The Vanished Giant

Once upon a time--some forty to fifty years ago--a titan strode across the
Philippine archipelago. He dominated Philippine cinema with a career
spanning almost forty years, creating some of the greatest Filipino films
ever made and influencing the generation of Filipino filmmakers that
followed. Then he vanished, leaving only traces of his presence in his
films, and in the memories of the people who saw them.

Gerardo de Leon Ilagan was born on September 12, 1913 to a family of
artists--his father, Hermogenes Ilagan, was writer, stage director and head
of a “sarswela” (a form of Spanish theater) group; his mother, Casiana de
Leon, was a singer. His brothers and sisters and descendants have all been
involved in both stage and screen, either as actors, singers, or filmmakers.

De Leon was to have followed a different course, at first; he was studying
at the University of Santo Tomas (UST) to be a doctor, and when he finished,
won fifth place in the medical board examinations. But the call of the arts
was strong; even while studying in UST he was already playing bit parts in
films like “Mga Pusong Dakila” (Noble Hearts, 1939) and “Bukang Liwayway”
(Sunrise, 1938). He directed his first film in 1938--“Bahay Kubo” (Nipa
Hut), a musical.

He directed films at a fast pace, making five in three years, from 1939 to
1941. War broke out when he was making “Anong Ganda Mo” (What Beauty You
Have!), but the film was released anyway, in May 1942, when the Japanese had
already occupied Manila. He directed stage plays and made two notable films
during the Japanese Occupation--“Dawn of Freedom,” 1944, with Abe Yutaka,
and “Tatlong Maria” (Three Maries, 1944).

“Dawn” is said to be fascinating for the way it tells the invasion of the
Philippines from the Japanese point of view--Filipinos welcome the Japanese
as they march into Manila; American officers oppress and kill a Filipino
soldier; a mother pleads to her son at Bataan to surrender. The film is a
piece of propaganda meant to remake the Americans as villains and the
Japanese as allies; interestingly, the film also tries to instill in
Filipinos a sense of pride in their Asian heritage--a pride lost to them
through centuries of Western colonization.

After some thirteen years of active filmmaking, de Leon hit his stride in
the fifties. “48 Oras,” (48 Hours, 1950), about a man who (because of a
bullet working its way to his heart) has only forty-eight hours of life left
to hunt down his wife’s murderers, is reportedly a masterpiece of film noir
(Charles Tesson praised the film in an article written for “Cahiers”).
“Sawa Sa Lumang Simboryo” (The Python in the Old Belltower, 1952), adapted
from a “komiks” (comics) story about a simple farmer driven by the Spaniards
to become an outlaw, is considered a classic of Filipino fantasy filmmaking.
“Dyesebel” (1953), takes another “komiks” story--this one written by the
great Mars Ravelo--and weaves what is said to be a haunting and delightful
love story between man and fish (French film critic Pierre Rissent calls the
film’s eroticism “Bunuelian”). The film was a great hit and inspired
countless sequels and remakes.

“Sanda Wong,” (1955) is a Hong Kong-Philippines co-production, at a time
when the level of filmmaking in the Philippines was actually superior to
that of Hong Kong. The film, another fantasy, tells the story of two
men--one a rich man, the other a bandit named Sanda Wong--who become
friends, and how their friendship is sorely tested. For all its
black-and-white simplicity, “Sanda Wong” is full of satisfying moments--the
haunting death by drowning of the rich man’s wife; the calling down of
snakes by means of a magic ring; the two men’s deftly sketched yet complex
relationship--moments that (for me, at least) puts the film on par with
(perhaps even superior to) Alexander Korda’s more extravagantly produced
“The Thief of Bagdad.”

Near the beginning of this string of remarkable films de Leon made “Sisa,”
1951; it was his first attempt to put a story by Philippine national hero
Jose Rizal on the big screen.

“Sisa” takes one of the most popular supporting characters in Rizal’s novel,
“Noli Me Tangere” (Touch Me Not), and makes her heroine of her own film (a
conceit Tom Stoppard would use decades later in his own “Rosencrantz and
Guildenstern are Dead”). “Sisa” is Rizal’s multilayered canvas of a novel
on Philippine society as refracted through the eyes of its most oppressed
citizens, a woman driven mad by the death and disappearance of her two sons.
Anita Linda as Sisa is a volatile, unmistakably sexual presence, bound
(barely) by conventional notions of what makes a good Filipina mother and
wife, until insanity liberates her. De Leon tells her story in grand Gothic
style, with bell tower haunted by a sinister sacristan, and tree branches
reaching out to Sisa like witches’ claws. The film takes the classic image
of forlorn, ravished “Ynang Bayan” (Mother Country), and recasts it as a
dark fantasy.

