There was almost no let-up in the thundering laughter from the audience during the premiere screening of renowned director Usmar Ismail’s Tiga Dara (Three Girls) at the Metropole in Central Jakarta, one of the oldest cinemas in the capital city.

The movie, produced in 1956 and recently restored in Italy, began playing in theaters on Thursday. It was a hit with audience members, who sometimes made remarks out loud when the characters delivered funny dialogue.

“Oh, men were always wrong since the 1950s,” an audience member said with a laugh after Nunung (played by Chitra Dewi) blamed a scooter driver who hit her on the street, declaring, “Men are always wrong!”

Tiga Dara tells the story of a family with three sisters — Nunung, Nana (Mieke Wijaya) and Neni (Indriati Iskak) — who try to find a husband for the eldest, Nunung, who is aged 29.

Nunung, who is set in her ways, does not like to go out or socialize. She enjoys staying at home to play mother to the rest of the family after their own mother died. Her grandmother forces her to attend parties and introduces her to many men in a bid to find her a suitable husband.

The story becomes complicated after Nunung meets Toto (Rendra Karno), the man who hit her with the scooter. Nana apparently also fancies him.

The film was one of Usmar’s most popular and commercially successful in the 1950s. The charm of his masterpiece film, however, has not faded or become outdated 50 years later. Many were amazed at how Jakarta looked at the time and tried to identify buildings they spotted in the film.

Deden Ramadani, a researcher who watched the film with his colleagues, said the discussion continued at home.

“I discussed the film with my parents, who said the film was promoted around neighborhoods […] using pick-up trucks and megaphones,” said the 23-year-old.

He added that his mother said she became tired of watching the film because it was screened at many wedding parties back then.

“My mom said each wedding party that rented Layar Tancep always screened the film,” he said, referring to outdoor film screenings.

Blast from the past: Mieke Wijaya smiles in front of a poster for the Tiga Dara movie, which catapulted her into fame.(Courtesy of SA Film)

Deden said he hoped more Indonesian classic films would be restored in the future, so he could continue to enjoy finding out about the past and learn from it.

“Film restoration is an effort to give back my generation’s right to watch the history of Indonesian film of good quality,” he said.

He referred to the scene of a movie theater ticket scalper, who backs down from his high price and said, “Bargain, please,” to his potential buyer.

“It was my favorite scene. We don’t have any ticket scalpers in cinemas anymore,” he said.

He added he hoped the government would take a more active role in restoring Indonesian film and not only give “sweet promises” during the premiere.

“They already did it during the premiere of Lewat Djam Malam [After the Curfew],” he said, referring to another Usmar Ismail masterpiece that was restored four years ago.

Like Lewat Djam Malam, the restoration of Tiga Dara did not include government involvement.

Alex Sihar, the financier of the project, said the restoration was a joint project with many private parties, including production house SA Film, Italy’s L’Imaggine Ritrovata film laboratory handling the physical restoration and Render Digital Indonesia for digital aspects.

“The remake of the film is produced by Kalyana Shira Films while the songs were also rearranged,” he said.

Alex said the project cost around US$260,000 and “our biggest challenge is to return the investment”.

He said one of the reasons behind choosing Tiga Dara instead of other cinematic masterpieces, was its popularity. “This film should be widely accepted, so people will see that actually investing in film restoration is possible,” he said.

He added that he wanted to prove that it had its own business cycle and was actually lucrative. “This is the proof point. We won’t know what to do again if this ‘pop’ one is not successful,” he said.

Lintang Gitomartoyo, a physical restoration supervisor on the film, said the restoration project was conducted in Bologna, Italy, by Indonesians.

Tiga Dara was screened at cinemas for eight weeks when it was first launched in 1956 and won a Piala Citra Award for Best Musical Arrangement at the 1960 Indonesian Film Festival.