The movie seems to revolve around the theme of greed. The story starts out with an innocent love that was manipulated by Miss Cho. Miss Cho was the one that used a young innocent girl in to confessing her feelings to the music teacher to see how the music teacher would react to the situation. Miss Cho had greed and because of greed, her main objective in the movie was to get close to the music teacher and ultimately confess her love to him. The story then continues with the wife being greedy of living in a better house. Her greed for a bigger house leads to the hiring of the housemaid. If they had stayed in a smaller home, then they could have managed their lifestyle, but because the wife was so busy working, a housemaid was a simple option. Once the housemaid came in to the house, she became greedy of what the wife had: a husband, children, a house, etc. It first started out as obsession, but later turned to greed.
One of the key elements in the film was the rate poison. It appeared in many scenes throughout the movie and I wondered why the child thought that the housemaid put rat poison in the water the first time he asked for it. I guess it was a form of foreshadow to show that it would happen further in the movie. The rat poison was also strange how it wasn’t used until the housewife entered the kitchen for the first time. When the father first introduced the rat poison to the children, he just explained to them what it was and didn’t actually use it. A question that I thought to myself was about the husband. I wondered why all 4 of these women had love, interest, desire, lust, etc. for this character. Then I thought that the character of the husband was maybe the quintessential first love a woman can have. Also, he had the image of a loving father and husband which possibly added to his appeal as a man. His character was very interesting because in the beginning, when he received the love letter, he acted in the proper way by “reporting” it to the headmaster. This made me think that he was a man who knew what was right and wrong. But later when he spends the night with the housemaid, he still knows that his actions are wrong, but still stayed with the housemaid. The director maybe wanted to send the message that men are also the victim in those situations or that the women is at fault for seducing a married man.
The movie "Housemaid" has several main characters who carry on the story. Dongsik, a good-looking piano teacher at a factory gets a housemaid introduced by one of his students, Miss Cho, who is later revealed to have fallen in love with him, but gets rejected. The major conflict in Dongsik's family starts when the housemaid enters the home, and Dongsik sleeping with her when his wife leaves home for vacation. This not only breaks the peace within the family, but also leads to the death of the housemaid's unborn baby, Dongsik's son Changsoon, and both Dongsik and the housemaid. Throughout the movie, there are certain factors that help the interpretation of the movie: 3 focused items: rat poison, piano and the stairs, and the background music. By using close-up technique, the importance of rat poison in the movie is implied throughout the whole movie. It not only kills the rats, but also results in killing Changsoon, the maid and Dongsik. The use of rat poison in killing people was warned at the beginning of the movie, in the wife's dream, in which the dead rats had a face of people. Second item, the piano, is considered as the core reason of conflict throughout the movie. It is used as the means that brings Miss Cho into the house and connects the housemaid and Dongsik's family. Additionally, the use of the piano room as a background of the seduction of the housemaid represents the piano as the core origin of conflict. The last focused item is the stairs, which are used as a background of 1) death and 2) representation of the hierarchy. Not only the death of the maid's unborn child occurs on the stairs, but also Changsoon falls down, and it is the place where the maid dies and tries to hold Dongsik's legs to keep him with her. Not only are the staris used to show the death, but it is also used in representing the hierarchy of the characters. It is not just the steepness of the stairs that symbolizes the hierarchy, but the camera angle when filming the stairs also shos the chanaged hierarchy of the maid. When the maid did not have any power and was doing choirs, middle shot was used, while when the maid had the power and was controlling everyone's behavior, low-angle shot was used, aggrandizing the maid, and making us feel that she has the authority. In addition to these items that were focused, there were other components that affected the plot and the audiences' perception of the movie. By using intense background music and the maid's loud piano sound, audiences were able to anticipate that something bad was going to happen, and intensified the interpretation of certain scenes. Through these different components such as camera angle, focused items, and background music, the movie was able to share the story to the audiences in a much more realistic way and help concentrating in the plot for the whole duration.
TINA KIM Camera Position and Objects to Express Feelings-The Housemaid
In the Housemaid, there were many objects that were used to express the character’s emotions. For instance, the mirror in the scene of where the camera is focused on Kim Jun-kyu and his reflection in the mirror represented his feelings of shame. Mr. Kim can be seen looking into the mirror only to cover his face and this can be seen by the reflection of the mirror. The mirror expresses Mr. Kim’s feelings by not being able to look at himself after cheating on his wife. The rat poison is another object which is used in many scenes to express desperation, a source of escapism, and also hatred. The position of the camera, which was shooting the movie from outside or inside of the house, was unique in expressing the character’s feelings. In this discussion, I will focus on the usage of the window frame to help express the character’s feelings. The camera shot the video with the characters either inside or outside of an area through the windows. This helps express the character’s feelings of either being an outsider or being trapped. In the scene where Kim Jin-kyu was intimately teaching Miss Cho how to play the piano and where his housemaid was looking from outside of the windows reveals how she felt out casted from the house and from Mr. Kim. Another scene where she is about to commit suicide with Mr. Kim is shot with her inside of the house with Mr. Kim. This shows that she is part of the household and with Mr. Kim. For Mr. Kim, he is feeling trapped with this woman in his own house! There were also several scenes taken by the camera where Mr. Kim is alone behind the window screen looking lost and miserable. In the scene where he was inside of the bus ready to go to his son’s funeral, the camera was positioned with only him inside of the bus and included the sides of the bus windows which created a prison for him. This again helps express Mr. Kim’s feelings of being trapped by the housemaid. The window frames increased the effect of his feeling of confinement by the housemaid. After, the housemaid forced an abortion with Mr. Kim’s child; the camera took a shot of her through the windows of her room. She is inside of the house but is confined. This scene shows her feelings of lost, remorse, and the feeling of nowhere to go. She was pregnant with a married man and murdered her own child. She is much like a criminal and victim at the same time behind these “bars”. There were also shots of the wife where she was sewing nonstop. Again, the shot was taken with the window frame in between. The wife felt trapped because of her need to keep her husband’s scandal a secret in order for him to keep his job. She is also under the control of the housemaid and she had no way out because she realizes that they need money for their children and for their new house.
In this thriller movie "Housemaid", the image of happy looking middle class family begins to fall apart when the young housemaid comes into the house. Although they wish to live in a bigger house, both wife and husband are too busy making money, they needed help with housekeeping. Unlike what husband said about "housemaid" in the very beginning of the film, this new girl shows irregular behavior like smoking or catching a rat with bare hands. (the class differentiation shown in the behaviors somewhat reminded me of Eliza Doolittle in the beginning of "My Fair Lady") The housemaid seemed to envy Miss Cho getting piano lessons and continuously show eager to learn piano with her agitating piano sound. Similar to Eliza Doolittle, education becomes the key to ascent of social status. The housemaid eventually seduces the husband, have his baby, thinking she could become part of his family. The husband couldn't handle the guilt and tell his wife about his mistake and the wife makes the housemaid to abort her baby. The housemaid goes mad when she feels rejected, she starts to threaten the family to tell other people. The wife and husband tries hard to keep this secret but the husband ends up drinking the rat poison with the housemaid. I thought it was very interesting to see how the wife seemed to be more troubled and afraid of other finding out about their situation, loosing job(incapability), than her husbands' betrayal. It was also interesting to see changes made in the role of "housemaid" later in the film.
Greed. This movie centers around greed. Greed for money, people, things. The movie is used to show that greed can corrupt even the purest of people. The music teacher was portrayed as a very pure person. Yet even he was not free from the power of greed. Despite all his efforts to remain pure, even he collapsed. Ultimately it is all traced back to the greed of the wife. It is shown in the constant shots focusing on her sewing as a second job of hers. She displays more greed by asking for the second house, and asking the music teacher to perform piano lessons. This introduced the character Miss Chocolate who wanted nothing but love from the piano teacher. She was so greedy that she pushed her friend to also fall for him and get suspended from work. This caused her to leave the company from shame and eventually die/commit suicide. The greed of the wife also brought in the Housemaid. The Housemaid is the one eh o eventually tempted the music teacher enough to corrupt him. The ultimate reaction to this movie is shown at the end where I the characters are pulled back to a reality where it is known that it was only a possible story and not the actual one. They point out and use this story to show that non one is immune from greed and if the situation is right anyone can crack.
In “The Housemaid,” the director, Kim Ki-Young, utilized many cinematic effects to portray the dramatic, thriller/horror tone found throughout the entire film, in the end creating a lasting feeling of uneasiness and gripping terror within the audience. One way the director established this tone was by panning from the piano parlor to the housemaid’s room from the balcony. Often shooting through the glass panels, this method of transitioning from one room to another showed how the housemaid was able to control multiple areas of the house. Through the balcony, she was able to gain access to the piano parlor, popping out of nowhere, ultimately creating a sense of fear in not only the family members, but the audience as well. This aspect contributes to the horror feel of the film. Moreover, this kind of panning shot gives the audience a new perspective on the actual size of the house, which is actually much smaller than what the audience initially perceives it to be. This new angle and frame gives the sense of a cramped and prison-like house, which is exactly what is becomes for the family when the behavior of the housemaid becomes even more erratic, controlling, and obsessive. Thus, the panels on the balcony doors represent the bars in prison cells, in which the family is trapped. Another cinematic effect that was used throughout the movie was the numerous upward shots of the dark staircase. The focus on the staircase acted as a foreshadowing of what was ultimately to come. The staircase eventually became a symbol of death and destruction as the setting of both the son and the housemaid’s deaths as well as where Miss Cho’s almost death took place. The wife and the children are usually downstairs while all the death, betrayal, deceit, and manipulation takes place upstairs. Often panning from the first floor of the house upwards toward the stairs, the director creates a feeling of uneasiness as the focus of the usually high-tension scene becomes more up-close in the view of the audience. In this way, an upwards shot from the stairs represents getting closer to destruction and terror. An example of this is during Miss Cho and the husband’s fight. As he threatens her by pointing out he could kill her by simply pushing her off the ledge, the camera pans from the bottom of the stairs up towards the two characters. By doing this, the director makes the audience really feel the high intensity and emotions being enacted by the actors. Another example of this kind of shot is when the housemaid is convinced by the wife to throw herself down the stairs in order to induce an abortion. Before she does it, the camera pans up towards the housemaid, providing a close-up to her face. Even before anything happens, the audience can feel the tension rising, knowing something terrible is about to happen. In these ways, the stairwell became the director’s ominous symbol throughout the movie for all things shocking, dramatic, and destructive.
