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Superstar
Nora Aunor Fan Site
Nora Aunor Fan Site
Pauline Kael, everlastingly my favorite film critic, has this author’s note in her
compendium of writings, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies, which she titled
“Movie Love”: “These last years have not been a time of great moviemaking
fervor. What has been sustaining is that there is so much love in movies besides
great moviemaking.”
What is this movie love? She defines this as a process that sees our emotions
rising “to meet the force coming from screen, and they go on rising throughout
our moviegoing lives.” She continues: “When this happens in a popular art
form—when it’s an art experience that we discover for ourselves—it is
sometimes disparaged as fannishness. But there’s something there that goes
deeper than connoisseurship or taste. It’s a fusion of art and love.”
That fusion of art and love can take place with a rediscovery of an old film of a
performer whose life is followed ardently by fans. Memories are supplanted by
real gaze. The footnotes disappear from the mind and, in their place, the full
symphony is heard, the dead is resurrected, and our faith in the thespian is
strengthened. Not by secondary data of shared impressions but by the primary
data of sight.
When writers talk of great performers, it is common to draw from samples of
excellence and not from the regular and the ordinary. I take pride, therefore, in
my find: Nora Aunor in a work that is scarcely remembered.
Fe, Esperanza, Caridad is a trilogy created by Premiere Productions of the
Santiagos. It engaged the services of two giant filmmakers, Lamberto Avellana
and Gerardo “Gerry” de Leon. The film was released in 1974, two years before
Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo, a film that presaged the power of Aunor in crafting
characters in themes that are nothing but incendiary. Officially, if there is such a
thing, Aunor was not yet acknowledged as an actress because it would be two
years later when the Urian, the nation’s premier body of critics, would honor the
actor for her work in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos.
This can best explain why in the trilogy, the exposures of her leading men are
substantial. The three stories are not focused on her. This is good for we see
Aunor interacting with other actors, instead of being a nucleus of intensity
around which pivot other characters. Aunor would be a physical and
metaphorical force later that there was no way but for other actors to play off her
energy field. For the students of cinema—and for the fans—this must be one of
the last major films of Aunor where directors were not yet in awe of her presence.
The film is interesting on many levels. One curiosity is the presence of two
directors who would soon be named National Artists for Film: Avellana, who
would be so declared in 1976; and de Leon much belatedly getting it in 1982.
The credit for the first story in this omnibus does not appear in my VCD but
articles point to Cirio Santiago as the director. Short compared with the other
two stories, the first one revolves around Fe, the singer discovered by a talent
manager (Dindo Fernando). Fe soon becomes the big star, and then painfully
witnesses her manager who is now her husband sink into despondency and
booze. Even before the husband dies, yes, you know it already. It’s A Star is
Born borrowed up to the last line of Judy Garland: “Hello, everybody. This is
Mrs. Norman Maine” to Aunor’s “Ako si Mrs. Artiaga.”
The second episode gives us a reason to appreciate Avellana’s insight as a
filmmaker. Despite his elite background, Avellana had already earned his spurs
in fleshing out poverty in the ‘50s, with his Badjao and Anak-Dalita. In
Esperanza, Avellana is the antithesis of Brocka for where the latter displays
poverty and squalor warts and all, the former takes us to the territory of the
“poor” and, without much commentary and with no repulsion at all, shows us
where they live.
With Avellana telling the story of this cigarette vendor being wooed by a rich
man even as her shy suitor, a jeepney driver, remains loyal, we see a tale of
hope told without the ponderous air usually associated with that discourse.
There is the subplot of a duplicitous “rich” boy passing on to Esperanza his drug
dealing, without our heroine’s knowledge and this becomes, like any subplots,
distracting. When the story, however, is on Doming, the driver, and Esperanza
with her dreams and ambitions, the episode is a caper. Finely paced, the story
has another gem, Rosa Aguirre not too old yet, delivering her lines, crisp and
crackling, like the ultimate zarzuelista. Aguirre is sublime as a comedienne here
and Aunor does her turn to remind us that the greatest tragediennes are those
who can also make you laugh.
