Period Comedies

Musang Berjanggut 1959

Tun Nila Utama (P. Ramlee), adopted heir to the Sultan of Pura Chendana (Ahmad Nisfu), refuses to marry, saying that the women of the realm are mere females, not true women. Ordered on pain of death to find a true woman within a year, he wins Puspawangi on the island of Kabul Chitra. At court the Sultan and his four ministers all desire her, and the Sultan feigns an illness that only the liver of a 'bearded civet', a musang berjanggut, can cure, to send her husband away. Puspawangi invites each of them to her house on the same night, outwits them all and shuts the bearded minister in a chest, which she presents at court as the musang berjanggut.

Songs: ‘Jangan Adek Angan-Angan’

• Best Song, ‘Jangan Adek Angan-Angan’ — Gelanggang magazine, 1960

Ahmad Albab 1968

The proud miser Mashood (A.R. Tompel) marries two daughters to rich husbands and the third, Mastura, to the poor goatherd Shawal (P. Ramlee), whom he scorns when Shawal can give only sugar and salt for his birthday. Searching for a lost goat, Shawal finds a cave of treasure that a voice says belongs to 'Ahmad Albab', and leaves it untouched. Years later his newborn son cries without pause until Mashood, who calms him at a door (albab in Arabic), names him Ahmad Albab; Shawal carries the child to the cave and claims the treasure. When the gambling sons-in-law fall into poverty and turn to theft, Shawal forgives them, and Mashood learns that wealth comes from God. (Synopses after Ahmad Sarji, Erti Yang Sakti, 1999.)