Kim Ki-young’s 1960 film, The Housemaid, chronicles the unsettling collapse of an upper-middle class Korean family. The film opens with an almost ‘Kodak Moment’ shot of the family in perfect domestic bliss: the children are in the foreground playing games, the wife is in middle ground sewing, and the husband is reading the local newspaper in the background. The balance of this shot is disrupted as the camera moves in on the husband and wife from the outside window as if the audience is viewing the family from a voyeuristic intruder’s perspective. The picturesque view of the family is further disjointed as an extreme close up depicts the older sister and younger brother’s cat’s cradle game. The repeated tangling and weaving of the string while the credits roll foreshadows the incoming “tangling” of their precious household by the ultimate intruder by which the film is entitled: the housemaid.
This theme of intrusion is perpetuated throughout the film. As the husband and his piano student, Miss Cho, practice piano, the housemaid views the pair from the same window as the beginning scene. She peers into the room longingly and the camera follows her eyesight almost implicating the audience’s own eavesdropping. When the housemaid seduces the husband, the audience once again views the scene from the outside of the window into the room. Rats have invaded the family’s new home and constantly terrorize the frail wife and daughter causing them to never feel at ease in their own home. Close-up shots of closing and opening doors continue throughout the film reflecting this theme of private space and enclosure illustrating the literal boundaries of the family’s domestic space. The housemaid is the ultimate invader because she has not only encroached physically into the family’s home but she has disrupted the balance of the private sphere of domestic life.
The Housemaid was released in 1960, a time in Korea where occupation by the Japanese has ended a little more than a decade earlier and “penetration” by foreign countries, like the U.S., is still very present (Bruce Cumings, KPS). The Korean people’s lingering anxiety of intrusion and destruction by an outside source is very literally represented within this Hitchcockian thriller with voyeuristic camera movements and disturbingly close up shots of minute details.
The Housemaid starts with an intense and somewhat horrifying music that immediately captures the audience’s attention. The music almost suggests the audience of introduction to a horror or a monster movie. As the title of the movie shows, the movie could be mistaken for a ghost or a mysterious story as the word “housemaid” is a term that arouses eccentric feelings. These assumptions are quickly vanished as the story progresses. Throughout the movie, the usage of the settings was very limited. There were two main settings: the house of Dong-Sik (the teacher) and the music classroom in the factory. Most of the movies important scenes occur within those two settings. This is almost as if the director wanted to show the narrowness of the characters’ perceptive of the world through the limited settings. Even within those settings, the camera did not capture a large area of the surrounding space. In other words, the long shots and the extreme long shots were almost nonexistent. There were only a few long shots of a train used to signify the passage of time or change in scenes. Medium shots were commonly used minimizing any appearance of unnecessary objects in the shots. Close-up shots were used in instances to emphasize a moment or object like rat poison. The common usage of medium shots shows the directors effort to concentrate the audience’s attention on the characters and their behaviors and words. It seemed that the director relied heavily on the actors to convey the messages of the movie.
The movie was shocking and unfamiliar to me. The fast escalation of the problems were somewhat rough to understand and awkward. However, the movie surprises the audience with the themes it holds that are reflective of the Korean culture at the time. Introduced in 1960, the movie was premiered only seven years after the ceasefire of the Korean War. Thus, the movie was introduced to the public who were suffering from social, economic, and political problems prominent at the time. In a sense, Dong-Sik (the teacher)’s wife’s obsession with material goods and economic stability is understandable and representative of the struggles of many Koreans who worked tirelessly for economic wealthy in pursuit of happiness. To many people, economic stability meant happiness. Perhaps, Dong-Sik and his wife’s decision to not to escalate their son’s death to the police and obey their housemaid in concern of losing Dong-Sik’s job was probably agreeable to the audience back then. Their decision may seem absurd to many of the audience today, but the devastated economy and poverty that characterized Korea during 1960’s would have given a different perspective to the audience. Furthermore, I found that the movie contained fantasies and idealism of the society. Dong-Sik’s unshakable love of his wife and his wife’s strong mindset to protect her family from economic instability at all cost were all seemingly driven by fantasy and idealistic views of the Korean society. Moreover, the movie portrays the greed of the people. For example, the housemaid wanted to possess Dong-Sik all by herself and unveiled her greed of him through drinking rat poison with him. In addition, Dong-Sik’s and his wife’s greed were shown through their obsession to materialism. His wife’s obsession was apparent as she worked the sewing machine restlessly to afford more materials. Dong-Sik’s obsession with materialism was revealed in extremity when he told Ms. Cho to keep coming back for piano lessons even after her confession to him so that, he can pay for his newborn son.
The conclusion of the movie left me disturbed. While a movie made in today’s society would have ended at the scene where Dong-Sik died nearby his wife, The Housemaid ended with a scene that almost seemed like a professor lecturing his students on the topic of moral. It gave me an impression that the story of the movie was quiet shocking at the time and the director saw a need to make a different approach for an easy consumption of the movie by the public, a conservative society.
The Housemaid takes place in the 1960s or 70s. During this time period, the appearance and the idea of being successful or wealthy are important for the people, especially the middle class. This living style has been influenced by the Americans. Mr. Kim, the music teacher at the local female factory, and his wife consistently talk about improving their home and the lives of their children. The both of them are constantly working to earn more cash to buy material luxuries for a comfortable living style. From the start of the movie, we learned how Mr. Kim’s family is preparing for a move into a two-story house. They used to rent places to stay from other homeowners, which made them move around often. Now, they are the owners of their own house. Also, after the purchase of a piano, Mr. Kim advertises private piano lessons to his music class and openly tells his students that his family needed the money. Furthermore, when the newly purchased TV arrived, the daughter exclaims how their family is the only one that has a TV in the neighborhood. The house, piano, and TV all symbolize how the Kims are the richest in their neighborhood and how material goods represent wealth. In addition, another sign showing whether or not a family is wealthy is the ability to hire a housemaid or a servant. However, having a housemaid around the house can create some fear for the family, especially for the wife, because of the sex temptation. As the movie progress, we were able to see Mr. Kim’s idea of the affair story between the businessman and maid that was read from the newspaper at the start. Only after the story was told did we realize “it was all a dream.” Mr. Kim’s laugh and explanation about man’s behavior and temptation at the end reveal that sex is the least of the worries for middle class families considering having a maid around the house.
Most, if not all, of the scenes in this movie primarily took place in two locations: inside the teacher’s house, and inside the classroom. I noticed that the director used many of the same techniques when filming different scenes that all take place inside the classroom. First, the camera focuses on the window; then, it zooms out so that the frame captures the teacher on his piano and all the women in his classroom. This repetitive image portrays the women functioning as a single unit whether they are singing or even when they share thoughts/opinions about their teacher after Kwan’s death. There were also several medium shots of Cho next to another woman that usually accompanied these classroom situated scenes. This is done to remind the audience that Cho (I think that’s her name) plays an important role in this film: it is Cho’s love for the teacher that causes those around her to suffer. Her best friend Kwan had passed away and Cho tore the teacher’s family apart by introducing him to a housemaid she thought she could trust. One scene in particular, after the teacher confesses to his wife about impregnating the housemaid, had a dramatic impact in establishing the wife’s character. At first the wife is shocked with disbelief about her husband’s disloyalty, but within seconds she turns around (motivated camera movement) and says she’ll handle the situation. She exits the door and the camera shoots a low angle shot of the wife walking up the stairs to talk to the housemaid. The music that accompanied the transition between these two shots reveals to the audience how much family means to her and how she’s willing to do something as humiliating as getting down on her knees and begging the maid in order to salvage her family. I feel that this scene strips her husband of his masculinity as the wife’s strong will and determination to act on his behalf to resolve the problem (convincing the maid to have an abortion).
In The Housemaid, different techniques are used to emphasize the thriller aspect of the film. Although it is not a horror movie filled with ghosts and demons, film technique were used to bring shock and emphasize certain points. One of the most obvious methods to emphasize the thriller part was the use of music. The use of eerie music was used to dramatize and foreshadow certain scenes. When the housemaid held the knife, dramatic music was cued to let viewers know that something bad was going to happen. There was also dramatic music when the rat died to foreshadow that rat poison would be an important part of the film.
Another technique used was the use of camera distance from certain subjects. This highlighted what the audience should focus on during that particular scene. The camera would often start close-up on a certain character or object and then show the whole setting relative to that focus. In one scene, the camera focused on in the glass of water that the housemaid said had rat poison in it to show the importance of that glass of water. The focus on the glass of water made the audience focus on that glass of water and see the significance of that water in the plot of the story.
