The Housemaid (1960 film)

The Housemaid
Theatrical poster to The Housemaid (1960)
Hangul	하녀
Hanja	下女
Revised Romanization	Hanyeo
McCune–Reischauer	Hanyŏ
Directed by	Kim Ki-young[1]
Written by	Kim Ki-young
Produced by	Kim Ki-young
Starring	Kim Jin-kyu Ju Jeung-ryu Um Aing-ran
Cinematography	Kim Deok-jin
Edited by	Kim Ki-young
Music by	Han Sang-gi
Distributed by	Kuk Dong Seki Trading Co.
Release date	November 3, 1960 (1960-11-03)
Running time	108 minutes
Country	South Korea
Language	Korean
Box office	$35,687[2]

The Housemaid (Hangul: 하녀, Hanja: 下女, Hanyeo) is a 1960 black-and-white South Korean film. It was directed by Kim Ki-young and starred , Ju Jeung-nyeo and Kim Jin-kyu. It has been described in Koreanfilm.org as a "consensus pick as one of the top three Korean films of all time".^[3] This was the first film in Kim's Housemaid trilogy followed by Woman of Fire and Woman of Fire '82. The film was remade in 2010 by director Im Sang-soo.

Plot[]

The film is a domestic horror thriller telling of a family's destruction by the introduction of a sexually predatory femme fatale into the household.

The film begins with a scene of a composer, Dong-sik Kim, reading to his wife a newspaper story about a man falling in love with his maid.

The story then jumps to the composer working at a factory. The composer has just moved into a two-story house with his wife and two children. When his pregnant wife becomes exhausted from working at a sewing machine to support the family, the composer hires a housemaid, Myung-sook, to help with the work around the house. The new housemaid behaves strangely, catching rats with her hands, spying on the composer, seducing him and eventually becoming pregnant by him.

The composer's wife convinces the housemaid to induce a miscarriage by falling down a flight of stairs. After this incident, the housemaid's behavior becomes increasingly erratic. She threatens to kill the composer's newborn son. She tricks the composer's son Chang-soon into believing that he has ingested poisoned water, and in a panic, he falls to his death down a flight of stairs.

Instead of turning her in to the police, Mrs. Kim offers to support Myung-sook in order to keep her from losing her job, and she asks for the husband. The composer moves upstairs with the maid and his wife labors over her sewing machine, falling asleep at her work every day. Unable to stand their new arrangement, both the wife and daughter attempt to poison Myung-sook, but she outsmarts them. Finally, Myung-sook persuades the composer to commit suicide with her by swallowing rat poison. He crawls downstairs and dies next to his wife, asking her to "Take good care of the children."

The film ends with the composer reading the story from a newspaper with his wife, returning to the very beginning of the film. The narrative of the film has apparently been told by the composer, who then smiles and warns the film audience that this is just the sort of thing that could happen to anyone.

Cast[]

• Kim Jin-kyu as Dong-sik Kim (the husband/father)
• Ju Jeung-ryu as Mrs. Kim (the wife/mother)
• (이은심, 李恩心) as Myung-sook (the housemaid)
• Um Aing-ran as Kyung-hee Cho (the factory worker who takes piano lessons)
• as Seon-young Kwak (the factory worker who commits suicide)
• Ahn Sung-ki as Chang-soon Kim (the son)
• Lee Yoo-ri as Ae-soon Kim (the daughter)

Critical response[]

In 2003, Jean-Michel Frodon, editor-in-chief of Cahiers du cinéma, wrote that the discovery of The Housemaid by the West, over 40 years after the film's debut, was a "marvelous feeling—marvelous not just because one finds in writer-director Kim Ki-young a truly extraordinary image maker, but in his film such an utterly unpredictable work".

Comparing the director to Luis Buñuel, Frodon wrote Kim is "capable of probing deep into the human mind, its desires and impulses, while paying sarcastic attention to the details". He called The Housemaid "shocking", noting that "the shocking nature of the film is both disturbing and pleasurable". Frodon pointed out that The Housemaid was only one early major film in the director's career, and that Kim Ki-young would continue "running wild through obsessions and rebellion" with his films for decades to come.^[1]

Influence[]

Bong Joon-ho has said The Housemaid was an inspiration for his 2019 film Parasite.^[4]

References[]

Bibliography[]

• Ahn, Min-hwa. "The Housemaid". The House of Kim Ki-young. Archived from the original on 2003-12-09. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
• Ahn, Min-hwa. "Representing the Anxious Middle Class: Camera Movement, Sound, and Color in The Housemaid and Woman of Fire". The House of Kim Ki-young. Archived from the original on 2004-05-06. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
• An, Jin-soo. "The Housemaid and Troubled Masculinity in the 1960s". The House of Kim Ki-young. Archived from the original on 2003-12-12. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
• Kim, Kyung-hyun (2004). "8. Lethal Work: Domestic Space and Gender Troubles in Happy End and The Housemaid". The Remasculinization of Korean Cinema. Durham and London: Duke University Press. pp. 233–258. ISBN 0-8223-3267-1.
• Kim, Soyoung. "The Housemaid and the Korean Woman's Film". The House of Kim Ki-young. Archived from the original on 2004-10-13. Retrieved 2008-01-21.
• Park, Jiye. "Gothic Imagination in Carnivore and The Housemaid". The House of Kim Ki-young. Archived from the original on 2003-12-10. Retrieved 2008-01-21.

Further reading[]

• Chang, Justin (2019-10-16). "Critic's Choice: If you liked 'Parasite,' don't miss 'The Housemaid'". Los Angeles Times.

External links[]

• The Housemaid at IMDb
• Review at asiandb.com
• Review at filmbrain.com
• Review at Koreanfilm.org
• The Housemaid: Crossing Borders an essay by Kyung Hyun Kim at the Criterion Collection