Two Men Eat, One Man Dies: The Housemaid (1960)

I had been made aware of The Housemaid well before finally coming to watch it, although had I been bit more patient I probably could have seen the bluray that is to be imminently released as part of Martin Scorsese's World Film Heritage Project which is being mounted by Criterion.  Due to research for a project though viewing was of the necessity and its availability on Hulu made it all the more justified.  I, of course, had already seen the somewhat loose remake of the film by director Im Sang-soo, but had long been trying to find an inexpensive way to see Kim Ki-young's Korean classic.  Often mentioned in  both intensive analysis of Korean melodrama, as well as the more broad surveys of the country's film, The Housemaid has been aptly described as the "before and after moment" in Korean cinema.  While it is far and away a different and in some ways better film than Psycho, I am comfortable suggesting that this providing the same sort of film/viewership dichotomy shift but in a way that proved far more evocative in terms of the trajectory of both Korean cinema specifically and the larger East Asian filmic output in general.  Were one to go purely off of the visual stylings and narrative choices in this film it would be hard not to immediately think of Hiroshi Teshigahara's stunning and visceral Woman in the Dunes, yet this equally engaging, if not decidedly more abrasive film arrived to cinemas four years earlier.  I find The Housemaid particularly worth one's time because it is as near perfect a genre hybrid that will ever exist, in so much as it is a combination of the deep-seeded psychological intensity both present in horror and melodrama, usually for entirely divergent reasons.  The Housemaid is scary, but not in the jump scare kind of way or in the ways in which the slasher films of the eighties proved to be, instead working from a frame of reference where the human existence is a thing of inherent frustration always managing to result in the greatest of psychological fracturing.  Furthermore, given the film's entrenchment in horror and melodrama the narrative is visually preoccupied with the idea of the body as something that is to be placed upon with force sometimes physical, but always cripplingly emotional.

The Housemaid, despite its rather suggestive title, focuses on the experiences of a man simply known as Piano Teacher (Kim Jin-kyu) whose teaching music at a women's factory is barely managing to keep his family from falling from their tenuously attained middle class status.  The Wife (Ju Jeung-nyeo) attempts to work from home as a seamstress, but her constant bouts with sickness have troubled her ability to do so, made doubly challenging by taking care of their daughter Ae-soon (Le Yu-ri) who appears to have suffered bodily affects from polio, as well as a son Chang-soon (Ahn Seong-gi) whose precociousness borders on diabolical.  Needless to say, Piano Teacher finds his job burdensome, all the more so when he is made the object of misguided affection by countless students, one whose whimsy leads her to write a love letter that causes her expulsion and eventual suicide out of shame.  Moving along with his plans of achieving a higher status for his family, Piano Teacher begins offering piano lessons from home, wherein one of his vocal students Miss Cho (Um Aeng-ran) leaps at the opportunity.  Working in a surprisingly invasive manner, Miss Cho establishes herself as a dominant force in the house, despite only appearing for the piano lessons, when it is revealed by Piano Teacher that he is now hoping to obtain a maid, Miss Cho calls upon her chain-smoking friend, who becomes known specifically as Maid (Lee Eun-shim).  Moving into the space, the Maid is associated more with destruction and mismanagement than nurturing and anything remotely indicative of domestic work in a traditional sense, indeed her inability becomes a point of frustration for Wife and to a degree Piano Teacher, yet when it is revealed that the student who confessed her love to Piano Teacher is dead, both Miss Cho and Maid use it as an opportunity to blackmail him, leading him to "accidentally" have sex with Maid and causing her to become pregnant.  This pregnancy comes simultaneous to Wife also becoming pregnant, causing a divide in the family for expectations and a decision to force Maid to procure an abortion.  This jealously results in Maid becoming vengeful and attempting to kill their children and eventually does convince Piano Teacher to consume poison.  In a final twist, the film moves back in time and suggests the entire set of events to be a series of day dreams only to be compounded by yet another unusual narrative choice in the closing moments of the film.