The use of different scene lengths created focus. Certain scenes such as the rats dying and close-ups on the housemaid stood out to me more than the longer scenes. The short and sudden close-ups of the housemaid’s face were used to instill surprise and catch the audience off guard. The plot twist at the end was also unexpected as it goes back to the beginning scene, revealing that the whole movie was not actually reality.
The film, the Housemaid, starts with well living main character Dongsik, who teaches how to play piano to factory women. He becomes to be seduced by a filthy housemaid and eventually suicides with her. In general, a housemaid, in terms of social role, is supposed to devote herself to her job and the family she serves, or somewhat in socially low status, but in this film the housemaid plays as a murderer and a life threatening character with her ambition. I was shocked about the fact that this movie was produced in 1960 when people still hold Korean traditional conservative point of view. Also the plot of this movie, especially the way the women is portrayed, is very sensational, considering the time period. In my opinion, social mobility is an important theme in this film. In this time period, two-story house was just brought up to the wealthy people from western countries. Building a such house shows the social mobility of people in the period. In the movie, there are many scenes to show the stair of the house. As physically going up the stair, the desire to socially go up is shown as a metaphor of the characters’ greed. The stair becomes the place where tragic death happens. Changsoon, a little son of Dongsik, falls down the stair and dies. Also the housemaid loses her baby by falling down. By setting the stair as the background of these deaths, the director implied bright and dark side of the social mobility. In addition, rat poison is an important device of murder. The subject of killing is supposed to be a rat, which is tiny and powerless. In this movie, the housemaid threats Changsoon and her sister to poison them. When killing rats with the poison, the housemaid becomes almost almighty god, since she can control a life or a death. Actually the housemaid does not have any power or money, but she fulfills her desire to become powerful by having the poison on her hand. Eventually, the rat poison kills herself and Dongsik who has been having an inappropriate affair with her.
The Housemaid (1960), as we can see from its title, is the story about what happens after a woman works as a housemaid in Mr. Kim’s house. As she enters Mr.Kim’s house, the destruction of one happy family begins. Several factors help interpreting this movie: rats and rat poison, stairs, and the door of balcony. In the movie, from the beginning to the end, rats and rat poison often show up because they are important factors that form tensions and fear of the movie. Unlike any other characters, the housemaid is the only character who is not afraid of rats, even holding them with hands. Especially, her behavior is contrasted with Mr.Kim’s wife, who fears of rats, and the difference in their attitudes toward rats forecast the conflict between two women. Rat poisons, not only kill the rats, but they also can kill the people. In the characters’ lines, there are several warnings that the poison can kill the people, and this actually happens. The son of Mr.Kim dies by falling, as he is astonished by the fear that the housemaid gave him poisoned water, and both the housemaid and Mr.Kim kill themselves by drinking the rat poison. Moreover, mostly, the story takes place in Mr.Kim’s house, which is composed of two levels. On the first level, there are living room and sewing machine that Mr.Kim’s wife uses. On the second level, there is a room where the piano Mr.Kim plays is, and this place is important in the movie in that the starting point of main event happens there. Stairs connect those two levels, and in my opinion, as two characters, Mr.Kim’s young son and the housemaid die at the stairs, stairs also symbolize the place of death. Additionally, there is another important place in this house: the balcony and its door. There are quite many thrilling scenes that the housemaid peeped through the glass-door of the balcony into the room where the piano is. She watches Miss Cho’s taking piano lesson from Mr.Kim, and becomes that she wants to learn to play piano as well. When she peeps through the door of balcony, audience feels like being the housemaid herself watching what is going on in the room.
Foreshadowing throughout the movie was quite explicit. For example, when the family moves to a new, big house, rats become a new issue, an issue that they have never faced before when they were not so wealthy. The sudden appearance of the rats is the cause of the collapse of Dongsik’s wife and a problem for every family member. Dongsik shows a rat poison, which is the most important and recurring theme of the movie, for the first time to his children and explicitly says that this poison can not only kill rats but people. Also, the camera shows a close-up from above of mice painfully dying after eating the poison and right afterwards shows Dongsik’s wife screaming and waking up from a nightmare. These scenes foreshadow that moving to a big, new house will bring an unseen problem to the family and that a rat poison will be a solution to terminate the problem. Later, when the housemaid goes to Dongsik’s house for the first time, she kills the rat, and we know that now the rat of the house, or a new problem to the family, is the housemaid.
The camerawork of the movie seemed sophisticated. When there is a scene of Dongsik and the housemaid, happening at the second floor of the house, it was not taken as separate shots but as one, uncut shot. For example, when the housemaid lures Dongsik from the piano room, which symbolizes his connection to the women who falls in love with him, and takes him to her room, the camera follows their movement. Also, after learning the pregnancy of the housemaid, Dongsik heads to a bar and haves a drink with his mentor. Dongsik, who values his family the most, is shocked by his mentor’s opinion about the adultery and takes a taxi to go home. His confusion and mental struggle are shown in the screen as a blurry, shaking front window view of the taxi.
The movie begins with the main character Dongsik and his wife talking about the adultery with a housemaid and ends with Dongsik teaching the audience a lesson not to commit adultery. This frame narrative structure of the movie and the way Dongsik directly points at and speaks to the audience were unnatural and unfamiliar to the contemporary audience. I wondered why the director chose to use such methods to present the story. The Korean audience at the time the movie was made was much more conservative and closed than today. The director Kim might have believed that the plot is way too shocking and controversial for the audience and could have chosen the frame narrative in order to soothe the shock of the audience.
The Housemaid portrays complicated relationships that revolve around Dong-Sik and his piano; Dong-Sik values his piano as one of the most important properties in his household, but his piano ends up to be the central object that attracted "rats", causing a chaotic breakdown of his family. The director Kim Ki-Young blends in some metaphorical factors in the film and notifies the audience that the main characters are all rats trapped in a house. The father gives his disabled daughter a squirrel as a present to encourage her to continuously try to walk and develop her leg muscles. The housemaid who first captures a rat by her hand was told to use the rat poison from now on, so she scoops plain, white rice from the rice cooker on a plate and pours the poison on top of it. The rat food seems no different from what Dong-Sik’s family (human beings) eats regularly, which reminds the audience that the entire household is being compared with the mischievous rats.
While Dong-Sik fails to protect his family due to his sexual greed, Dong-Sik's materialistic wife gets crushed by her greed in properties. When Dong-Sik confesses to her that he had a secret love affair with a woman, she thinks that his secret lover is a worker from the factory and immediately tells Dong-Sik that it would have been better to hear that Dong-Sik is dead. However, when Dong-Sik admits that he shared love with the housemaid, she becomes calm and soothes her anger. Her sudden change in emotion might have occurred because (1) the housemaid is someone whom she can persuade and control under her force or (2) the fact that Dong-Sik would not lose his job as the music teacher in the factory since the workers would not know about this incident. She regrets later on by saying that it was her mistake that they got a new house. Lastly, the housemaid has both Dong-Sik and his wife’s characteristics as she wants to win over materialistic success and Dong-Sik. She ends up treating Dong-Sik as one of her properties.
Although the film itself is rather provocative if we consider the time period and Korea's cultural aspect in 1960, the audience could sense the atmosphere of Korea back in the days throughout the settings, background, and the gender role. Dong-Sik is the main bread-earner, the patriarchal figure who has to support his family especially in a financial aspect while his wife portrays the traditional house wife who stays at home and does a side work to support the family. All the workers in the factory were women, which indicate women’s role in society and their limited chances of getting white collar jobs. Becoming a housemaid was another option that provided food, shelter, and money, and it may have sounded attractive to young women in their 20s.
As my peers have mentioned above greed and rat poison were central themes/aspects of the film. Another point of interest was the concept of the wheel/moving as indicated by the squirrel's running and the whirring of the sewing machine. I related this point to the extent that one action led to a series of uncontrollable events.
I found it extremeley interesting how conflicted and complicated Mr. Kim's character was. On one hand his qualities had single-handedly brought on the attraction of three women. His role of provider, handsome music teacher, caring father encapsulated classic patriarchal ideals; these were also the qualities that made the women go to extreme lengths to earn his affection and carry out their loyalty. However there exists a certain disparity between this masculine image of Mr. Kim. He increasingly relies on his wife to defend him from the housemaid. Having revealed his infidelity, he retreated to hide behind his wife's decision making and judgement to deal with the matter at hand. Ultimately, he succumbs to the insistence of the housemaid and commits suicide by rat poison. Mr. Kim seemed to lack the authority to make his own decisions, albeit the severity of the situation.
The film moves at an incredible pace. The Kims do not even have time to mourn the loss of their first son before things continue to escalate. As such I felt the film left little room for proper digestion and recovery.
However, greed is an overwhelming theme throughout the film. It is the root of all the conflicts within the film. Moving to a bigger house, seeking a housemaid, etc.