Gerry de Leon’s contribution demands a different kind of attention. A master of
the gothic, de Leon opts to tell the story of a young nun courted by a gardener
who turns out to be the Prince of Darkness himself. There lies the problem and
there also swells the possibilities of the third and last story. You can snicker at
the bad costume of the devil but your jaw will drop with the first scene—a
monastery with nuns walking with candles. Headily theatrical, the scene
generates for us the impression that the filmmaker knows this dark subject
matter in both its camp and compelling incarnations.
Rakishly handsome, Ronaldo Valdez channels for the most part the long
ancestral line of Judases and Lucifers and archvillains created for the Filipino
silver screen and radio, from Ben David to Ramon D’Salva, from Johnny
Monteiro to Paquito Diaz. The story seems to be built around him and, yet, it is
when he is with Aunor, in dialogues that defy the apocryphal and the logical, that
we get a truly original sense of evil, one that is deeply touching.
As Caridad, Aunor tries to convince the Devil to return to God. In return for that
plea, Caridad will do anything, even jump off the cliff. Uneven because of
limitations with the sets, the film soars when de Leon’s skills in mere shifts of the
camera axis possess him. There is the shot of the blue skies and the clouds
being taunted by the Devil and the camera going down to the ground and
scaling above the treetops. There is Aunor at the terrace, the background a
silvery blue gray. She is holding a rosary and praying to Virgin Mary there amid
the evil lair. It is horrifying proposition: evil is as accessible as good. The
realization is clear and troubling and it works because one senses these two
actors—Valdez, for all his theatrics; Aunor and her underplaying—believe in the
things they are doing.
The same year the omnibus was finished, Gerry de Leon would move on to
make a full-length film with the Valdez and Aunor, with Christopher de Leon
added for good measure. The film was Banawe. It would be acknowledged as
de Leon’s last film. And Aunor’s valedictory to being merely superstar.
compendium of writings, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies, which she titled
“Movie Love”: “These last years have not been a time of great moviemaking
fervor. What has been sustaining is that there is so much love in movies besides
great moviemaking.”
What is this movie love? She defines this as a process that sees our emotions
rising “to meet the force coming from screen, and they go on rising throughout
our moviegoing lives.” She continues: “When this happens in a popular art
form—when it’s an art experience that we discover for ourselves—it is
sometimes disparaged as fannishness. But there’s something there that goes
deeper than connoisseurship or taste. It’s a fusion of art and love.”
That fusion of art and love can take place with a rediscovery of an old film of a
performer whose life is followed ardently by fans. Memories are supplanted by
real gaze. The footnotes disappear from the mind and, in their place, the full
symphony is heard, the dead is resurrected, and our faith in the thespian is
strengthened. Not by secondary data of shared impressions but by the primary
data of sight.
When writers talk of great performers, it is common to draw from samples of
excellence and not from the regular and the ordinary. I take pride, therefore, in
my find: Nora Aunor in a work that is scarcely remembered.
Fe, Esperanza, Caridad is a trilogy created by Premiere Productions of the
Santiagos. It engaged the services of two giant filmmakers, Lamberto Avellana
and Gerardo “Gerry” de Leon. The film was released in 1974, two years before
Minsa’y Isang Gamu-Gamo, a film that presaged the power of Aunor in crafting
characters in themes that are nothing but incendiary. Officially, if there is such a
thing, Aunor was not yet acknowledged as an actress because it would be two
years later when the Urian, the nation’s premier body of critics, would honor the
actor for her work in Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos.
This can best explain why in the trilogy, the exposures of her leading men are
substantial. The three stories are not focused on her. This is good for we see
Aunor interacting with other actors, instead of being a nucleus of intensity
around which pivot other characters. Aunor would be a physical and
metaphorical force later that there was no way but for other actors to play off her
energy field. For the students of cinema—and for the fans—this must be one of
the last major films of Aunor where directors were not yet in awe of her presence.
