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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.
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.