The housemaid shows a grotesque and horrifying depiction of a woman and result of one’s affair. In the film, the director portrays how woman can be extremely obsessive towards another, and how woman can turn out to be a fearful creature regardless of femininity. Through out the movie, Mr. Kim faces three women who all love him, but fail to be loved by him. First one is Kwak, who eventually dies after she was suffered from not being loved by Mr. Kim. Second woman is Kyunghee who was the one trying to get close to Mr. Kim through Kwak and piano lessons. Thirdly, the housemaid loves Mr. Kim thus, her love becomes way too obsessive, and cruel which makes her poison Mr. Kim’s son and threaten his family and his wife. All the moves, facial expression, gestures, and behaviors such as standing outside the veranda staring inside the room, weirdly peeking onto Mr. Kim when he’s playing the piano, and making a dissonance sounds by smashing the piano all creates the housemaid’s image of weirdness, abnormality, and insanity. Because of the housemaid who repeatedly threatens Mr. Kim’s family, his family had to live with fear and horror. All that horrifying situations were derived from Mr. Kim’s fault at one short moment. The object that caught my eye from the beginning of the movie till the end was the rat poison. The first scene that shows a rat and rat poison was when Mr. Kim’s wife found a rat on their kitchen shelf and fainted; after that scene, there was a quick close up framed scene of rats died from the poison. Whenever the rat poison was shown in the frame, the soundtrack shifts into the fast beat, dissonant notes, and sometimes there are thunders and lightening sounds that creates the mood of horror. From my point of view, the scene of rats died from the poison shows the intent of what will happen in the future. Later on in the movie, Kim’s son, Changsoon, Mr.Kim and housemaid all dies by the rat poison. The director may or may not intended, but the scene of Mr. Kim’s wife dreaming about dead rats lying on the kitchen floor matches with what had happened later on in the movie. Although the technical aspects were not highlighted in the movie, the pace of the film moves very quickly, and the plot was very intriguing to stay focused though out the whole film. At the end, when Mr. Kim speaks to the audience was another scene that I had never expected when watching the movie.
To me The Housemaid is hard to predict the next scene compare to other movies. Some movies are very easy to read through what’s going to happen in next couple of scenes because the intention of producers or directors will eventually reach that point. I think the reason why it is such a hard to read the consequences is because the character “housemaid” is unpredictable even though she is not hiding anything behind the scene. So, I have developed my analysis based on the camera movements and the housemaid’s standing location where the camera is following.
The audiences happen to follow the camera. In my perspective, The Housemaid has more than just objective view of the characters. The camera movements seem to be a viewfinder for the audiences but it has certain intention of tracking the scenes more than representing the watcher. For instance, the very first scene, camera is showing the piano teacher and his wife. Then, at some point, it moves out and shows two children playing with thread. Here in our subconscious, the audiences already recognized that there were two children except the housewife and the husband. The camera is intentionally trying to ignore the fact and reveals is later on. So basically, kids were in the frame but not recognized until the camera brings them into the frame.
The exiting part is this kind of shooting characters are shown in many other scenes through out the movie, especially when the camera is tracking the housemaid. The room where housemaid is staying is across from the piano room. Often she uses terrace to move to the piano room. The terrace is very thematic place. Generally, it’s not considered as outdoor but also not the opposite. And she watched piano room from there. I assumed that the glass doors created another frame. When the housemaid was watching through the glass door hidden in the terrace, she was out the frame but in the scene. So again, she was there out the frame (the glass door) and the camera brings her in. There is the intention of exposing the character and its characteristics but hiding the meaning of character’s action.
To divide the shot in three areas from top to bottom, in the movie, the housemaid is often on the bottom of the scene representing her social status. Through out the movie, she was positioning on the ground or below knee level of sitting husband. However, when the film gradually reaches the climax, the angle of camera shooting has changed. When the housemaid finally took over the house and the social rank became upside down, there is shots often placing the housemaid on the top area and the couple on the bottom. This indicates that the power in the house is inverted from the couple to the housemaid.
Overall, the last scene was indicating frame narrative method. The jealous, psychopathic housemaid is gone in a second, but she still shows up bringing tea in. The beginning and the end connect smoothly but as an audience, it was quiet a shocking moment because all the spectacle moments were not true. Few hours later after watching the movie, I thought the director was being playful because at the end, the housemaid looked very innocent. Maybe that’s the reason why Kim Ki –Young is praised as a genius in Korean cinema.
The opening credits to “The Housemaid” was a medium-long shot of the family and then it zoomed in focusing on the string game, Cat’s Cradle, foreshadowing the never-ending complexity the family will soon face. The director used the off-screen sound of the piano as a foreshadowing device for the viewers. The piano pieces that were played during the beginning of the movie were brighter and lighter, but as the movie progressed and became darker, so did the pieces played. Another thing the director did to add to the suspense and development of the plot was abrupt scene changes. These abrupt scene changes seemed to be used to help show that time has passed during the movie because in one scene Mr. Kim and his housemaid had intercourse and the next scene was the housemaid showing signs of pregnancy. It left a lot of room for the viewers to fill in the blank themselves and try to figure out what happened.
Gender roles played a great part in the relationship dynamics that developed throughout the movie. The director used a lot of medium shots when showing the interactions between Mr. Kim and the women in his life. Majority of these shots helped portray women as submissive to this one man. Mrs. Kim, Ms. Cho and the housemaid were all practically at this man’s feet in majority of the scenes. The director also used medium-long shots when showing the housemaid’s obsessive behavior. An example is the scene of her standing outside the piano room in the rain staring into the room. This obsessive behavior is a way to show the high value and importance of Mr. Kim in her life – he is so important to her that she is willing to commit suicide just so she can be happy to have him by her side before they die.
From the movie "The Housemaid", the director Kim Ki-Young portrays social irrationality of that era through the destruction of Mr. Kim's family. Unlike many other women from that time, Mr.Kim's wife illustrates her desire toward money and wealth for the family. But the more she wants things, the more her family experiences destruction. For example, not only when the housemaid comes into the movie causing all the hardships within the family as Mr.Kim's wife wanted the bigger house, but also the wife gets to find out about her husband's betrayal after she acquired the television. Along with these factors, the housemaid's craving over Mr.Kim's love illustrate the consequences of excessive greediness in thematic matter.
Moreover, this movie sets overall dark and horror tone through several factors such as rat poison, piano, weather, and the stairs. The rat poison is the foreshadowing element where we can observe two similar scenes throughout the movie. The children of Mr. Kim were being suspicious of the housemaid handing out water to themselves which eventually was used as a revenge factor at the end for her dead baby. And this factor was highlighted by numerous close-up scenes. Additionally, the sound of unbalanced piano, heavy rain and the lightening builds up the dark mood especially from the turning point where Mr.Kim fell for the housemaid one night due to his sadness. Last but not least I think the stairs in the house play an important role as a transition or some kind of medium for division in the family.
In the beginning of this movie, Aesoon and Changsoon were playing the rope games together making intertwining patterns over and over again. I believe that those intertwining patterns actually indicate the complicated relations between main characters of this movie. To me, the key elements in this movie include the rat poison and the stairs. Rat poison is something that links the whole story. First, when the housemaid just entered the family, her cruelty was soon revealed by killing the rats without any hesitation. And Changsoon was killed indirectly by the rat poison. Also, the housemaid and Mr. Kim used the rat poison to kill themselves in the end of the movie. Hence, it seems that the rat poison served an important role in evoking fear and showing cruelty. Next, stair was the place that most of the conflicts happened, as the stairs could also represent the social classes. When a person is not satisfied with his/her given class, conflicts occur. As we can see in the film, the housemaid wanted to own Mr. Kim completely and did not consider herself in a lower class; she expressed her anger, envy, and agitation directly through the sound of piano like she did not care about what other people think. The desire to own Mr. Kim eventually led to their deaths; she believed that this was the only way to own him forever.
In addition to rat poison and stairs, there is another point I found very interesting: the dress. In the first half of the movie, the housemaid usually wore white dress or white tops; however, after she was pregnant and found herself have the ability to dominate the family, she started to wear black dress. The dress made her emotions extremely apparent to the audiences in this black-and –white movie. It is obvious that housemaids raised many social issues in the 1950s and the 1960s, as Mr. and Mrs. Kim talked about this kind of issues more than once in the movie. Director, Kim Ki-young, made it very clear that the whole story was meant to warn people about the possible consequences of giving into temptation. In the end of the film, Mr. Kim even talked to the audiences directly about this movie’s main theme. I was actually very surprised when I saw this since this kind of ending is very rare in contemporary movies.
Kim Ki-Young's “The Housemaid” is very over-the-top, especially by today's standards. The acting in the film is exaggerated, only pushed further by other factors, such as the dramatic music and camera techniques. To enhance this effect, shots start wide, often coming into a close up of one of the characters to show reactions and facial expressions. At these moments, the music crescendos to add to the extreme level of drama. Also, the camera will move, exposing someone outside a window or around a corner for a shocking effect. Characters are sometimes shown only in part, often without their faces, as hands or feet, usually when there is some sort of misdeed being carried out. The camera often captures characters by looking up at them from below, or down from the top of the staircase, which creates some definite tension. The housewife is shown literally above other characters, such as the wife, which is a way to represent the balance of power. Usually dressed in dark colors, as opposed to Mrs. Kim's white, traditional attire, she represents a very dark mentality as she maintains control over the family. This film is a good representation of how Western cultural ideals had spread into Korea, permeating daily life. Mr. and Mrs. Kim, perfect pictures of the middle class of the time, very concerned with matters of materialism. The family has problems paying their electric bill promptly and are forced to work all the time, which even takes a toll on Mrs. Kim's health. However, they have no problem upgrading to their two-story home and splurging on a television, making them “the richest family in the neighborhood”.