Given my recent movement in academic research towards gender and embodiment in cinema, both in traditional genres like horror, as well as newer, more unconventional examples, mostly related to non-human/robotic bodies, I have tended to read recent films with this lens upon each text.  While, I will admit it has proven to be an overextension in a few cases, with something like The Housemaid body is not only worth considering, but is absolutely essential to the narrative.  Take for example Ki-young's decided fascination with the disabled body in the film, his choice to included Ae-soon is at first suggestive of problematic exploitation, however, on second consideration one understands that in both melodrama and horror the disabled figure often represent the point of suffering and even decided anger in the case of the latter genre.  Here, Ae-soon, is not the point of ultimate suffering, because individuals like Piano Teacher exist in a state of han, or notion of suffering based on unfair oppression, a term unique to Korean culture and usually evidenced in a larger collective notion.  Many Korean thrillers pull the idea of han to invoke a knowing subtext related to elements such as colonialism or class-based oppression, these ideas are popular in works like Mother or the Whispering Corridors franchise.  Here han is a decidedly privileged feeling and what is often embodied physically, instead becomes something reappropriated for a privileged individual to feel as though he is suffering, despite being well-to-do and only responsible for his own terrible decisions.  Furthermore, body becomes a class-based signifier as well, wherein the rats that appear throughout the film, both evidence a breaking from hegemonic and socially prescribed structures to something deem unsavory and indicative of the lowest of classes, in that rats represent the sewers and streets.  I say this to suggest that the very rats that Maid kills represent her own attempt to destroy her classed body, yet when it is her ability to convince Piano Teacher to commit suicide via poison, it becomes rather clear that he too is capable of embodying a rat. Of course, body works in other ways throughout the film, just as psychoanalysis, Marxist class ideals and many other readings would, it only speaks to The Housemaid as a rich cinematic text.

Key Scene:  The water spiting scene is great, but there is also a scene that falls apart on itself, here literally, due to the lack of a complete copy being available.  In the context of the scene and its suggestion of a psychotic break, it would appear as if the loss of these few frames was predestined from its inception, working in a similar way to Bergman's Persona.

I plan to obtain this as part of the World Film Heritage box set, but it is also available on Hulu, so viewing is subject to multiple options.

To Look Ordinary, Not Beautiful, Just Ordinary: Frankenstein Created Woman (1967)

My consumption of Hammer films has always been of considerable lack, particularly since I have decided to take upon yet another prospective project involving solely an analysis of the films within this unique franchise.  Upon inquiring from a friend as to some viewing recommendations from the storied company's catalog, I was amazed to find that there are quite a few films, indeed, even various eras of Hammer studio output.  Needless to say, I now have a considerable stack of Hammer films to undertake, having only seen Horror of Dracula, The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and the more recent, and considerably underwhelming The Woman in Black (My review at the time was far more positive).  A suggestion to begin my journey with Frankenstein Created Woman proved quite fruitful, particularly since it is a decidedly watchable work by Terence Fisher, one that manages to pull in the wonderful gothic horror elements I have come to appreciate from the few Hammer films I have seen, while also incorporating a storyline that stretches a considerable temporal length without exhausting itself or seeming a bit too haphazard.  In fact, between some of the wonderful scowling put on by Hammer veteran Peter Cushing and an overall sense of fun being exuded by all involved, Frankenstein Created Woman gives the sense of being a fully fleshed out genre film that manages to take itself lightly, thus making some of the more subtle social commentaries that emerge seem that much more realized, even decidedly intentional. I would even go so far as to suggest that Frankenstein Created Woman works primarily because it does have such a focused critique on issues of gender and class and how projections of privilege from either group can, ultimately, hinder and even harm the individuals whose bodies are othered and subsequently silenced, never mind a consideration of all the ways in which gender and identity are subverted and undermined throughout the films, pointing to the distinct yet seemingly inextricable entities of the body and the soul.  Packed into an hour and a half movie, Frankenstein Created Woman is precisely what I want from a genre piece and while I have high hopes, I know that not all of the Hammer films I will encounter later are likely to carry his same sense of brilliance and wonder.