The film is interesting on many levels. One curiosity is the presence of two
directors who would soon be named National Artists for Film: Avellana, who
would be so declared in 1976; and de Leon much belatedly getting it in 1982.
The credit for the first story in this omnibus does not appear in my VCD but
articles point to Cirio Santiago as the director. Short compared with the other
two stories, the first one revolves around Fe, the singer discovered by a talent
manager (Dindo Fernando). Fe soon becomes the big star, and then painfully
witnesses her manager who is now her husband sink into despondency and
booze. Even before the husband dies, yes, you know it already. It’s A Star is
Born borrowed up to the last line of Judy Garland: “Hello, everybody. This is
Mrs. Norman Maine” to Aunor’s “Ako si Mrs. Artiaga.”
The second episode gives us a reason to appreciate Avellana’s insight as a
filmmaker. Despite his elite background, Avellana had already earned his spurs
in fleshing out poverty in the ‘50s, with his Badjao and Anak-Dalita. In
Esperanza, Avellana is the antithesis of Brocka for where the latter displays
poverty and squalor warts and all, the former takes us to the territory of the
“poor” and, without much commentary and with no repulsion at all, shows us
where they live.
With Avellana telling the story of this cigarette vendor being wooed by a rich
man even as her shy suitor, a jeepney driver, remains loyal, we see a tale of
hope told without the ponderous air usually associated with that discourse.
There is the subplot of a duplicitous “rich” boy passing on to Esperanza his drug
dealing, without our heroine’s knowledge and this becomes, like any subplots,
distracting. When the story, however, is on Doming, the driver, and Esperanza
with her dreams and ambitions, the episode is a caper. Finely paced, the story
has another gem, Rosa Aguirre not too old yet, delivering her lines, crisp and
crackling, like the ultimate zarzuelista. Aguirre is sublime as a comedienne here
and Aunor does her turn to remind us that the greatest tragediennes are those
who can also make you laugh.
Gerry de Leon’s contribution demands a different kind of attention. A master of
the gothic, de Leon opts to tell the story of a young nun courted by a gardener
who turns out to be the Prince of Darkness himself. There lies the problem and
there also swells the possibilities of the third and last story. You can snicker at
the bad costume of the devil but your jaw will drop with the first scene—a
monastery with nuns walking with candles. Headily theatrical, the scene
generates for us the impression that the filmmaker knows this dark subject
matter in both its camp and compelling incarnations.
Rakishly handsome, Ronaldo Valdez channels for the most part the long
ancestral line of Judases and Lucifers and archvillains created for the Filipino
silver screen and radio, from Ben David to Ramon D’Salva, from Johnny
Monteiro to Paquito Diaz. The story seems to be built around him and, yet, it is
when he is with Aunor, in dialogues that defy the apocryphal and the logical, that
we get a truly original sense of evil, one that is deeply touching.
As Caridad, Aunor tries to convince the Devil to return to God. In return for that
plea, Caridad will do anything, even jump off the cliff. Uneven because of
limitations with the sets, the film soars when de Leon’s skills in mere shifts of the
camera axis possess him. There is the shot of the blue skies and the clouds
being taunted by the Devil and the camera going down to the ground and
scaling above the treetops. There is Aunor at the terrace, the background a
silvery blue gray. She is holding a rosary and praying to Virgin Mary there amid
the evil lair. It is horrifying proposition: evil is as accessible as good. The
realization is clear and troubling and it works because one senses these two
actors—Valdez, for all his theatrics; Aunor and her underplaying—believe in the
things they are doing.
The same year the omnibus was finished, Gerry de Leon would move on to
make a full-length film with the Valdez and Aunor, with Christopher de Leon
added for good measure. The film was Banawe. It would be acknowledged as
de Leon’s last film. And Aunor’s valedictory to being merely superstar.
Reposted here since
the original webpage
is no longer available.
the original webpage
is no longer available.