There are several important motifs that carry on throughout the film. Water is prevalent throughout, whether it be the rain splashing against the windows or drinking water poured into a glass, deceptively harmless. It sets the tone for many of the more intense scenes, such as the one where Kyung Hee confesses her love to Mr. Kim. As their disagreement develops inside, all you see of the housemaid is her feet outside the window in the storm. She reveals herself, dripping wet and makes her demands for Mr. Kim's affections. The window also acts as an important element, creating a sort of frame where one can see outside, or peer in on the madness happening inside. It relates a lot to what Mr. Kim mentioned about how squirrels continue to run around, despite being trapped in a cage. This is also important, as the story itself is set up as a frame, which is revealed with the strange conclusion. The director also uses the upstairs window as a tool to transition between the housemaid's room and the piano room, both very crucial to the events in the movie. The piano is one of the most significant symbols and, though it is not necessarily in the forefront, it is the source of trouble for everyone. It is what brings Kyung Hee into the house and, ultimately, the housemaid as well. The staircase is another important setting. Here, several confrontations occur and everybody that dies does so in this place, with the exception of Mr. Kim, who barely crawls down only to die next to his wife. In the end, she leaves Mr. Kim with no choice but to take his own life with her, using the rat poison that was seen throughout the entire movie. It is used by the characters to kill and manipulate, while foreshadowing the deaths of Mr. Kim and the housewife with those of the two rats at the beginning.
"Housemaid." The title itself doesn't give much clue about what the movie is going to be about. However, in the beginning of the movie, when the credits are being displayed, I was able to sense what this movie is going to be about. As the camera slowly moves closer and closer to the family, it passes a window with bar-like frames and also a wooden chair (also with horizontal bars) which reminded me of jail. It didn't stop here, the walls in the background had bar-like designs AND the children were playing a string game. Therefore, I sensed and guessed that this movie will probably be about being trapped. It's amazing how the beginning sequence can subtly give the audience a clue about what the film is going to be about -this family ends up being trapped by the crazy housemaid. The black and white film also had film noir elements such as the stairs, femme fatale, and the shadows. I specifically want to talk about this movie's femme fatale, the housemaid. A femme fatale "is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations." This wiki definition is very accurate to Mr. Kim's situation because as a married man, this handmaid seduces him to sleep with him. She ends up getting pregnant which leads to compromising (fall down the stairs to kill the baby inside), dangerous (housemaid uses rat poison to kill Mr. Kim's son; everyone gets violent), and deadly situations (stabbing, voluntarily drinking rat poison, suicide). One wrong keeps leading to another wrong.
In ‘Housemaid’, the scene begins with ideal morals of marriage and honour, with the wife representing honour by admonishing news of adultery. The husband, on the other hand, appears to be more accepting of adultery. This seems to have a sense of foreshadowing for the audience, preparing us for the future adultery that the husband commits.
Same locations with relatively strict compositions were also used throughout the movie, with each location representing different categories of people, and different values. For example, the old house appears to represent morals and honour, the new house crime and sin, and the classroom as societal expectations. It also appears ironic that the new place, which was meant to be built for joy, happiness, and ‘a better life’, becomes a place for sin and crime, not just for sexual crimes among adults, but also for arguments among the children. It also becomes a place of death, where both the housemaid’s unborn child and the wife’s son die.
The use of rats in the movie symbolizes dirt and shame, which was portrayed by the housemaid, where her actions appear convulsed like a rat. Her entry to the household, then, appears to symbolize the degradation of honour, which was to be replaced by dirt and shame. A sense of foreshadowing was also presented when the wife became startled by the rat, seemingly symbolising the start of Mr Kim’s adultery.
There thus appears to be a juxtaposition of honour and dirt and shame as well, with honour being symbolized by the wife and the old house, while dirt and shame becomes symbolized by the new house and the comparison of the housemaid to rats.
The shot of the housemaid convulsing on the stairs after falling down the stairs is also contrasted with the image of the dying rats after they had eaten the poisonous rice. It appears that like the rats, the housemaid was going to meet her death as well. However, a reversal of power takes place instead, disrupting the balance of power between the characters.
This theme of power and control was symbolized by cigarettes. Cigarettes were initially used to control the housemaid when she was in a lowly rat-like status. In the later part of the movie, however, when Mr Kim was forced to sleep with her every night, cigarettes were brought to him instead, symbolizing the shift of power – Mr Kim was being controlled by the housemaid. This is in contrast to the beginning, when Mr Kim offered the cigarettes to the housemaid.
Sexual connotations were also portrayed in the movie during shots of Mr Kim teaching Ms Cho the piano. There were many hints of intimacy between the two of them. However, Mr Kim was not able to express his sexual interest, but could instead only express intimacy in the next shot with his wife. These alternate shots of restrained intimacy and expressed intimacy changes however, when the housemaid claims possession of Mr Kim. During Ms Cho’s last piano lesson, the housemaid used to knife to injure Ms Cho, where the knife seemingly symbolizes the cutting off of the love tangle between Mr Kim and Ms Cho.
The break-up of a family was also portrayed in the middle of movie, when Mr Kim’s family comes back after their trip and where the housemaid threatens to tell Mr Kim’s wife about this betrayal. Here, the quality of the movie becomes choppy; shots appear chopped up and disconnected. As with the break-ups in this movie, this seems to demonstrate the break-up of a family as well.
The Housemaid directed by Kim Ki-young in 1960, shows and criticizes the 50s and 60s conservative middle class family. Mr. Kim Dong Sik who is a music teacher represents the conservative father of the 50s. When he receives kind of love letter from Ms. Kwak Sun Young who working at textile factory, he reports this to dorm inspector. She suspends for three days and goes back to her home and Ms. Cho Kyung hee who likes Mr. Kim comes to Mr. Kim’s house to learn piano. From that time the films shows Mr. Kim’s changes and ruin their family because of these seductions. The movie starts with a happy family with two children and Mr. Kim Dong Sik and his wife. This is because to compare the family after they hired a housemaid at the end. In the film they show lots of scenes with stairs. When Ms. Cho who is worker and Mr. Kim who is rich going up to do piano lesson, it represents her desire to elevate her life when she got his love. However, it also shows collapse of their life. Such as a son of Mr. Kim fall down the stairs after he drinks rat poison and housemaid also fall down when Mr. Kim’s wife knows all about her pregnant. At the end of the film, Mr. Kim gives some advices to the viewers. It is not usual in nowadays movie so it was interesting.
In ‘The Housemaid’, various objects were employed as important symbols to convey and represent the movie’s core ideas and themes. Rats, for instance, were a central symbol in the movie. The importance of rats was shown through several close-ups in the movie, such as when the housemaid lifted one up by her bare hands and when they struggled for life after eating the poisoned rice. Rats are considered as a dirty, harmful and sometimes eerie pest in households. These characteristics seem to also describe how the housemaid was to the Kim’s family. Recalling the first appearance of a rat in the movie in the kitchen’s cabinet, where it startled Mrs. Kim to the point that she almost fainted and had to stay in bed for days, I think the rat somehow has a symbolic connection to the housemaid and foreshadows the traumatic events that her entry to the house brought to the family. On the other hand, it can also be seen to resemble the Kim’s family. The housemaid’s first deed when she came to the family was catching and killing a rat, just like how she gripped the Kim’s family later in the movie. Similar to how she killed the rat, she killed the young boy using rat poison and committed suicide with Mr. Kim using rat poison as well.
The eerie tone of the movie was established using techniques such as close-ups and the use of dramatic music. A close-up or a medium close-up given to the housemaid’s face outside the window almost always startled the audience, accentuating the uneasy and creepy feeling of the movie. The bad weather and the sound of thunder also help in building up tension and anxiety. Most importantly, I think the sound of thunder not only serve as a building element to the atmosphere, but also as a moral judgment and showed how unforgiving the events were. For example, when the housemaid drank the poison with Mr. Kim and their hands held together, there was a very loud sound of thunder at that moment, almost like an angry sound from the heaven.
A review about the movie suggests that the story aroused thoughts of westernization in the Korean community in 1960s and how this took a toll on the traditional moral standard and value of the society. The Kim’s house was fully decorated in western style. There were actually several close-ups to decorative objects that depict such style, such as the doll on the side table in the master bedroom. Piano seems to be a symbol of status. Mr. Kim would not allow the housemaid to touch the piano yet she insisted and kept on playing it. It seems to suggest that Mr. Kim was drawing a line between his class and the housemaid’s class while the housemaid constantly tried to cross the line.
The ending of the movie was extremely unexpected, showing that all the unnerving events did not really happen to the family. However, the ending does tie up with the occasional humor and peculiar feeling throughout the movie. Mr. Kim’s direct address to the audience seems to provide a comic relief to the tension and uneasiness that the movie created and the return to the opening scene draws a full circle for the story.
Individuals perpetually desire for ideal lives and establish various courses of actions in pursuing happiness. Korean society has promoted the value of equality where people can enjoy their rights over various aspects of society as sovereign subjects regardless of class and gender. Unlike Confucianism-based tradition that stresses hierarchy through oppression and unequal distribution of resources, Korean society has envisioned an ideal society where everyone can equally pursue their happiness. During the course of modernization, the boom for industrialization enhanced and the aspects of the people’s struggles were also vividly visualized. As clearly reflected in the film “The Housemaid”, contemporary standard of happiness was confined into a socio-economically stable life without knowing what their genuine ideals desire. Moreover it was significantly notable to see an uncomfortable coexistence of inequality and stability that deeply lies in the dominant notion of society
Desires for class mobility crucially encourage individuals to exert their passion and enhance their strivings. Mr. Kim accomplished his dream of having his own house where his family can happily live in without concerns. His family clearly visualizes an ideal aspect of middle class family that has socio-economic stability and a desirable standard of happiness in the contemporary society. Such aspects are also enhanced through the elements such as a two-story house, a piano, and a housemaid. In spite of the strivings for class mobility, the housemaid critically plays a key role in not only disrupting a pursuit of happiness of an ordinary middle class family, but also visualizing the inequality a powerless female housemaid has to confront, which is especially portrayed in the scene where the housemaid aborts her child. The aspect the emergence of her child was undesirably not accepted whereas Mrs. Kim’s new child is born in encouragement and happiness dramatically visualizes her unequal access of entry into the mainstream society. Furthermore, portrayal of the struggles of the protagonists is vividly enhanced with the cinematic effects and filming techniques. Firstly camera focus on settings of two spaces, a factory filled with numerous female workers and a wealthy house of a happy middle class family effectively represents the contrasts of the two different socio-economic classes. Such repetitive focus reminds the audience of aspects of not only the contemporary strivings, but also class differentiation. Furthermore, dramatic sound effects embedded in the scenes where the housemaid holds a knife and a rat dies of poison crucially contribute to suggesting a misfortune to be brought upon the family of Mr. Kim (Housemaid eventually stabs Kyunghee and rat poison crucially contributes to tragic setting of Mr. Kim’s family). Lastly, the camera technique such as close-ups on certain objects such as the glass of water offers its significance as a metaphor for the tragic death of Changsoon. As reflected in the assertion of Mr. Kim toward his wife, “All you want is money”, the dominant conceptualization of happiness (that stresses economic stability) not only generates familial disruption, but also enhances inequality, which is portrayed through the polarization of gender and class differentiation.
