Zigzag

I saw this movie on its original and I guess, only release but I can't remember much of it although I thought it was good for a low budget movie made in the Philippines. Made in the noir style, the plot involves a young woman who had a traumatic experience leading to partial amnesia and hysterical blindness. It is believed she witnessed a murder. A love song from the Visayas (a region in the Philippines) called Dandansuy eerily played on the piano somehow revives her memory and restores her sight.

Now about the title, I believe it had something to do with a portion of that mountain road called Kennon starting from the foothills of La Union Province and leading into the Philippines' gold mining capital, Benguet Province and finally to the resort city of Baguio. A portion of it indeed consists of tight zigs and zags which is a challenge for unskilled motorists. This comes near the top leading to Baguio City, a mountain resort city which the Americans caused to be built in the 1920's with Philippine money and imported Japanese labor. The American administrators could not stand the very humid tropical "summer" heat in Manila so during that season they retreated to the cool and pine scented mountain air of the Cordilleras of which Baguio City is a part. Thus, the tiny city has its own Governor's Mansion and nearby is a network of other houses for the members of his cabinet. Not to be outdone the justices of the Supreme Court also have their own compound of summer residences. In hindsight, I realize that the tortuous mountain road was built not only for the comfort of the American administrators but also to facilitate the extraction of precious metals, chiefly gold, from the massifs of Benguet Province. From then on, Baguio became a famous tourist destination prized for its cool climate, spectacular mountain views and for its vegetation which at over 3000 meters differs markedly from the nearby lowlands. Kennon is the name of the army engineer who supervised the building of that road.

Its main street is aptly named Session road because during the Commonwealth era, the Philippine Legislature held their sessions there during the hot season and has since become the venue for conferences.

I believe a chase and fight scene at the famed Zigzag road figures at the end of the film. The other parts of the movie were shot practically in the neighborhood of my childhood in Pasay City, now part of Metropolitan Manila on a street formerly favored by American expatriates working in the Philippines probably because the U.S. Embassy is nearby on Dewey blvd. The palm lined boulevard famous for its view of the Manila Bay sunset has since been renamed Roxas blvd., after a Philippine president.