Malvarosa (film)

Rosa, a beautiful young woman, lives in the slums situated at the nearby railroad tracks with her mother and five older brothers. By the time her alcoholic father died in a train, her mother Sinforosa felt guilt and depression as she became widowed. A few years later, she is going to marry his fiancé Candido but she has to deal the problems first that their family faced in spite of poverty especially Rosa's brothers who also carry their own burdens in which made Rosa stressed to have a solution as well as their confrontations. It would also tell the lives of Melanio, the eldest and an obnoxious womanizer; followed by Alberto, a man with a mean reputation to his family; Leonides, a violent man who became notorious for his crimes throughout the neighborhood; Vedasto, a scheming man whom he persuaded his sister to work with a wealthy man; and lastly, Avelino, a patient and responsible man whom he trusts his sister to eliminate their family's burden. Rosa would also witness some of the misfortunes happened in their family.

During the shooting of the film, the director and its staff cooperated with the Philippine Constabulary and the Manila Railroad Company for their participation in the important scenes of the film as well as their permission to their facilities and staff.

Malvarosa, released in 1958, concerns a large nuclear family aspiring to recover from the devastation wrought by World War II, when both the retreating Japanese occupiers and the advancing American re-occupiers dropped so many bombs, set so many fires, and killed so many civilians that, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Manila was one of the most devastated cities in the world at that point, traditionally regarded as comparable in its misery to Warsaw. The country was in such dire straits that, when the American government insisted on setting up military bases and implementing parity rights as preconditions for financial aid, the Filipinos had no choice but to acquiesce.[1]

The film was released on May 19, 1958 at the Dalisay Theatre in Manila, Philippines.

• Malvarosa at IMDb