The Housemaid (1960)

Kim Ki-yŏng

On Kim Kiyŏng (1922-1998) and his filmmaking

-- known for psych-sexual drama, avant-garde sensibility-- contrast with Sin Sangok-- work rediscovered by the film critics in the late 1990s

Film, The Housemaid

-- thematic figuration of gender and family: tropes of domesticity, masculinity, motherhood, juxtaposed against the economic and social changes Clip (beginning to 03:57)

-- according to Kyung Hyun Kim, the film “depicts masculinity as vulnerable and repressed gendered agency, falsely invoking the need to awaken its violent nature”

Aesthetically –

Expressionist cinematic style (evocative of film noir) – e.g., low-key lighting

Sound

Psychological thriller

Domestic Space

Staircase: metonymy for failed economic/social class ascendance Kitchen: evinces shifting patterns of domesticity in transition to modernity Piano room: the piano as an object of (fetishistic) desire

Structure of a dream? – final sequence

“Post-colonial Korean cinema, in its attempt to confront modernity, has heavily focused on the representations of women.” Soyoung Kim