Art As Expressed In A PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS FILIPINO

A Portrait Of The Artist As Filipino

Art, as expressed in A Portrait Of The Artist As Filipino (Diadem Production / Manuel de Leon) is the confluence of the literary, the histrionic and the cinematic arts. Nick Joaquin provides the text, the cast provided the life and Lamberto V. Avellana the unifying art. The Avellanas have hewn a screenplay that produces the power of the play but is flawed by its very fidelity to the original. The play is the only drama that is worth serious study and the Avellanas have been played false by their respect for Joaquin's work. The film is talky in several places and is stagy rather than cinematic. Such fatal fidelity is not unusual in film versions of celebrated dramas. The heightened dialogue of the play when spoken on the screen even by such persuasive artists as Daisy H. Avellana and Naty Crame-Rogers sounded uncomfortably phony. This is especially true when Joaquin allows his characters to verbalize their allegorical roles, making them mouthpieces spouting purple floridity. It is a tribute to the cast that intelligence and sensitivity save so many scenes from being begged down by improbable dialogue. In an industry heavily dependent on star system, the art of acting seldom gets attention. That sensibility has always been evident in Avellana's use of imagery, his forte is the intimate scene. Two or three people at a critical moment in their lives being observed by the camera. The scene is often half-articulate, the characters grope for words that would catch the nuances of emotion that holds them in its grip. The poignancy of the scene lies in its cinematic recording of the moment of truth, when words serve merely to lead us to the inner life that only gestures, silences, light and shadow, and noises can suggest.

When Avellana is freed by the script from the play's cumbrous dialogue, he creates images that do Joaquin justice. In the hotel room scene with Tony Javier (Conrad Parham), he trains the camera on Paula (Crame-Rogers) as she is dressing up. She picks up her scapular and is about to put it around her neck when she holds the gesture for one brief second. She carefully folds the scapular and tucks it inside her bodice. In that wordless scene, Avellana captures Paula's character in filmic terms and suggests the religious and cultural values of her generation, making a statement no amount of words can ever hope to hold. Another instance is the waiting scene. Candida (Avellana), waiting for Paula, catches a glimpse of her father, Don Lorenzo (Pianing Vidal) at the door of his room with the light shining behind him. The camera looks over Candida's shoulder, down the long, dim corridor and points up to the distance between the daughter who has betrayed her father and the old man whose aloofness has victimized his daughters. And again, at the burning of the portrait, Avellana uses his camera with telling effectiveness. As the flames rise from the painting representing the dilemma that incapacitated the sisters for life, the camera shoots from the ground, catching Paula as she rises with the tongues of flame that reach up to Candida who appears at the window. The phoenix-image graphically renders Joaquin's point that the destruction of the painting brings about the sisters' rebirth. Paula's act has broken the painting's spell and made them participants in life once again. The irony of this choice becomes apparent in the scene that closes the film. The sisters have chosen to cast their lot with a dying generation and their return to life is nothing more than the brief blaze before a fire dies. For the film is a poignant elegy for the custom and ceremony that died with a city and the innocence and beauty that lived too briefly.

Directed By: Lamberto V. Avellana
Based On The Original Play By: Nick Joaquin
Screenplay By: Donato Valentin And Trinidad Reyes
Director Of Photography: Miguel Accion
Music And Scoring By: Mike Velarde, Jr.
Film Editor: Enrique Jarlego
Sets: Francisco Balangue
Produced By: Diadem Production And Manuel de Leon
Release Date: September 10, 1965

In memory of National Artist For Theater Daisy H. Avellana January 26, 1916 - May 12, 2013