WHEN SINGAPORE WAS SOUTHEAST ASIAS HOLLYWOOD

The Arts 5 (December 1997)

Timothy R White

Dept Of English Language & Literature

National University of Singapore

1997 has been an important year for Singaporean filmmaking. In this

years Singapore International Film Festival, three new feature-length Singaporean

films debuted; in addition, four Malay films from Singapores Golden Age were

screened, along with two independent features from the 1970s. Although it would

be mistaken to assume that we now have a healthy Singaporean film industry, there

are certainly signs of life appearing -- signs that have been largely absent during

most of the last thirty years.

However, at one time Singapore was a major center for filmmaking in

Southeast Asia, churning out Malay-language films in a variety of genres from two

fully-developed studios. How did they start? What happened to them? And, what

will happen to Singaporean cinema in the future?

THE EARLY HISTORY OF SINGAPOREAN CINEMA

In the mid-1930s, two film empires were founded in Singapore. The

first of these was Loke Wan Thos Cathay Productions, with studios in Singapore,

Kuala Lumpur and, eventually, Hong Kong. The second was the Shaw Brothers

studio, founded by the legendary brothers Run Run and Runme. Beginning with

secondhand equipment they had found in an abandoned building in Shanghai, the

Shaws built an empire that included film studios, distribution networks, and

theaters.
 Both studios relied, especially in the early years, on Indian directors

remaking films they had already made in India, replacing Indian actors with locals

but keeping the scripts largely intact. Even though they were recycled, these films,

heavily laden with song and dance numbers, proved quite popular with local

audiences. Unfortunately, the booming success of Singapores fledgling film studios

was cut short by World War Two.

THE JAPANESE OCCUPATION

On 8 December 1941, Japanese forces invaded Malaya, and Singapore

surrendered ten weeks later, on 15 February 1942. The Occupation force set out

immediately to establish control over almost all aspects of life, including cinema.

Although the Japanese were quick to utilize the studios of other occupied Southeast

Asian nations, especially the Philippines and Indonesia, for the production of

propaganda films, they seemed to take little interest in those of Singapore.

However, there were a few films made in Singapore during the Occupation --

Bermadu, Hancur Hati, Ibu Tiri, Mutiara, Terang Bulan di Malaya, Topeng Syaitan,

and Mata Hatu -- but little is known about these films or the circumstances under

which they were produced.

All film exhibition came under control of one of the "kaishas," or official

Japanese Occupation government monopolies; the movie exhibition monopoly was

given to Eiga Haikyu Sha (the Japan Film Distribution Co.), with its headquarters in

Singapore, and which took over all the theaters throughout Malaya. Japanese films

were used in the campaign of "Nipponisation" carried out by the Occupation forces,

who recognised the power of cinema for propaganda purposes and for building the

shinchitsujo, or "New World Order." Because the Japanese initially lacked enough

Japanese films to fill Malaya's screens, the Sendenbu, or department of propaganda,

authorized the release of some of the 50,000 reels of British and American films they

had seized, but only after censoring and re-editing them to deliver the proper

messages. This lasted until 1943, when a regular supply of Japanese feature films

was available.

These Japanese-made films, filmed in Japan and the studios of

occupied nations in Southeast Asia, seemed remarkably familiar to war-time

audiences; despite the propaganda content, stylistically they were not much

different from the Hollywood films that the Japanese condemned. This is not really

surprising, as Japanese cinema was heavily influenced by American films, and the

Japanese studio system was modelled, to a great degree, on that of the Hollywood

film industry. In fact, many of the key personnel involved in making these films had

trained and worked in Hollywood. For example, Nankai no Hanataba (Bouquet in the

Southern Seas; 1942), a film about the bravery of the Japanese pilots who paved the

way for the invasion of Malaya, and which was made exclusively for screening in

Southeast Asia, was directed by Abe Yutaka, who had been known as "Jackie Abe" in

Hollywood when he worked there (as an actor, production assistant and, in lean

times, a butler) in the late teens and early 1920s.

