Panggilan Darah

Panggilan Darah
Newspaper advertisement, Surabaya
Directed by	Sutan Usman Karim
Produced by	Tjho Seng Han
Starring	Dhalia Soerip
Studio	Oriental Film Company
Release dates	30 June 1941 (1941-06-30) (Dutch East Indies)
Country	Dutch East Indies
Language	Indonesian

Panggilan Darah (Indonesian for "Call of Blood") is a 1941 film from the Dutch East Indies (now Indonesia) directed by Sutan Usman Karim and produced by Tjho Seng Han for Oriental Film Company. The black-and-white film, now considered lost, starred Dhalia and Soerip. It followed orphaned sisters as they tried to make a living in the colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta). Panggilan Darah was a fair commercial success and saw screenings both in the Indies and Singapore, but Oriental was unable to recoup its losses and merged into another company soon afterwards.

Plot

Orphaned sisters Dahlia and Soerip (themselves) leave their village in an attempt to make a living in the colonial capital of Batavia (now Jakarta). After a long period of misery, they are accepted as housemaids at the home of Hajji Ishak (Mochtar Widjaja). Although initially elated, they find that Iskak's wife (Wolly Sutinah) is a cruel mistress who often beats them. Meanwhile, Ishak's would-be-son-in-law is constantly flirting with Dahlia, much to his fiancée's dismay.

The sisters finally decide to run away from Ishak's home. They make their way to Kudus and find work at the Nitisemito cigarette factory with the help of their friend (S. Poniman). Not long after their escape, Ishak receives a guest who reveals that the two were his nieces. This revelation spurs Ishak to take out advertisements in newspapers, looking for the young women and asking them to return to Batavia.

Ishak's search initially has little success. However, when the sisters receive news that Ishak is looking for them, they quickly return to Batavia. There they are greeted with open arms. Ishak's wife regrets her earlier treatment of the girls and repents, treating them splendidly and supporting Dhalia's plans to open an orphanage.^[1]

Production

Panggilan Darah was the directorial debut of Sutan Usman Karim, commonly known as Suska, a journalist and former member of the touring theatrical group Bolero under Andjar Asmara. With Panggilan Darah Suska became one of several reporters who entered the film industry in 1941.^[2] He directed the film for the Batavia-based film company Oriental, run by ethnic Chinese producer Tjho Seng Han; Tjho produced. The production house had previously released three films, all directed by Njoo Cheong Seng, but after Njoo departed for Fred Young's Majestic, Oriental had required a new director.^[3] Writing in 2009, Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran suggested that the film may have been partly sponsored by Nitisemito, which was one of the largest cigarette factories in the Indies in the 1940s, based on the factory's prominence in the film.^[4]

Panggilan Darah was shot in black-and-white by the Indo cameraman JJW Steffens, with editing handled by Soemardjan.^[5] The film featured nine kroncong (traditional music with Portuguese influences) songs. The cast, particularly Dhalia, Soerip, and S. Poniman, was already known for their singing prowess.^[6] It also starred Wolly Sutinah and Mochtar Widjaja. Panggilan Darah marked Sutinah's debut for the company; the other cast members had previously screen credits with Oriental.^[7]

Release and reception

Promotional image of Soerip released for the film.

Panggilan Darah debuted at Orion Theatre in Batavia on 30 June 1941. It was reportedly a modest success,^[8] making most of its money from lower class audiences.^[4] It was screened in Surabaya, East Java, by August,^[9] and by September it had been shown in Singapore, then part of British Malaya.^[10] A novelisation was published by the Yogyakarta-based Kolff-Buning Publishers that year.^[11]

Reviews were mixed: lower-class audiences praised the music, while the intelligentsia scoffed at the idea that a factory supervisor would bring a guitar to work.^[4] An anonymous review in the Surabaya-based daily Soerabaijasch Handelsblad found the film "something special" ("ls iets bijzonders"), praising Soerip's spontaneity in her role.^[9] In a review of the plot as found in promotional material, Biran finds the chain of events illogical, asking why the sisters would not have worked in their own home village and how the destitute sisters could have made the journey from Batavia to Kudus, over 400 kilometres (250 mi) away.^[4]

Legacy

Unable to recoup its expenses, by 1941 Oriental had been merged into the Dutch-owned Multi Film and ceased producing works of fiction.^[8] Suska left the company and joined The Teng Chun's Java Industrial Film, for which he directed Ratna Moetoe Manikam beginning in 1941.^[12] Most of the cast remained active in cinema for the remainder of their lives. Both Dhalia and Soerip remained in the film industry for the next fifty years; they acted in their last feature films, Pendekar Jagad Kelana (Warrior of Jagad Kelana) and Cintaku di Way Kambas (My Love in Way Kambas) respectively, in 1990.^[13] Sutinah and Poniman would remain active in the industry until 1986 and 1975, respectively.^[14] Only Widjaja is not recorded as performing in any more films.^[15]

The film is likely lost. The American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider writes that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost.^[16] However, JB Kristanto's Katalog Film Indonesia (Indonesian Film Catalogue) records several as having survived at Sinematek Indonesia's archives, and Biran writes that several Japanese propaganda films have survived at the Netherlands Government Information Service.^[17]

References

Works cited