Woman of Fire

Woman of Fire (Hwanyeo) (1971)

Runtime: 100 minutes

Directed by: Kim Ki-Young

Starring: Namkoong Won, Jeon Gye-Hyeon, Yuon Yuh-Jung, Choi Moo-Ryong

From: Woo Jin Films Co., Ltd.

Here is something I saw via the free Korean Film Archive that anyone can watch on YouTube. It's a curio, as I explain below: 

Wednesday night I did not see any movies; instead I watched some documentaries about Pearl Harbor. As it was the 75th anniversary of that important day in American history, I figured that would be the most appropriate thing to do. Last night, I decided to see another Korean movie; it had been awhile. A few will be leaving Netflix Instant last next week and I hope to see at least one of those but but this isn't one of those. Instead, it's from the official YouTube Channel of the Korean Film Archive, which has over 100 movies available for free. Even to a lot of film fans, they really only know the past 15 to 20 years of filmmaking from that country, as they produced many acclaimed works. Well, even before then they made motion pictures that were worthy of being watched. It's just that things were different back then and international distribution did not happen too often, or at least to the United States.

Around this time 2 years ago I saw The Housemaid, a 1960 movie from Kim Ke-Young. It's about the title character entering the life of a young family and due to her predatory ways and being insane, she absolutely tore that family apart. Well, this film is a remake of that, from the same director. The general story is the same but various things are different; it's not just that the original was in black & white and this is in color. The housemaid here doesn't start off as predatory; she's just a girl from the country who ends up in Seoul to try and earn money for her poor family. Because of the husband being henpecked and weak, even though he brags about being faithful, he has issues... he becomes unfaithful after getting drunk. Things happen, and that's when the housemaid becomes crazed.

While this is a good movie, I find The Housemaid to be great. Just personal preference, that's all. Both have crazed moments that make you realize South Korea didn't just start making movies w/ outrageous moments yesterday; it's happened for decades now. Those moments in the two movies are sometimes different. It's a shame that plenty of the director's films are lost; from what I've seen he is quite good, and also lenses things in a unique way, with interesting shots and camera placement. The prints for both films would be lost if a hardcoded French subtitled version wasn't around. When the World Cinema Foundation put out The Housemaid, they took the painstaking task of erasing all those subtitles; Woman of Fire still has those, but hopefully they won't be a bother.

You'll notice that this movie also has a bold use of red and blue, and also has songs that I presume are early 70's version of K-Pop. Oh, and this is a rare film which takes place on a chicken farm. Apparently, you're supposed to knock on the door of chicken coops before you enter, else you scare the chickens. Hey, that's what they said!