In addition to Abe Yutakas Nankai no Hanataba, other Japanese films

made in and for Singapore and the rest of Southeast Asia include Shima Kojis

Shingaporu Sokogeki (All-out Attack on Singapore; 1943) and Koga Masatos Marei no

Tora (The Tiger of Malaya; 1943). Some animated cartoons were made for exhibition

in Southeast Asia also. One very popular cartoon character was Momotaro, the

"Peach boy", who appeared in a number of cartoons designed not just for domestic

consumption within Japan, but for propaganda use in occupied countries as well. For

example, Picture Book 1936 (Momotaro vs. Mickey Mouse) featured fanged Mickey
Mouse lookalikes riding giant bats, attacking peaceful Pacific islanders (represented

by cats and dolls, for some reason); the hero Momotaro jumps out of a picture book,

repels the American mice, and cherry trees blossom throughout the island as the

grateful natives sing "Tokyo Chorus".

In a more ambitious cartoon, Momotaro's Sea Eagle, released in 1943,

Momotaro leads the attack on Pearl Harbor, then "liberates" Southeast Asia; although

Momotaro himself is a human boy, the "liberated peoples" are presented as animals

(cute little rabbits, mice, ducks and bears, who willingly and sternly fight behind

Momotaro, their liberator and leader), while the Americans and British (and

especially General Percival, who surrenders Singapore to Momotaro) are huge, hairy,

ugly demons, complete with horns and drooling fangs. Nippon Banzai, another

animated propaganda film designed for use in the occupied nations, employed an

almost avant-garde mix of line animation, shadow animation, and live-action

footage, along with the following commentary (in English!):

The peaceful Southeast Asian countries have been trampled underfoot for

many years, their inhabitants made to suffer by the devilish British,

Americans, and Dutch. In the midst of this hardship, in their hearts they (the

inhabitants) have waited for a ray of light, a strong soul. That light, that soul

was Japan.

THE GOLDEN AGE OF SINGAPOREAN CINEMA

To the disappointment of no one but the Japanese themselves, this

ray of light was extinguished in 1945, and the Japanese Occupation ended. Within

a few years, the cameras were turning in Singaporean motion picture studios once

again. The first postwar film studio was Malay Film Production Ltd, established at 8
Jalan Ampas by the Shaw Brothers in 1947. Malay Film Productions was soon

followed by Cathay-Keris Productions, the result of a merger of Cathay Productions

and Keris Productions, with production facilities first in Tampines and later on East

Coast Road.

The chief asset of Malay Film Productions was, of course, the great P.

Ramlee (see last months article on Malaysian cinema for more information on

Ramlee). Almost a one-man production crew, Ramlee wrote scripts, wrote songs

(both music and lyrics), sang, acted in movies, and directed; almost everything, in

fact, but run the cameras (although there is evidence from his films that he probably

specified camera angles and lighting plans)! His films, especially the comedies, were

very popular among the Malay population of both Singapore and peninsular Malaysia.

P. Ramlee made the majority of his films at Malay Film Productions

studio in Singapore, and because most of his films were contemporary comedies or

melodramas, and were filmed partly on locations in Singapore, they provide an

interesting look at the Singapore of the 1950s and 1960s (especially interesting is his

1961 film, Seniman Bujang Lapok, known in English as The Nitwit Movie Stars, for its

scenes of filmmaking at Malay Film Productions). However, the Singapore of P.

Ramlees films (and, in fact, most of the Malay films made in Singapore) is unusual in

one important respect. It is a Singapore almost totally devoid of Chinese. Just as

African-American filmmakers of the 1920s-1940s made films featuring an almost

completely black America, Malay films featured a Singapore in which racial

difference, and the tensions it sometimes brought, did not exist. Certainly there

were exceptions, but most of these films were made primarily to entertain, and

social commentary, while not unknown, was seldom aimed at ethnic, racial, political

or religious conflicts.
 Cathay, unlike the Shaw brothers, relied, in addition to the foreign

films it distributed, to a great extent on films made at its Hong Kong studio. These

films were made mostly in Mandarin, but sometimes, especially in the early years, in

Cantonese. In 1997 Cathay re-released three of these Mandarin films -- Our Sister

Hedy (Tao Qin, 1958), Her Tender Heart (Evan Yang, 1959) and Mambo Girl (Evan

Yang, 1957) -- revealing the inventiveness that became a standard feature of

subsequent Hong Kong movies.

Back home in Singapore, Cathay-Keris made movies in Bahasa Melayu.

