Format: Video from The Magic Flashdrive on laptop.
There’s a particular style of film that seems to really hate the poor. It wasn’t too long into Maynila: Sa Mga Kuko ng Liwanag (called variously Manila in the Claws of Brightness, The Nail of Brightness and The Claws of Light) that I realized that’s exactly what sort of film I had on my hands. Our hero, Julio Madiaga (Bembol Roco) starts the film as an underpaid itinerant construction worker. Despite his low pay, his bosses steal from him, skimming off the top of his negligible salary and refusing to pay overtime.
Julio has come to Manila from the provinces to search for his girlfriend Ligaya (Hilda Koronel). Ligaya was taken away from the village by a Chinese woman who promised her a good job in a factory—free food and enough money to send some back home to help with the education of her siblings. Ligaya doesn’t want to go, but does because of the promise of money. It’s not a difficult guess to figure out exactly what actually happened to Ligaya—she’s essentially be sold into prostitution. Julio, however, is slow on the uptake and naïve enough to not realize this for some time.