The Korean black and white 1960’s film directed by Ki-young Kim, The Housemaid, centers on a music teacher and how his family is put into a disastrous downfall by the involvement of a housemaid. Despite the seemingly straightforward premise, the director is able to create tension and shocking scenes through some dreary aesthetics and camera shots ranging from close-ups to long takes.
The opening credits give the audience its first taste of what type of movie The Housemaid is. It involves one camera angle filming two children playing a game taking turns knotting string between their fingers. Other films may usually show their opening credits cutting through various scenes focusing on a character, or pan through scenery. However, unlike other films, Kim creates a shot that is over minute watching the designs of the string showing the complexity and discord that will ensue. The length of the credits forces the viewers to watch the take for just that long, which will build up suspense waiting for the next cut to the next scene. Along with this, the font and transitions of the credits bleed or drip in and out as if from a horror film. Both the credits presentation and the long take of the string in the opening credits plays to the director’s ability to create some tension and discomfort before the movie really even begins.
Another scene that makes use of a long take in order to build up suspense revolves around the abortion of the housemaid’s child. Here, the camera shot shows a medium close-up of the husband and wife in the foreground with the wife reassuring the husband while the housemaid can still be seen from the waist down in the background at the top of the stairs. The scene proceeds for over 30 seconds and tracks backwards following the spouses into the next room while the wife closes the two sliding doors in order to shield her, her husband, as well as the audience’s eyes from what will happen. Just like the opening, the length of the scene is suspenseful in that it forces the viewers to wait. Then, the camera slowly closes in on the wife as she waits to hear a loud scream and crash. Each tracking shot and the hidden view of the housemaid add to the tension and eventual release giving off the shocking outcome of the take.
Finally, there are multiple times where sudden cuts to a close up of a character’s face accompanied with dissonant chords of music. The most prevalent include the housemaid at the balcony looking in through the window. These abrupt shots may be considered more associated with horror a film which in turn makes The Housemaid seem like one at times. The unpleasing imagery in the opening credits and the variety of suspenseful takes throughout The Housemaid creates a compelling film from straightforward events.
Despite of the ludicrous reception of Housemaid by people today, the movie is strikingly sophisticated and complex at the time of 1960. Thus, this movie is a significant work to be discussed thoroughly. The work is a compilation of dark themes, symbols, and unique techniques of camera angles, as well as the development of characters.
Each character in this movie has his or her own inner conflict, which eventually complicates the relationship between other characters. For example, Miss Cho uses her friend and her desire to learn the piano as an excuse to gain sympathy and favor to get close to him. Her patience explodes and threatens the teacher to accept her love. Another well-developed character is the wife, who is a perfect model of a traditional wife who cares for her husband and her kids. On another level, however, her greed for materiality (bigger house, a maid) shows through her actions and words of seduction to her husband. She is a loving mother and wife, but she is also cold-hearted to be securing only her family’s auspicious reputation despite of her loss of husband and her son. Perhaps the wife is powerless and hopeless to be confronting the maid directly, who is already engulfed in rage and despair for the loss of her child.
Many symbols are apparent in this movie. The emergence of the rat is a crucial part of the movie because the use of the rat poison becomes the main player in creating a climax to the movie. The wife has a dream of a rice bowl drenched in rat poison with one rat already dead and another in the vicinity. The scene leaves a strong impression even after the movie because of its powerful visual and foreboding connection to two scenes: the scenes of two children on the stairs (the teacher’s son and the still-born baby) and the death scenes of the maid and the music teacher. The piano is also symbolic because the music seems to portray the psychological state of the characters. Miss Cho takes patient steps as she approaches the music teacher, as she learns how to play step by step. The maid never made any music, only dissonant sounds. The piano expresses the ugly and twisted tantrum of the maid, who will never create a sound, harmonic relationship with the teacher.
The film is very distinctly Korean because of the visuals and the cultural references. The fashion style of wife and the maid contrasts greatly, creating the balance of the good and the evil. The wife dresses in white Hanbok, showing that she is Korea’s ideal housewife, who is true to fidelity. The maid dresses in tight black dress showing her figure, personifying her dark, lustful mind, or Heuk-shim. Scenes of bad omen can be taken as cultural allusions. During the thunderstorms, lighting sparks a fire on a tree, forecasting a striking turn point in the movie. The maid drops and breaks a dish, and the daughter’s squirrel she received from her father dies. These scenes of omen are undoubtedly universal, but they stand out as they reflect traditional Korean culture of taking superstitions very seriously. Along with the elements of Korean culture, the movie reminds the viewers a similar approach used in Hollywood movies. The dramatic shots with the camera quickly zooming into a close shot paired up with the dramatic sound effects allude to scene storm western movies especially Hollywood, like Psycho (1960). Perhaps, Korean slang, "Hollywood action," meaning exaggerated expressions in a dramatic or action scene in a movie originated from such scenes.
This thriller movie “housemaid” by Kim Ki-young, old Korean traditional movie, It is a story about a crazy housemaid who ruined a whole Mr. Kim’s family life and finally led to commit suicide because of obsession about Mr. Kim. At first, her behavior was simply obsession about Mr. Kim but later turned to greed and jealous of everything such as a husband, house and baby and so on. This movie in general deals with the power of desire. Desire for living in bigger house triggered hiring the housemaid and eventually led to a hideous situation. Without greed, Mr. Kim’s family could live happily together. Moreover, I believe that the director Kim Ki-young highlights no one can reject irresistible greed by expressing Mr. Kim as a man who is a fairly pure man. But he also could not resist by greed. In this movie, piano plays a significant role as a source of greed. When housemaid saw that Mr. Kim was teaching piano to another girl, she felt extreme anger and this jealousy made her being crazy. Heavy deficit by buying piano led to teach piano to the girl to earn money was the starting point of death of housemaid, Mr. Kim and his son’s in the end. The piano also was used in uplifting of atmosphere in the movie. Another thing I want to mention is a rat poison. It was used in method of killing person. It symbolizes how violent people are in an extreme situation. The housemaid worked off her anger by killing Mr. Kim’s son, using rat poison. Mrs. Kim also poured it in housemaid’s soup, trying to kill her. Whether good person or bad person, in an extreme situation, they become violent and sordid. Last thing I want to consider is nightmare. One day, Mrs. Kim had a nightmare. In her dream, there were two dead mice looked like human face. It foreshadowed death of housemaid and Mr. Kim. I thought it was interesting. Overall, the director wanted to send the message that no one can resist greed and people become abominable in an extreme situation.
The housemaid is the first black-and-white film I have seen. Surely, it is the oldest film I have seen. The main male character 'Dong-sik' is a music teacher in a factory who support his family. As his family moves to bigger house, they hire a housemaid. However, he has a sexual relationship with the housemaid and make her pragnant. Therefore, Dong-sik and his wife make the housemaid cause abortion. After abortion, the housemaid becomes crazy, obsesses to Donng-sik, and finally threats the family. One his mistake makes a big tragedy.
In this film, Dong-sik's family represents the middle class which made success and pursue bigger wealth. He and his wife constantly seek happiness and comfortability. I think a old-fashioned factory and wife's part-time job shows the reality of the era the film created. A mysterious opening music, artificial set of house, unnormal acts of children makes the film's atmosphere heavy and dark. Also, I felt that the sound of a sewing machine which is constantly working with the housmaid's obsession reflects the confused society of 1960 in Korea.
After screening, many people laughed. It can be seen a strange movie because of a funny ending, ridiculous story, and exaggerated characters. But, I think many parts of movie actually 'meant' something. Dong-sik makes big mistake and does very unmoral thing and trys to hide his fault with his wife's help. Their actions make the housemaid unhappy and be miserable. The only reason they trys to hide his fault is for their own comfortability. They worked hard for a long time and seems that they almose get to thiere goal, happiness, the wealth. As the housemaid obsesses to Dong-sik, They also obsesses the comfortability. So, they cannot take any action against the housemaid's unnormal request. I think this film shows the family's efforts for better life in 1960 of Korea. For better life, a man can destroy the lower level's woman and the man's wife can help her husband. There is not morality in the era of this film. The innocence of morality causes a tragedy. The film's last comment of Dong-sik also meant the era which the story like this can not be understood. I think this film reflects the period which middle class's people pursue the wealth, heavy, confused society.
