The Housemaid (1960)
(Hanyo)
Country: KOR
Technical: bw/1.55:1 109m
Director: Kim Ki-young
Cast: Jin Kyu Kim, Jeung-nyeo Ju, Aeng-ran Eom, Eun-shim Lee
Synopsis:
A pianist employed to teach music to factory girls reads his wife the news story of a man who had an affair with the family housemaid. Thereafter, as their economic circumstances improve, he is locked in a nightmare of unsolicited female stalking and infatuation leading to him impregnating the psychotic young girl infiltrated into his household by one of his pupils.
Review:
Restored by Scorsese's World Cinema Project, Kim's erotic classic remains rough around the edges, and that's not just a comment on the picture quality. Even allowing for the cultural (and temporal) remove, the characters interact in unexpected ways and the dialogue is clunky at times. This could be explained by the (presumably imposed) epilogue in which the lead actor is required to deliver a worldly and excruciatingly blokey warning to stunned cinemagoers, but that is problematic in itself. What we are left with is a mounting Sartrean inferno of cohabitation, in which plot elements such as a crippled daughter, repellent kid brother, rat poison and sewing machine jostle with hysterical performances and a screaming brass soundtrack that makes James Bernard's Hammer scores sound like Michel Legrand. Apparently inspiration for the Oscar record-breaker, Parasite, the film has also been remade twice, once in Korea (2010) and again in the Philippines (2021).
(Hanyo)
Country: KOR
Technical: bw/1.55:1 109m
Director: Kim Ki-young
Cast: Jin Kyu Kim, Jeung-nyeo Ju, Aeng-ran Eom, Eun-shim Lee
Synopsis:
A pianist employed to teach music to factory girls reads his wife the news story of a man who had an affair with the family housemaid. Thereafter, as their economic circumstances improve, he is locked in a nightmare of unsolicited female stalking and infatuation leading to him impregnating the psychotic young girl infiltrated into his household by one of his pupils.
Review:
Restored by Scorsese's World Cinema Project, Kim's erotic classic remains rough around the edges, and that's not just a comment on the picture quality. Even allowing for the cultural (and temporal) remove, the characters interact in unexpected ways and the dialogue is clunky at times. This could be explained by the (presumably imposed) epilogue in which the lead actor is required to deliver a worldly and excruciatingly blokey warning to stunned cinemagoers, but that is problematic in itself. What we are left with is a mounting Sartrean inferno of cohabitation, in which plot elements such as a crippled daughter, repellent kid brother, rat poison and sewing machine jostle with hysterical performances and a screaming brass soundtrack that makes James Bernard's Hammer scores sound like Michel Legrand. Apparently inspiration for the Oscar record-breaker, Parasite, the film has also been remade twice, once in Korea (2010) and again in the Philippines (2021).
(Hanyo)
Country: KOR
Technical: bw/1.55:1 109m
Director: Kim Ki-young
Cast: Jin Kyu Kim, Jeung-nyeo Ju, Aeng-ran Eom, Eun-shim Lee
Synopsis:
A pianist employed to teach music to factory girls reads his wife the news story of a man who had an affair with the family housemaid. Thereafter, as their economic circumstances improve, he is locked in a nightmare of unsolicited female stalking and infatuation leading to him impregnating the psychotic young girl infiltrated into his household by one of his pupils.
Review:
Restored by Scorsese's World Cinema Project, Kim's erotic classic remains rough around the edges, and that's not just a comment on the picture quality. Even allowing for the cultural (and temporal) remove, the characters interact in unexpected ways and the dialogue is clunky at times. This could be explained by the (presumably imposed) epilogue in which the lead actor is required to deliver a worldly and excruciatingly blokey warning to stunned cinemagoers, but that is problematic in itself. What we are left with is a mounting Sartrean inferno of cohabitation, in which plot elements such as a crippled daughter, repellent kid brother, rat poison and sewing machine jostle with hysterical performances and a screaming brass soundtrack that makes James Bernard's Hammer scores sound like Michel Legrand. Apparently inspiration for the Oscar record-breaker, Parasite, the film has also been remade twice, once in Korea (2010) and again in the Philippines (2021).