Although it lacked a star of the magnitude of P. Ramlee (although leading ladies

Maria Menado and Rose Yatimah were quite popular, as was comedian Wahid Satay),

Cathay-Keris did boast of at least one outstanding film director. Unlike the small,

personal films of Ramlee, the films of Cathay-Keriss Hussein Haniff used a much a

larger canvas, often featuring large battle scenes filmed outdoors (but with limited

resources) with what look like fairly large numbers of actors and extras. Instead of

contemporary subjects, Haniff worked with historical stories, setting his social

commentary and criticisms in Malayas feudal past. As seen in Hang Jebat (1961) and

Dang Anom (1962), the films by Haniff that were shown at the 1997 Singapore

International Film Festival, he was a master of mise-en-scene -- scenery, precision

acting, lighting -- as opposed to Ramlee, whose chief concerns were camera work

and the emotions expressed by the human face and voice.

Although not directed by big name directors such as Ramlee and

Haniff, the genre films, especially the horror films, made by Cathay-Keris were

popular and worth seeing even today. Better remembered than the more prestige

films are such Malay-language horror films as Anak Pontianak (Vampire Child; Ramon

A. Estella, 1958), Sumpah Pontianak (Vampires Curse; B. N. Rao, 1958), and Orang
Minyak (The Oily Man; L. Krishnan, 1958). These films, based on Malay mythology

and legends, all seemed quite scary when they were seen in theaters at the time of

their release. Now, they are just as entertaining, but maybe not quite as scary, and

a little funnier than they were intended to be (although humor, as well as songs,

were an important part of the genre), and not quite what we regard as realistic.

But this difference in the way we regard these films says much about

the ways in which films have changed, and just as importantly, the ways in which

Singaporeans have changed. Initially, movies from Hong Kong began to replace

home-grown films. But in the late 1960s television became the rage in Singapore,

and with it Western ideas and images. Of course, Singaporeans have lived with

Western ideas for many decades, and Hollywood movies have always been popular

here. But with television, the ubiquity of Western culture really began; no longer a

relatively small part of the cultural mix experienced by Singaporeans, Western

images of reality soon became something approaching the norm.

This made a crucial difference to the way Singaporeans saw reality in

movies. They began to see it more with Western eyes, through which reality lies in

the mise-en-scene -- the objects, the characters, etc. -- and not so much in the

ideas, emotions, and relationships among people. No longer was it good enough to

present mythical stories that expressed feelings, fears, and traditional beliefs

through films that suggested the essences, rather than realistically depicted the

images, of people, places and things. An unfortunate exodus occurred as

Singaporeans began to reject their own movies in favor of those of Hollywood which,

despite their high production values and visual excitement, said little to Southeast

Asians about themselves and their culture.

In 1967, the Shaw brothers closed the Singapore studio of Malay Film
Productions. Their biggest star and best director, P. Ramlee, had left in 1963 for

Kuala Lumpurs Studio Merdeka (which was subsequently taken over by the Shaws in

1966). Cathay had been in financial trouble since the death of its founder, Loke Wan

Tho, in an airplane crash in Taiwan in 1964. When Cathay-Keris folded in 1972,

Singapore became a nation without a national cinema.

THE POST-STUDIO YEARS

After the closure of Singapores two major studios, few films were

made here. The handful that were produced in Singapore, or by Singaporeans, are

indicative of the changes that audiences had gone through. In 1978, independent

producer Sunny Lim made a series of action/spy movies, obviously made to cash in on

the popularity of the spy movie genre (especially the James Bond series), and just

as obviously made on shoe-string budgets. But it is not the low production values of

these films that audiences find so hilarious today (two of these films -- They Call Her

Cleopatra Wong, directed by George Richardson in 1978, and Dynamite Johnson,

directed by Bobby Suarez in 1978 -- were screened at the 1997 Singapore

International Film Festival, and earned richly deserved laughs); it is the rather crude

attempt to imitate Hollywood films that these films so sadly reveal. Hollywood

movies have their faults, but one thing is clear: For better or worse, nobody can beat

Hollywood at its own game, nobody can make Hollywood films like Hollywood itself

can. And although audiences may have enjoyed these films, it was an enjoyment of

these films as camp, not as genuine expressions of Singaporean culture.

The few other films made in Singapore at the time did little to remedy

this situation. In 1979, Hollywood auteur Peter Bogdanovich, backed financially by

Playboy magazine magnate Hugh Hefner, made Saint Jack, set and filmed in

Singapore. Although an interesting film, it is hardly a Singaporean film; it merely

uses Singapore as a slightly seedy, sordid backdrop for its tale of an American

expatriate involved in prostitution and petty espionage.