Won Jae Chang In the film, “The Housemaid”, the director, Kim Ki-Young, has adopted an expressionist style in which image and sound, as well as acting styles, are exaggerated and distorted in order to create an emotional effect. There are few outdoor scenes and most of the scenes primarily took place inside two stairs house and music class room at factory. First floor represents the middle class area where Kim’s family live in. Second floor represents the low labour women area. Therefore, the stair between first and second floor can be seen as border of social level. After housemaid gains major power, she has kept staying on second floor and commanding Kim to stay with her. At the beginning of the scene, Kim’s finds the rat poison bottle. The camera focused on this bottle which indicates the next future scene. The director has used lighting effect to show the actor’s face to be darker because the lights are set on the wall and usually stood behind the actors. Due to the contrast of brightness, the house and characters look more mysterious and fearful. After the Kim and housemaid have sexual relationship, the lighting (thunder) suddenly show up and this lighting effect was used as a sign of tragic event that can easily be understand by the audience. The director also has used sound effect to make the film more horrific. These background sounds are used at serious scene so, the audience can possibly feel fearful or surprise. For example, the director has used loud and horrific sound at the scene where the rat was dying due to poison.
Melody Chi 7-8-13 YISS, Summer 2013 Korean Cinema Prof. Steven Chung Movie Response #1: The Housemaid
In The Housemaid, the positioning of objects in a frame becomes crucial as the movie progresses, because it signal that Mr. Kim is losing both the audience’s sympathies and his superior position in the household, while his housemaid is gaining control over the family. For instance, the day after Mr. Kim has sex with the maid, he stares himself down in a mirror. Mr. Kim can perhaps initially be seen as being the subject in control of the scene, as he is the only subject in the frame and is also positioned in the center foreground in comparison to the mirror and other objects in the scene’s background. However, it becomes clear that Mr. Kim’s status as both the one in control of his household and a character that the audience can sympathize with is deteriorating. For example, in the scene, Mr. Kim’s back is to the camera, while his reflection is what the audience can fully view. The fact that Mr. Kim is turned away from the camera (and thus the audience) signals that the audience is losing their sympathetic viewpoint of Mr. Kim; while previously the audience was encouraged to support Mr. Kim when he was being a devoted husband, father, and teacher, the watcher is now withdrawing their positive viewpoint. In fact, that the audience can only see Mr. Kim’s face through the reflection in the mirror symbolizes how the audience is scrutinizing and judging Mr. Kim for his betrayal, as he himself is doing in this scene.
This idea that Mr. Kim is beginning to cede control over his household is emphasized when the housemaid intrudes into the scene from the bottom of the frame. First, this unconventional introduction from the bottom of the frame gives the audience (or at least, me) the impression that the housemaid is a threatening predator encroaching on its prey (in this case, Mr. Kim); this implication obviously promotes the housemaid as more powerful and more in control. In addition, when she is introduced into the frame, she is positioned very clearly in the foreground, and she is portrayed with a close up camera shot. The housemaid thus seizes the role as the main subject and relegates Mr. Kim to the background, a less powerful position. Her prominent positioning in the frame (as a subject in the foreground who completely blocks Mr. Kim from the audience’s sight) parallels the beginning of her domination over Mr. Kim, and through him, his entire household.
The main theme of the movie, “the Housemaid”, I believe, is jealousy: jealousy of the music student, the housemaid, and the wife of the music teacher. The jealousy of music student is completely hidden behind the scene. She pretends that she is a nice girl who is kind to the children and the wife of the music teacher. However, she is actually the one who slyly devises a way to completely destroy the life of music teacher after his refusal of her love. The jealousy of the housemaid ends up with obsession, revenge, and even death. Her obsession of “possessing” the music teacher, however, does the exact opposite of what she wants. Uncontrollable anger leads her to commit a murder of a child of the music teacher, in revenge of the miscarried baby who was purposely killed by the wife.
It was certainly not a pleasant movie. This movie was full of disastrous events: an affair, attempts of murder, and suicide. Through “the Housemaid”, the director, Kim Ki-Young, revealed that the human nature is evil. Characters continuously and frankly express their emotions that belong to the evil side. Although, in the beginning of the movie, the music teacher and his wife were pictured as if they were roll models of not only the best couples but also the best parents. However, the director exposed bits and pieces of evilness in each character. For example, human nature of looking down on people who have disabilities is well illustrated when the younger brother makes fun of the older sister for not being able to walk freely.
The major themes in this movie are love becoming obsession and the importance of trust. Mr. Kim's wife says she will always be beside her husband even if he committed robbery or even worst murdered a person. However she feels disgusted and cannot forgive her husband immediately when she hears that he slept with another woman. This could be because their love and trust was great and she fully believed that she was the one and only woman to her husband. Since the trust is broken in their relationship, all the bad happenings in the house continues on. Could you call the housemaid's love towards Mr. Kim a 'real love'? At first, the housemaid started having interest in Mr. Kim because of the jealousy towards her co-worker learing piano to Mr. Kim. The housemaid says that she does not want to be considered below her and wants to be better than her. Jealousy was the main reason to the start of her obsession. As time passes, the housemaid realizes that she was used as a one time enjoyment by Mr. Kim and there was no space for her to fit into this family. This leads to her trying to take over the place of Mr. Kim's wife and break their relationsip. Lonelines, betrayal and anger made her to take such horrible acts such as putting Mr. Kim's children in danger to gain Mr. Kim. However, in the end, even when she decides to die together with Mr. Kim, Mr. Kim leaves to die beside his wife. Begging to stay with her did not stop Mr. Kim from being beside his real love. From the beginnng until the end, housemand was alone. Convetting what is not hers and being obsessed about did not find her happiness but actually brought misery to her life. Since the movie is made well before, the flow from one scene to the next had some oddness and was not as smooth as the movies made now. There was a lot of exaggeration to the acting by all actors, and in my opinion this was because the whole movie takes place in one setting, Mr. Kim's house, and in order to show all the emotions and intensity of the scenes, exaggerated acting and also the catching sounds of background music was used.
In the movie "Housemaid," the main theme of the movie was love; that once was trust, excitement, and hope that later turned to obsession, jealousy, and death. It was a little bit obvious to hear many foreshadows in the movie, like the news on the newspaper in the beginning, closed up focused camera shots of rat poison, etc. The movie started off with this pure love towards Mr. Kim from various women. The first woman was Mr. Kim's wife who worked very hard to support Mr. Kim and to accomplish his/her dream of getting bigger house, having more luxuries, and stuff. She was very submissive to her husband and they both loved each other dearly. The second love was from this woman from work who gets kicked out from the factory because she wrote love letter to Mr. Kim whom was a music teacher/already married man. The third love was another woman from the factory who was the laid off woman's friend who tried to earn Mr. Kim's heart quietly by bringing cookies to his children and learning piano at his house. However, her quiet love turned to a violent petition which led Mr. Kim to abuse her and to kick her out from the house. She later on covers Mr. Kim's wrong doings because she still loved him. The last and the most violent love was his housemaid's love toward him. She tried hard to earn Mr. Kim's attention and interest at first which led her to feel jealous towards his wife and the woman from the factory that again led her to act violently towards them that later on hurt the woman and killed Mr. Kim. The most scary thing about the housemaid was that she never felt guilty about anything but she still felt lonely and sad. When she killed that rat at first, it showed that she was not scared or feeling anything towards killing something. This showed that her ego was not controlling her, which later got her to kill the little boy, attempt to kill her friend from the factory, and killed both Mr. Kim and herself, because she was not getting what she wanted--Mr. Kim's love.
I think this movie have done a great job specifying the social and cultural aspects of people in Korea in the earlier years where social class was divided. Also, the overall feeling of the movie was dark and moody; the director did very good job using the light source and the camera using. The light was always in a perfect position to show the shadows on both on actor's faces and in the house which made the whole atmosphere to look sad and horrific. The camera focused and had a long shots when it was showing the important elements of the movie, like rat poison, piano, water, cigarette, etc. that symbolized obsessed love turning into a great destruction.
When I first saw The Housemaid today in class, I was just stunned. The movie is such a dark and twisted melodramatic film that I did not even imagine existed during the 1960s. However, thinking again, Korea was a very conservative country back then, and it still is although a lot less now. During that period, people wouldn’t dare go on an affair with another person because they would be “scarred” for life or looked bad upon the community. The film perfectly depicts the concept of fear as of being “branded” as an offender of adultery. In one example, it was so absurd when the housemaid killed Mr. Kim’s son, Changhoon , and Mr and Mrs Kim did not even report it to the authorities. Instead, they agreed to the housemaid’s proposal of having Mr Kim sleep with her at night in exchange for not exposing the adultery committed by Mr. Kim. This incident would have probably been too exaggerating even during that period but I think the director really wanted to clearly point out that adultery was an absolute sin and that people would do anything to prevent it from being exposed to the public. Ultimately, this film is surely the most twisted and mind-fucking black and white film I have ever seen, yet the film is so uniquely and superbly directed.
Although the film itself is disturbing and twisted, it is nevertheless perfectly directed by Kim Ki-Young , who does a stunning job constructing the melodrama film with the proper props and styling. For example, Kim Ki-Young adds the perfect background music whenever disturbance is shown in the scenes. The background music is very ideal, which sort of seems like the genre is rather a complete horror film instead of a mixture of both horror and melodrama. Another example of Kim Ki-Young’s superior directing is the props used in the film. First, the house of Mr. Kim’s shown in the film is equivalent to a haunted house. It’s made out of wood that makes creaking sounds when walked on and house is very dark with just a bit of lightings added to it. The rat poison is also a symbolic prop Kim Ki-Young uses throughout the film. In the very beginning of the film, the rat poison is shown to the audience immediately before the audience is aware of any disturbance yet to happen. The rat poison really emphasizes that the story will become extremely dark. In the end of the film, Kim Ki-Young intelligently finishes off and compensates for the twisted plot shown to the audience by revealing the whole story was a “what if…” with Mr. Kim giving the audience a lecture or lesson learned from whole story. I believe this finishing was an essential part of the film because it relieves the audience of such pain and disturbance.
