POST-WAR ERA TAGALOG MOVIES # 1: MILA DEL SOL, RODRIGO (BIMBO) DANAO, DOMINGO PRINCIPE IN "ORASANG GINTO" (1946) / A FILM BY MANUEL CONDE

Unlike the pampered sugar industry, the film industry did not wait for war damage payments or U.S. AID to help it get back on its feet. Movie companies in 1946 “begged, borrowed and bought whatever they could in the way of equipment and film, and are now turning out pictures, despite all odds and impediments, at a rigid clip.” And all this in spite of the fact that the cost of producing a film had gone up to P75,000 as compared to about P30,000 before the war, and more taxes were being imposed on the industry by the government.

Using raw stock purchased from the black market, LVN Pictures produced the very first film that came out after the war. After quickly reorganizing in late 1945, LVN asked Manuel Conde to write and direct Orasang Ginto, the first of the war movie hits about the Pacific War, which played from March 4 to 12, 1946 at the Zest Theatre.

Based on a story of Doña Aurora Quezon, it highlighted the “tragedies and miseries of the Filipinos” during the war and the “historic sacrifices that made Bataan and Corregidor known to the world.” The film starred Mila del Sol and introduced two newcomers--- Elvira Reyes and Rodrigo ‘Bimbo’ Danao. Conde, who was then still a regular major in the Armed Forces of the Philippines, used, without permission from his superiors, an entire battalion for the war scenes in the movie, and for this, almost got court-martialed.

Source: The Cinema of Manuel Conde by Nicanor Tiongson