Frankenstein Created Woman begins in a pre-title sequence, wherein an unnamed man is depicted being brought to the guillotine for an unexplained crime, only to have a small child looking on during the entire ordeal, it is revealed in the closing moments of this sequence that the boy is apparently the son of the man.  This then begins the film proper, showing Hans Werner (Robert Morris) a goofy, albeit likable guy who works for the more creepy and generally less genial Victor Frankenstein (Peter Cushing) whose stoic demeanor seems only concerned with pushing beyond the limits of science into a new degree of living, particularly so considering his fascination with the moments after death where the soul has yet to leave the body.  Aside from his work with Frankenstein, Hans also possesses romantic ties to the local barmaid Christina (Susan Denberg) who for all intents and purposes is an attractive girl, save for scarring on the left side of her face, a point of ridicule for her via a group of aristocratic youth who take much joy is throwing their money around and mocking all those worse of than they are, particularly the scarred Christina, as well as Hans for his romantic relationship with the woman they deem monstrous.  When the three reprobates return to the bar later that night to wreak more havoc, the bar owner beats the young men to death, an act that is immediately blamed on Hans who is assumed to share a genetic line with his murderous father, thus proving enough for a conviction.  Falling victim to the guillotine himself, Christina becomes distraught and throws herself into a river dying.  Realizing the moment of science possible in this, Frankenstein is able to transfer the soul of Hans into the body of Christina who returns to the living world blond and void of any of her scarring.  However, she now possesses the vengeful soul of Hans, thus using her new level of sexuality to pick off the three members of the gang, all the while Frankenstein flails to reign in his destructive creation, only to meet her at the cliff  of a river, wherein she jumps to her demise a second time, however, now as a more sacrificial act, acknowledging her body as a surrogate for Hans and his vindictive soul.

There is a ton of stuff at play in this film, much to my surprise, although I cannot be entirely thrown off by this occurring, since I had an equal if not greater reaction to The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires.  However, I was of the assumption that much of the brilliance in that film was directly a result of The Shaw Brothers' involvement, yet it appears equally that of Hammer, if not entirely so.  I say all this because Frankenstein Created Woman manages to be a film that is deeply concerned with the process of othering and the oppression which occurs in such acts.  Take, for example, Hans who is impoverished and the son of a murdered criminal.  Society, it would appear, has all but written him off as a productive individual, leading to his being able to only find work within the space of Frankenstein's lab, a place that has been othered primarily because of a figure whose quest for scientific truth runs counter to the assumption that all power or privilege is either pre-ordained through God or can be accrued through wealth.  Indeed, when one needs to find a victim the blame falls directly on Hans and his lower class body, one could only imaging what Angela Davis might think of this particular moment in the film.  Even greater is the oppression on the body of Christina who is also lower class and that of a woman, becoming a thing of assumed exploitation for the aristocratic men, something they believe they can use freely without concern.  When the factor of her scarring is added, one could make the case for her being disabled, in so much as her scarring makes her somewhat immobile through a society that predicates women's bodies as things to be looked at and deemed attractive, something that is not entirely possible when one is maimed.  When the body of Christina is then melded with Hans' soul something intriguing happens, wherein the newly risen Christina becomes hyper-mobile in the space of the narrative, perhaps a statement on the layers of class and gender performance occurring before become futile upon death, more so a consideration though of their fluidity and how easily they can be leapt over once a person decides that following the foolish rules is not only a waste of time, but perhaps severely limiting.

Key Scene:  The matter-of-fact ending to this film made me chuckle a bit, although it was quite well-executed.

This is available in a box set with The Legend of the Seven Golden Vampires and Dracula: Prince of Darkness.  This is your best bet for viewing the film, as it is cheaper to get these three together than it is to get any of them on their own.

Don't Ruin Your Reputation For Petty Gains: The Five Venoms (1978)

I decided to jam one last Shaw Brothers film onto my month of kung fu films, because, after all, they are the premier names in the realm of the martial arts work, indeed carrying the same weight Sirk does with the melodrama, Powell and Pressburger do with Technicolor and Ford does with the Western.  All of the aforementioned directors had moments in their career where they took considerable risks cinematically, choices that existed within their genre/style associations, while also twisting them in new and unique ways.  While they were often met with hesitation they also produced captivating and new ways in which to understand a previously cemented gorup of works.  I would argue that in The Five Venoms the Shaw Brothers approach the genre, for which they well established in at this point and decided to push it to grand proportions.  The Five Venoms is not a simple film, indeed the plot is considerably intricate despite its rather straightforward title, so much so that I will admit much of my recollection of the details of this film are heavily a result of scouring plot synopsis online prior to writing this blog post.  This audacious approach does pay off, considering that it is still incredibly watchable even if I found some, if not entire portions, narratively confusing and linearly uncertain.  I wholly embrace the work, because the Shaw Brothers dare to take a genre film and extend it to the grandest of proportions, indeed I would argue that The Five Venoms is the martial arts equivalent of something like Seven Samurai, where a work that had previously existed only in the realm of genre, moves into being grand, almost art house cinema.  Each moment of the winding and heavy plot of The Five Venoms plays into a larger consideration of loyalty, collective identity and deception that could make the most glorious of shogun samurai period pieces seem minor in breadth.  While I would be hard-pressed to consider this one of my favorite works of the marathon, I will concede to it being one of the more historically important.  It blows viewers over with information and narrative that extends through an undeclared amount of temporal space, never once back tracking (aside from affirming match cuts) to drive a message home.  The Five Venoms demands to be viewed with full attention and to be revisited many times.

