A digital work-in-progress version of the restoration of the great Korean classic The Housemaid was already screened at last year’s Cannes Film Festival. The restorative work by the Korean Film Archive has now been finished.
The film, originally released in 1960, swept all the awards at the Best Korean Film Awards that year. It tells the story of a composer who sleeps with the maid while his wife is away at her parents’ home and ends up losing everything because of the deranged maid. The film depicts the intellectual husband’s conflict – not knowing what to do between the maid, who has her eyes set on becoming the missus of the house, and his wife, who has no idea what’s going on. The interior creates a claustrophobic atmosphere, within which a suffocating psychological warfare unfolds. This film, made three decades before Fatal Attraction, is representative of Kim’s leading originality.
The work is based on a murder case in which a maid working for the family of a middle-school teacher kills their five-year-old. The first in the Housemaid trilogy (The Housemaid, The Woman of Fire, The Woman of Fire 82), it caused a sensation, and anecdote has it that at the time of its opening, all the women in the audience got agitated and rose from their seats, screaming: ‘Kill that wench!’ (excerpts from Kim Ji-young monography, KOFIC)
Film details
- Country of production
- South Korea
- Year
- 1960
- Festival edition
- IFFR 2009
- Length
- 108"
- Medium/Format
- 35mm
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