More recently, 1991 saw a temporary return of Singaporean filmmaking

with Medium Rare, based on the infamous Adrian Lim case. Although made in

Singapore and featuring a story based on a true Singaporean incident, Medium Rare,

directed by Australian Arthur Smith, is just as guilty as are Sunny Lims movies of

trying to ape Hollywood movies. Singapore comes across as pure oriental

exoticism; by comparison, the Singapore of Saint Jack is presented in a much more

truthful, objective manner. To make matters worse, the filmmakers felt the need to

add a white leading actress, in an apparent (and failed) attempt to attract Western

audiences and Asian audiences accustomed to Hollywood films.

SINGAPOREAN CINEMA TODAY

After Medium Rare, the Singaporean film scene seemed bleak indeed.

However, the last three years have shown that not only are there young Singaporeans

with a burning desire to make movies that speak to Singaporeans, there is also an

audience for these films. The rebirth of Singaporean cinema began in 1995 with

Eric Khoos Mee Pok Man, one of the more interesting examples of truly alternative

filmmaking in Southeast Asia in some years.

Although the influence of Western cinema is certainly not absent from

this film, in its pace, subject matter, and sensibility it is much more Southeast Asian

than it is Hollywood. It takes a subjective, at times mystical, but at the same time

detached look at a number of such typical Singaporean characters as the cabbie who

knows the best hotels for trysts with prostitutes; the Chinese fortuneteller, with his

common sense advice, "Just be gentle and patient, and she will like you"; and the

mee pok man himself, quietly plying his trade in a small, dilapidated storefront,
wearing his singlet, cooking and serving his fish-ball noodles without a word to his

customers.

1995 also saw the release of Bugis Street - The Movie, a film about the

transvestites who haunted Bugis Street in the 1960s and 1970s (before it became a

shopping center!). Although filmed in Singapore, Bugis Street, made by the Hong

Kong director Yonfan, indulges in rather shameless exoticism, and, fortunately, did

not set a precedent for future Singaporean films.

1997 has proven to be the best year for Singaporean cinema in the last

twenty-five years. In addition to the re-release by Cathay of seven of its old films,

the Singapore International Film Festival premiered three new Singaporean films.

Director and actor Hugo Ng revisited the Adrian Lim story in God or Dog, this time

with a much more Singaporean slant than that taken in Medium Rare. Although

based on an incident involving quasi-religious cults, adultery, and murder, the film

avoids the voyeuristic quality of Western films dealing with the same sort of subject

matter.

More interesting, however, were the two other Singaporean films that

made their debuts at the SIFF. The Road Less Travelled, by first time director Lim

Suat-Yen, while lacking a dramatic story that makes a lasting impression, is

significant in that it seeks to avoid the sensational subject matter often used by

novice filmmakers to attract attention to their films. The Road Less Travelled,

although similar in some ways to Hong Kong melodramas, deals with young

Singaporeans and their concerns and relationships. Lim made a film that means

something to her, that expresses what she wants to say, and not what she thinks will

make the most money at the box office by appealing to an audience raised on

Hollywood movies.
 The other Singaporean film to debut in 1995 is Eric Khoos second

effort, 12 Storeys, about the lives of various Singaporeans living in a rather old

Housing Development Board block. Much more skilfully made than is Mee Pok Man,

12 Storeys, while retaining the mystical quality of the earlier film, relies much less

on sensationalism. Gone is the prostitution and morbidity of a dead body rotting at

the kitchen table, in favor of the lives (both interior and exterior) of ordinary

Singaporeans. Like Lim Suat-Yen, Khoo is more interested in making a film for

himself and his friends and neighbours than in pleasing Western sensibilities.

This change in attitude is, I think, indicative of a more general change

in the attitudes of Singaporeans in general. This change is a greater sense of pride in

being Asian and, more specifically, Singaporean; not just in the wealth and

sophistication enjoyed by Singapore, but in the culture, creativity and artistic

expression that has been overlooked for too long.

Will Singaporean cinema ever be as dominate and profitable as those of

Hong Kong or Hollywood? Probably not. But that is not necessarily a bad thing. If

young Singaporean filmmakers continue to keep their cameras trained on life at

home, and if they follow in the footsteps of such greats as P. Ramlee and Hussein

Haniff, who never lost touch with the common man, Singaporean films will continue

to be appreciated where it counts: in Singapore. And, maybe, the rest of the world

will find that these films speak to them, as well.