The Five Venoms begins with the dying master of the infamous Poison clan explaining to its remaining student Yan Tieh (Chiang Sheng) that the previous five seniors of the dojo have come to make a less than positive name amongst themselves, although the master is rather certain that the infamy is resting on the actions of one or two of the former members.  Explaining to Yan that the five seniors have no identifiable names or traits, given their donning of masks, he goes about explaining the various techniques of the seniors in a hope that Yan will be able to incite them into betraying their secret identities through exposing their styles.  The five venoms of the title represent the animals with which each senior appropriates their style, which are the following: Centipede, Snake, Scorpion, Gecko and Toad.  The last one the Toad proving particularly interesting since nearly all of his skill is predicated upon his being seemingly invincible.  Yan Tieh, however, is not skilled enough in any of the styles to take on the members of the respective dojo, thus leading the master to suggest that he befriend one of the members that is not tied to the exploitation and use their skills to overcome their opponent. The remainder of the movie involves Yan Tieh moving through the city outside of the dojo and uncovering the layers of deception that involve the members of the former Poison clan discover in the process that it is specifically Snake and Scorpion who are of the highest point of trouble making in terms of ruthlessness.  As such, Yan Tieh moves to befriend both Gecko and Toad, realizing that Centipede is also tied to the criminal activity.  Yet, given the layers of communication occurring and the various skills and extensions of power possessed by the members, both good and bad, Toad is eventually killed through the brutal use of The Coat of a Thousand Needles.  After affirming Gecko's identity, Yan Tieh proceeds to create a plan of attack for the taking on of Snake and Scorpion, one that requires training and eventually flawless execution, but just as the Poison clan master predicted, Yan Tieh is able to fell the villainous members and end any further extension of a negative name upon the Poison clan.

I have mentioned in degrees of passing through the previous posts, particularly when discussing Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, the idea that one of the tropes within kung fu cinema appears to be the idea of body on display to be performed and performed upon.  I know this is what I just discussed concerning Mirageman, but here one can see it evolving in relation to the classical work of Shaw Brothers, relatively speaking of course.  I mean to say that there are multiple ways in which the body is put on display as well as theoretically considered.  Take for example Toad, he is the point of such masculine perfection as to be a battering ram that is incapable of overcoming, unless one is to be aware of his single weakness, which is place, not unintentionally in his eyes.  As an insurmountable force, he is apt not to listen to reason or budge, therefore the body and mind are distinctly separated in this context.  Similarly  this body on spectacle as a direct contradiction to the power of the mind, occurs with both Snake and Scorpion who are inclined to betray their identities, because both styles of martial arts require them to project their bodies in significant and highly personalized ways, therefore their body as power, requires them to reject the mental strains of stealth and secrecy.  It is indeed no small directorial choice to make Gecko a fighting style that predicates itself upon patience before striking, whereas Centipede and his intense "one thousand hands" attack is both sporadic and a barrage, but also so flailing and wild as to leave his mind exposed to the strikes of Gecko and Yan Tieh.  Indeed, it seems as though the film draws a clear line between issues of the over performed body, specifically that of the masculine and its ties to corruption and a willingness to do illegal, if not outright evil acts.  The narrative thus becomes a commentary on the importance of a well-rounded mind to match a physical prowess, because not only does it allow one to make consciously sound decisions, it also affords one the means to overpower those who might otherwise win off of brutish means alone.

Key Scene:  Opening montage is great, indeed, it might be its excellence that made getting into the slower pacing of the remainder of the film a tad more difficult.

This is worth renting before buy, not that it is outright bad, indeed it is quite good.  It might, however, prove a bit confusing upon a first viewing.