Kim Ki-young
The Housemaid (1960) (하녀)
Edition 2022
110'
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1960
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Crime, Drama, Thriller
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Dialogue:
Korean
This classis of South Korean cinema of the sixties is an erotically charged thriller about a manipulative maid who drags a neat bourgeois family into the deepest depths. A marriage of the cinema of Hitchcock and Buñuel.
The only film in this Classics section that dates back to last century made such an impression on younger generations that it can be regarded as the matrix of a mini-genre about diabolical personnel infiltrating the bourgeois elite, of which Bong Joon-ho's Palme d'Or winner Parasite might be the crowning achievement. Protagonist is a music teacher who sees his entire existence (house, wife and child) destroyed by the manipulations of a seductive maid, which leads to claustrophobic terror captured in quasi expressionistic black-and-white photography. This masterpiece by Kim Ki-young can also be interpreted as a manifesto in defence of patriarchy and against the perverse influence of western culture. But above all, it's a wicked erotic thriller that would make Hitchcock and Buñuel proud.
"A bleak, Nietzschean view of human motivation, and the whole, with its jazz-score, location shooting, hot-house Sirkian drama and Clouseau-like horror suspense makes for a notably delirious experience." - Time Out Film Guide
Image gallery
Credits
Director
Kim Ki-young
Composer
Han Sang-gi
With
Lee Eun-shim, Kim Jin-kyu, Ju Jeung-nyeo
Scenario
Kim Ki-young
Director of Photography
Kim Deok-jin
Editor
Oh Young-Keun
Producer
Kim Young-cheol
Production studios
Hanguk Munye Yeonghwa, Korean Munye Films Co., Ltd.
More information
Dialogue
Korean
Countries of production
South Korea
Year
1960
Filmography
Kim Ki-young
The Boxes of Death (1955), Yangsan Province (1955), A Touch-Me-Not (1956), A Woman's War (1957), The Twilight Train (1957), The First Snow (1958), A Defiance of Teenager (1959), A Sad Pastorale (1960), The Housemaid (1960), The Sea Knows (1961), Goryeojang (1963), The Asphalt Pavement (1964), A Soldier Speaks After Death (1966), Woman (1968), Lady Hong the Beauty (1969), Len's Sonata (1969), Woman of Fire (1971), Insect Woman (1972), Transgression (1974), Promise of the Flesh (1975), Love of Blood Relations (1976), Io Island (1977), Soil (1978), Woman Chasing the Butterfly of Death (1978), Woman of Water (1979), Neu-mi (1980), Ban Geum-ryun (1982), Woman of Fire '82 (1982), Free Maiden (1982), Hunting for Idiots (1984), Carnivorous Animal (1985), Be a Wicked Woman (1995)
