100 YEARS OF MALAYSIAN CINEMA AT MUZIUM NEGARA: NARROW IN SCOPE BUT FULL OF CURIOS AND NOT MUCH FACTS!

By Mansor bin Puteh

 

 

I am probably the only person in the film industry of Malaysia today who is not related to anyone whose parents were involved in the industry to have paid a visit to the Shaw Brothers' Malay Film Productions Studios at 8 Jalan Ampas in Singapore.

 

This happened in 1963 when my mother took me and my younger brother, on her jaunt to the city with many in the group of visitors from Melaka to visit our relatives who were living there and making tours to interesting places in the city.

 

I also watched television for the first time when I was there.

 

But the experience of visiting the Malay Film Productions Studios became the highlight of my trip to Singapore when we were allowed to enter the studios where they were filming a scene in a cabaret with P. Ramlee and the other actors all of who I had never seen in films since I had not yet then been to the cinemas.

 

The lead actor in the scene was Saloma and she was the last to appear on the set because she had a lot of makeup to do. And when she was done I saw her walking pass me and saying, 'Sorry…Terlambat!' (Sorry…I'm late!')

 

I checked with her younger sister, Mariani many years since she died who said she was the one who was singing 'Darah Muda' and not Saloma. So I figured Saloma was singing the song, 'Bila Larut Malam' (When Night Falls) and not 'Darah Muda' (Young Blood) which I thought she had done.

 

After P. Ramlee died Muzium Negara organized a special exhibition and I remember buying a shirt button with a photo of his face on it. I lost it when I went to study film at a university in New York City because I had left it with other personal items and newspaper clippings I had saved from the report I did as a reporter with Utusan Melayu, with someone who later thought they were garbage.

 

There is an interesting side exhibition held by Muzium Negara that started from 20th May to 23 July.

 

However, I found it wanting; there is just too many curios and objet d'art and not much text or information and expert analysis with references to the cinemas of other countries in Asean and Hollywood!

 

First of all, the stress on P. Ramlee is too much like if there is no P. Ramlee, there is no Old Malayan Cinema and then the Malaysian Cinema as a whole.

 

There is also a display of three beds which were said to be a recreation of the beds where the 'Three Abduls' or 'Tiga Abdul' in one of the films directed by P. Ramlee.

 

I had seen a similar display of such items in another exhibition on the history of Old Malay Cinema with reference to Old Singapore Cinema at the Malay Heritage Center (MHC) in Singapore in March, 2010 but whose beds are totally different than those that are displayed in Muzium Negara.

 

I made a return trip to the studios in Jalan Ampas in November, 2011 after an absence of forty-eight years!

 

The MHC or TWM for Taman Warisan Melayu is in a building that was formerly the Istana Kampung Gelam where the ancestors of the first Sultan of Singapura (sic) had lived at that was built on the site of the original palace where the Sultan Hussain Shah and his family had lived from 1824 until he had to flee to Melaka few years later where he died and was buried outside of the Masjid Trengkerah.

 

Obviously, there is a tussle of some sort with regard to the films and the cinema that was created and introduced by film scholars and critics and historians when they classified the films produced by the two major studios in Singapore - the Malay Film Productions Studios and Cathay-Keris Studios owned and managed by the two Shaw Brothers and Loke Wan Tho and Ho Ah Loke, with Singapore clinging onto them as their own and with Malaysia hoping that Singapore will ignore such a claim.

 

The truth is all the films produced by the studios then before the collapse of the studio system and the studios are all about Singapore and there is hardly any of the films that are set in Malaysia, except for 'Raja Bersiong' which is on a historical event related to the Sultanate of Kedah.

 

It was written by Tunku Abdul Rahman with Shaw Brothers spending RM1 million which was the most expensive film that the studios produced them.

 

Unfortunately, this fact is not mentioned in this exhibition as much as those that mentions how it was the studio system that had created all the film directors including P. Ramlee and the others thus giving the rightful place for the four studio owners who are all Chinese two of whom were from Shanghai, China and the other two are local-born Chinese, who for no reason decided to pursue their artistic and business acumen to create what would otherwise had not been created.

 

Therefore, a forum with some local panel members and one or two from Singapore is due so that the organizers and curators can present to the public what their main goals and intentions were and if what had happened in the past could be used as an inspiration to the authorities particularly Finas so that the real and true New Malaysian Cinema can be recreated in the same form, shape and effectiveness…