Terang Boelan

Terang Boelan (1937)

Rohaya (Roekiah) must separate from her lover, Kasim (Rd Mochtar), so that she can marry her father's choice, the disreputable but rich Musa (Eddie T. Effendi). The night before the wedding, Kasim plays the song "Terang Boelan" for Rohaya, and they agree to elope. The following day, Rohaya and Kasim escape from Sawoba Island to Malacca, where Kasim begins work at a drydock and Rohaya keeps busy as a housewife. They discover that Kasim's old friend, Dullah (Kartolo), has lived in Malacca for some time.

Date of release
1937-12-08
TMDB
10.0 / 10 (1)
Genres
Drama
Director
Albert Balink

Casting

Interesting facts

Terang Boelan is a 1937 film from the Dutch East Indies. Written by Saeroen, directed by Albert Balink, and starring Rd Mochtar, Roekiah and Eddie T. Effendi, Terang Boelan follows two lovers who elope after one is almost forced to marry an opium smuggler. The film was shot in the Indies and Singapore, and was partially inspired by the 1936 Hollywood film The Jungle Princess. It was aimed at native audiences and included keroncong music, which was popular at the time, and several actors from Balink's previous work Pareh (1936).

Production

By late 1936 Balink had obtained financial backing from several domestic and foreign companies with which he, the Wongs, and Franken opened the Dutch Indies Film Syndicate (Algemeen Nederlandsch Indisch Filmsyndicaat, or ANIF) in Batavia (now Jakarta). Although this new establishment focused mainly on newsreels and documentaries, on 1 January 1937 ANIF announced that it would produce several feature films, one of which was Terang Boelan.

The story for Terang Boelan was written by Saeroen, a reporter with the newspaper Pemandangan who had close connections to the theatrical community, shortly after the domestic release of the American-produced Dorothy Lamour vehicle The Jungle Princess (1936), which served as an inspiration. The Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran wrote that this gave Terang Boelan stylistic and thematic similarities to the earlier film.

Production had begun by February 1937, under Balink's direction and with the Wongs as cinematographers, only to be interrupted by the relocation of ANIF's offices. Filming had begun by May of that year. Sources conflict as to whether Franken was involved: Biran wrote that Franken had been left in charge of the studio's documentaries, while the American film scholar Karl G. Heider recorded Franken as co-directing the film.

The cast of Terang Boelan mainly consisted of actors who had appeared in Pareh. This included the leading actor, Rd Mochtar, and several minor players, including Eddie T. Effendi and Soekarsih. Other cast members, including the leading lady Roekiah and her husband Kartolo, were drawn from traditional toneel theatrical troupes; this may have been part of an effort to attract theatregoers.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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