Rentjong Atjeh

Plot

Pirates have begun roaming through the Strait of Malacca, robbing ships and killing their crews and passengers. On one ship, three children survive: Maryam (Dewi Mada), who is captured and forced to live with the pirate captain (Bissoe), and brother and sister Daud (Mohammad Mochtar) and Rusna (Hadidjah), who escape to the jungle. Fifteen years later Rusna meets with the soldier Ali (Ferry Kock), who falls in love with her; meanwhile, Daud has fallen in love with Maryam, who serves as a dancer for the pirate captain. Ali and Daud go to the pirate ship and kill the crew; Ali takes out the captain with his rencong (an Acehnese dagger). They are able to live in peace, no longer fearing pirates.

Production

Rentjong Atjeh was written by Ferry Kock, a former member of the Dardanella touring troupe who had recently returned from the United States. His wife, Dewi Mada, starred in the film; other actors included Kock, Mohammad Mochtar, Hadidjah, and Bissoe. The arrival of Kock and Mada continued a trend of theatrical personnel migrating to film following the success of Albert Balink's 1937 film Terang Boelan (Full Moon); this migration also saw figures like Andjar and Ratna Asmara, as well as Fifi Young and her husband Njoo Cheong Seng, join the industry.

The Teng Chun, the owner of the Java Industrial Film (JIF), served as both producer and director; Kock had originally been asked to direct but was unable to perform. The's brothers worked on the film as well: The Teng Liong served as sound director, while The Teng Hwi was cinematographer. Mas Sardi wrote and conducted several songs for the production, including "Oh Ajah dan Iboekoe" ("Oh My Father and Mother") and "Akoe Ta' Sangka" ("I Never Expected").

The film was shot in black-and-white. As the Dutch East Indies government was preparing for an expected war with Japan following the German invasion of the Netherlands, the crew was not allowed to shoot scenes at sea. Instead, scenes showing the pirates were shot at the shore of an inlet in Batavia (modern day Jakarta). Other scenes used unused footage from The's previous work Alang-Alang (Grass; 1939). Some scenes were inspired by Hollywood films; a scene where Ferry Kock's character bites a rencong during a fight, for example, was inspired by a scene in Tarzan films; Alang-Alang and the later film Poetri Rimba (Jungle Princess; 1941) also drew inspiration from the series.

Release

Rentjong Atjeh was premiered in 1940 at the Sampoerna Theater in Surabaya. Before that, the film's story had been serialised and the sheet music for its soundtrack was published as a promotional booklet. The film was also screened in British Malaya, where it was advertised as "the first great Malay historical drama".

Rentjong Atjeh was a commercial success, which the Indonesian film historian Misbach Yusa Biran credits to Andjar Asmara's marketing skills. Following this, JIF began regularly publishing a promotional magazine titled JIF Journal which carried information on its upcoming productions.

Rentjong Atjeh is likely a lost film. The American visual anthropologist Karl G. Heider writes that all Indonesian films from before 1950 are lost. 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.