IN HIS RICHLY DOCUMENTED BOOK “The Cinema of Manuel Conde” (University of Santo Tomas Publishing House, 280 pages), with meticulous attention to detail, scholar-playwright Nicanor G. Tiongson presents the prolific and illustrious artistic achievements of Manuel Conde, better known to his fans and admirers as Juan Tamad.
Here’s a hefty load of judicially chosen archival materials in the form of splendid production stills (handsomely reproduced by UST Publishing House), news clippings, publicity posters, pages from handwritten shooting scripts, set and costume design sketches by National Artist Botong Francisco and on top of it all, an annotated filmography with a synopsis for each of the 39 films Conde directed (plus a list of his documentary films, acting and writing credits in other films). Tiongson serves a sumptuous spread of Conde’s film output for film scholars and movie buffs to savor and relish.
Acknowledged in the author’s introduction this meaty volume is to a large extent the result of the generous archival contributions of the surviving members of Conde’s family. With their help and by drawing from other research materials in different libraries as well as viewing copies of seven films tht Conde directed, Tiongson has managed a full-bodied profile of Conde spanning five periods of his life.
In the book’s first five-chapter biographical section, Tiongson traces Conde’s entry into the movies and moves on to his apprenticeship with directors like Carlos Vander Tolosa, his early directorial successes, establishment of his own production company (MC Pictures), trips to Hollywood and participation in the 1952 Venice Film Festival where he showed a re-edited “Genghis Khan” (featuring an English track written by the renown American film critic James Agee), his critical and commercial hits like the Juan Tamad series, and his final productive years.
Colorful Anecdotes
Along the way, Tiongson spices his narration with quips and quotes that reveal Conde’s personality and work ethic.
Some of the colorful anecdotes refer to the “Conde Touch,” the director’s way of extracting realism from his stars’ acting. On one occasion, before shooting a scene for “Ibong Adarna” (1955), Conde prepped his actor Nestor de Villa by running 10 times around the LVN lot with the actor so that by the time they returned to the set, the actor had no trouble projecting exhaustion from traveling a very long distance in the scene.
As Tiongson often underscores in his narration, Conde’s emphasis on realism contributed to the critical and commercial success of his films and was among the chief stylistic innovations he did in his films.
For instance, in the case of Genghis Khan (1950), he relied on Botong Francisco’s encyclopedic knowledge of Mongolian nomadic life to make the sets, costumes and battle scenes as authentic as possible.
At a screening in Hollywood, some viewers commended Conde for fielding short horses typically found in Mongolia. (Conde was amused by this remark since the short horses he found were from the karitelas in Angono and Taytay where the film was shot.)
Even if a film was a royal adventure fantasy picture like Prinsipe Paris (1949), he injected realistic swordplay that thrilled audiences because actual blades were used instead of the typical wooden sticks that were the bane of eskrimahan (fencing) scenes in many Filipino films.
Social comment
Conde’s signature mark was his integration of social commentary and nationalism whatever the genre of his movie, be it musical, comedy, drama or action.
His Juan Tamad films became the epitome of this aesthetic as Conde perfected his style of tackling the issues of the times without turning preachy or didactic. “Good movies are like castor oil. It’s good for the body but nobody wants to take it. You have to sugarcoat serious films,” he said in an interview
Which his singular artistic vision, Conde eschewed making films which he considered as having no educational value or social relevance at all. Abiding by such principles, he sought to maintain his creative independence by setting up his own production company in MC Pictures.
For Tiongson, Conde’s progressive thinking and resistance to the demands of the commercial studio system in his time parallels and even anticipates the non-mainstream efforts of today’s independent filmmakers.
In the book’s last chapter, Tiongson expounds on this insightful thesis and persuasively shows that wherever Conde worked, be it with other studios or his own company, the long arc of his artistic growth and maturity was delineated by a strong independent aesthetic sensibility which empowered him to explore and introduce new ways of adapting folk literature or reshaping popular genres, critique the status quo or take on the challenge of rising to the standards of world cinema like the Venice Film Festival.
Cultural studies
Although Tiongson’s explanation of Conde’s significance as a filmmaker to today’s audiences is comprehensive and multi-faceted, much of his appraisal emanates from a cultural studies point of view.
His arguments can be fortified by intensive and close critical readings of significant parts of Conde’s extant films, particularly in the way he constructed and codified film space, the interplay of various elements within the frame and the evolution of such a system over time as shown in different films.
For example, Tiongson quotes what a number of local and foreign critics have often remarked about Conde’s Genghis Khan—that first, his molding of film space and time is reminiscent of the seminal Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, and second, that his visual rendering of spectacle is far more involving and evocative than multimillion dollar Hollywood studio versions of the same subject.
While such information is vital, an in-depth shot analysis of key sequences from the film needs to be done to substantiate and validate these comparisons.
A thick description of how Conde configured the screen world and moved his camera in film space or directed the movement of his actors and other production elements in relation to each other and the camera can advance our knowledge and enliven our appreciation for Conde’s peculiar film language and the poetics of his compelling imagery.
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