In the 1960s, de Leon made “The Moises Padilla Story” (1961), the true story
of a man (Leopoldo Salcedo) running for mayor who is crushed by the
province’s corrupt governor. De Leon was commissioned to make this film by
the Nacionalistas, as an example of what might happen if the liberals ever
took power; de Leon took his assignment seriously, intensifying the outrage
by visually and dramatically comparing Padilla’s ordeal to Christ’s.

But nothing de Leon ever does is so simple; the film transcends propaganda
by focusing on its Judas, incarnated by Joseph Ejercito Estrada as Padilla’s
chief torturer and former best friend.

It’s a brilliant conceit; Estrada’s conflicted loyalties to friend and
employer gives the film much of its tension, its drama. Every inflicted
torture, every act of mutilation registers on Estrada’s expressive face as
yet another betrayal of his friend, another source of unending guilt; he
makes you wonder who suffers more, the torturer or his victim. Estrada in
the film is astonishingly good, possibly better than he will ever be for the
rest of his career as an actor--or his tragicomically short one as president
of the Philippines.

In both 1961 and 1962 de Leon plunged into full-scale adaptations of Jose
Rizal’s two major novels--the aforementioned “Noli Me Tangere” and its
sequel, “El Filibusterismo” (The Filibuster).

“Noli” is marred by weak acting, particularly from Edita Vital as Maria
Clara and Lina Carino as Sisa de Leon could not get his ideal cast. Eddie
del Mar as Crisostomo Ibarra, Rizal’s fictional counterpart, is serviceable,
but the strongest performance comes from Leopoldo Salcedo as Elias, Ibarra’s
proletariat conscience.

Despite the serious flaws, the film is full of unforgettable sequences:
Elias’ battle with the crocodile (showing, incidentally, de Leon’s mastery
of editing); Elias’ phantasmagoric flight across the countryside, with
corpses of loved ones pointing accusatory fingers at him; and Sisa being
whipped by the Captain’s wife--a scene charged with the eroticism of de
Sade, or Georges Bataille.

“El Filibusterismo” shows de Leon at the peak of his powers. The novel,
more intense than its predecessor, was occasion for de Leon to fully
exercise his Gothic sensibilities. He has, for example, two lovers meeting
under the widespread branches of a tree--a romantic enough spot, save for
the pair of twisted crosses marking the grave of the girl’s parents nearby.
He has a bandit hunt down a priest and corrupt politician, all three like
ants scrambling across a vast landscape--an image of fatal inevitability not
unworthy of Erich Von Stroheim’s Death Valley sequences in “Greed.” Most of
all he has Pancho Magalona, giving the performance of his life as Simoun,
the twisted version of Crisostomo Ibarra and the novel’s heart of darkness,
driven to destroy everything and everyone with his thirst for vengeance.

De Leon ended his career the way filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Francis
Coppola and Jonathan Demme began theirs, making B movies for Roger Corman
(one of his last films was “Women in Cages,” 1971, reportedly an
above-average example of the “women-in-prisons” movies). It may not
necessarily have been a sign of his downfall or degradation: “Terror Is A
Man” was made in 1959, before he did his Rizal masterpieces, and the film is
regarded as a minor horror classic--a valid, if lesser-known, adaptation of
H.G. Wells’ “The Island of Dr. Moreau.”

After “Women in Cages,” he did two more films of note--“Banaue” (1975),
starring Nora Aunor (the film was partially directed by others), and “Juan
de la Cruz” (1976), starring Fernando Poe Jr., which was never finished.

De Leon died on July 25, 1981, a titan of Philippine cinema. His versions
of “Noli” and “El Fili” are considered definitive; his “Dyesebel,” which
started a franchise that has lasted some thirty years (the latest remake was
as recent as 1996), is still regarded as the best version. He has
influenced Filipino filmmakers from Lino Brocka to Mario O’Hara to Celso Ad.
Castillo; Fernando Poe Jr.’s pictures, perennial moneymakers even today,
echo de Leon’s unmistakable visual style--the low-angled shots, the tiny
figures running under tremendous skies, the looming face framed against vast
landscapes.

Unfortunately de Leon is a titan whose imprints on this world are vanishing.
The negatives of “Dyesebel,” “Sawa Sa Lumang Simboryo” and his reputed
masterpiece, “Daigdig Ng Mga Api” (The World of the Oppressed, 1965) are
gone; “Sisa” survives, but only as a 16 mm print in wretched condition. His
“Noli Me Tangere,” “Sanda Wong,” and “The Moises Padilla Story” have been
restored (although “Moises” is missing at least three reels); hopefully, “El
Filibusterismo” will be next.

(Parts of this article are taken from the CCP Encyclopedia of Philippine
Art)

(“El Filibusterismo” can occasionally be seen on the Viva Channel; “Terror
is a Man,” “Beast of Blood Island,” and “Women in Cages” are available in
either VHS or DVD form).

(Comments? Please mail me at noelbotevera@...)




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