella-directed Japan-set film, Melanchong ka-Tokyo (Holiday in Tokyo, 1964) also produced by Malay Film Productions. A missing Estella Filipino title is Ang Tagala (The Tagalog Woman, 1941), the Vietnam-set Kim (1957), and an unplaceable Italian work, Consiglio Costoso (Expensive Advice, no date provided)—all from the director’s entry in the Film volume of the Cultural Center of the Philippines’s Encyclopedia of Philippine Art (2nd ed., CCP & University of the Philipppines Diliman Office of the Chancellor, 2017, pp. 449–450).
[2] One rudimentary context of Estella’s relocation to Malaysia, which I am still in the process of further evaluating, is that his arrival coincided with the announcement of a strike for higher wages by film performers and technicians from Malay Film Productions, through the Singapore Malay Artists’ Union, submitted to Shaw Brothers. Although a Filipino actor-director, Eddie Infante, preceded everyone in 1955 with Gadis Liar (Elephant Girl, apparently unavailable), after an earlier notice concluded amicably in 1954, the near-simultaneous solicitation of a clutch of Noypi directors in 1957 and 1958 raises the disturbing possibility that our talents might have been envisioned to function as safeguards against the possible inactivity of Malaysian and Indian creatives. However, filmmaker, critic, and historian Amir Muhammed provided a crucial qualification: “I’ve asked three people who’ve written about the era and all of them say it was never a policy akin to hiring scabs; it was more like two things that happened in parallel. The strikes were never major enough to cripple production for long. (P. Ramlee’s Panca Delima, released in 1957, was one of the few films that got delayed; then there was a bigger strike in 1965 where Shaw had to temporarily close.) The Filipino directors were hired based on cultural similarities but also access to more sophisticated ‘Hollywood techniques’” (Facebook Messenger reply, November 5, 2025). [For essential basic resources, see the list of references at “Malay Film Productions & Cathay-Keris Studio (1943–1973),” Wiki.sg, last edited August 6, 2019.]
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