In this movie "housemaid", the main theme in my opinion was money, trust, and love. It portrays the significant conflict between relationship and status in the society. Mr. Kim and his wife clearly can take the maid to the police station. But they cannot because they understand that doing so will bring their social status down (losing his job and criticism from the society). Thus, they cannot do anything against it. This in a sense portrays the capitalistic society where fame and money is significantly valued. Another instance where we can catch this is the housemaid's action. The housemaid does not seem to have "true" love for Mr. Kim. But rather wants stable lifestyle but also from jealousy of her co-worker who was learning piano from Mr. Kim. Instead of striving to have a stable life herself, she takes the easy out by deceiving and murdering the family members of Mr. Kim. This again, portrays how the social status is so significant for these citizens. It is hard to spot true love in this story. Even the Wife has strong desire for stable life. She has been Mr. Kim's wife for so long, but when she faces the threat of the maid which can potentially ruin the family's fame, she just listens to what the housemaid says and just lets Mr. Kim sleep with her. If her "true love" was strong enough, there is no way that she will accept this. To conclude, I saw a strong conflict between "true love" and "Social status"
Actually I only saw Sang-Soo Im’s “Housemaid” that is Do-Yeon Jeon acted in 2010. Ki-Young Kim was well-known movie director who was good at psychological description and melodramatic scary movie. He was usually focused on female actor’s psychological description. He made unusual and unique movie at that time. in 1960, when he was be a movie director, his works were not be recognized as much as nowadays.
The movie “Housemaid” was played in enclosed space as suspense movie that is hero’s house. His house has 1st floor, 2nd floor and stairs. Each rooms and stairs are place that moving plot and took on overtone of story. In 1st floor, wife who is substantive household has sewing machine and also living room is in 1st floor. Director located sewing machine in 1st floor so we can understand actual power in family members. In 2nd floor, husband’s working space and “Piano” is in it. 2nd floor is more closed place because of stairs. 1st floor showed a desire of harmonious family but 2nd floor showed human nature’s pure instinct and all events happened. Stair’s meant “Death”. Ki-Young Kim gave a sensation of fear to audience by rat. Rat gave a sensation of fear and important role in movie. First I saw this movie in class, a monochrome film and dubbing’s awkward was little bit funny but after rat came, several kinds of directing skills and equipments made me fell into this movie. In movie, there were not violent and heady scenes. Only rat made us feel scary.
Actually “Housemaid” also showed reality of society at that time. He criticized society in that period. Housemaid wanted to move a step up in a society and he showed that desire. He wanted to describe how society’s vertical structure was unconditional. Main conflict of this movie was wife’s desire of save family and housemaid’s desire to move step up in society’s clash. Even though housemaid was trigger of events but director didn’t describe housemaid as weak in directly. Because all characters are incompleteness objects in movie.
The Housemaid (1960) by Kim Ki-Young, is the oldest film I have ever seen. Because the movie was filmed fifty years ago, the way people talk in the movie or how the movie is established can be out of style, so the movie didn’t seem interesting at first. However, as the movie expands on its storyline, I felt that the movie was very interesting, and the content of the movie could have been very sensational back in time. The movie depicts a family’s destruction by the introduction of a housemaid who sexually misbehaves.
In the movie, the contrast between Mrs. Kim and the housewife is very clear. Mrs. Kim, the wife of Mr. Kim who is a music teacher at a factory is a traditional Koran housewife. She talks very calm, and wears a traditional Korean costume, Hanbok. She gets afraid of the rat, and depicted as a delicate woman. In contrast, the housewife is like a seductive femme fatale. She doesn’t get scared by the rat, catches rat with her hands, smokes, and etc. Housewife is represented as abnormal woman which can be very controversial especially in the 1960s in Korea. Also, even when Mrs. Kim gets informed the housewife is pregnant with Mr. Kim, the housewife doesn’t get kicked out of the house. Instead, housewife presses Mr. Kim and Mrs. Kim and becomes the authoritative one in the family.
Rat is an important factor throughout the movie. It not only contrasts Mrs. Kim and the housewife (Mrs. Kim depicted as a feminine woman when she gets scared of the rat and housewife catches the rat with her hand), but it is also used as a foreshadow throughout the movie. It constructs the creepiness and a sense of fear. Along with the rat, rat poison also foreshadows the destruction of the family. Rat poison plays a big role in the movie like when housewife attempts to fool Changsoon when she lies about how she put rat poison in the water, or when Mrs. Kim tries to kill the housewife by putting rat poison into the soup.
While watching the movie, I wondered about one character appearing in the beginning of the movie; Kwak. When thinking about the movie’s main storyline; introduction of the housemaid in Mr. Kim’s family and the destruction of his family, I wonder about Kwak’s presence in the movie because her existence and the fact that she sends the love letter to Mr. Kim doesn’t seem that relevant with the movie’s plot. Other than this and some minor movie effects (which can be explained since the movie was filmed in the 1960s), the movie has very sensational plot which makes the movie to be known as a prominent Korean classic thriller.
This movie "housemaid" contained the meaning that one fault can make disasters. In this move, i could see some skills of camera Basically, zoom in and out was main skills and long shots too. However, i could see some interesting skills such as focusing out when the mr. Kim tried to kill the housemaid. The camera showed the points of view of housemaid and represented the moments that her vision becoming unclear or blurry. Also, at some point zooming in to one object or a part of the body was effectvely showed to me.
One thing that i realize in this movie was the society of past and today is similar. People who earn more money get higher authority. Also, there are no limit in love even at that time the men and women's social status was totally different. However, one thing that i couldn't understand was the behavior of housemaid. She killed a person to revenge and she did everything to get mr.kim's love. However, in the first of the film, she only needs the money. It means, she choose the love instead of the money and do horrible things that is not related with any authority or wealthy.
In the last of the film, mr.kim said whatch out the woman if you don't want to ruin your life or family. According to mr.kim, there is a still gap between women's social status and men's social status because he tried to say the message of the movie to only men not women. However, interesting thing is, in the movie, there were some differences between men and women but men was gentle and women had the authority in their home. Thus, i could feel the director tried to reduce the gap between the men and women social status through the movie
The movie 'housemaid ' shows how young housemaid destroys happy family’s life. Since the movie was taken more than 50 years ago, it has some interesting points such as inflexible Korean background and old movie style (limited way of portraying ideas) that they have to do in 1960's It is interesting that movie has an inflexible Korean background in 1960's. In the first part of movie, Miss Kwak gets a suspension, just because she sent a love letter to his music teacher and he thought it was unethical. According to the film, love is something a person should be in shame and should be hidden. The movie shows problem of capitalism, money. Even though housemaid killed the son, they don't call the cop because wife doesn't want her husband-teacher losing his job from the factory. It seems like the money is important than anything here. I think it is similar with today's problem like the last movie we watched, 'Cast Away’; Mr. Kim tried to suicide because of the financial issues. In the end of the movie, it has a very shocking reversal, which summarizes the whole story as a novel that wife reads and the husband give advice to audience. I don't know it is a style of 1960's movie or just some random part placed just to quickly end the film. It is funny that the movie has very unique style; very different from many movies I’ve seen. This movie is my first Korean black and white movie that has non- natural acting accent. The way to show actor’s thoughts was interesting. Some parts were taken literally just like when Miss Cho reads out her letter to let the audience know what it is about. Also kiss scene and bed scenes were taken out. I know it is not illegal to portray such images in 1960's but it bothers me to focus movie since those scenes were chopped off from the film even if the scenes makes sense without what’s taken out. The funniest part was when the housemaid kiss the teacher, she grabbed her hair first to block her mouth to and fake kiss with him. But even if movie was old and had some weird parts, I still liked the movie because it had lesson that we can still understand today.
With an intense and penetrating introduction, the beginning of the movie gives the audience an immediate presumption that the movie will fall under the category of a horror and thriller movie. The combination of the intensifying background music and the exaggerated camera zoom-ins on the character’s faces when they talk creates a powerful aura to the viewers. Throughout the movie, the audience is exposed to the suspense and fear of how a Korean middle-class family is intruded by a daunting housemaid. As the housemaid smokes cigarettes (unlike many women around the 1960s), grabs a rat by its tail, and even becomes a murderer, she is portrayed as a sexually predatory femme fatale. Later on in the movie, as the housemaid threatens and becomes superior, the audience can easily find out that greed is a central and significant theme of the movie. Not only the housemaid, but also the other characters are also portrayed to be greedy: Miss Cho who convinces her friend to confess her love to the music teacher so she can be aware of how he would react and the music teacher’s wife who wanted to live in a bigger house.
From the beginning to the end of the film, rat poison serves to be a significant part of the movie. For example, many of the characters die due to consuming rat poison. During the 1960s (when the movie was filmed), rats served to be a big problem in Korea. Therefore, rat is a symbolism of trouble and distress. For example, when the music teacher’s wife first encounters a rat in the cabinet, the scene is very dramatic. A little later during the film, as the housemaid grabs the rat by its tail, the scene is again very dramatic. In the end of the movie, the music teacher turns to the camera and says that this kind of situation can happen to anyone. As sort of a moral lesson, the viewer can interpret the ending as a way of telling men to avoid all temptations. The way the character smiles and turns to the camera, I found it a little sarcastic and comical.
After watching Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid, two reoccurring themes persist throughout the film. The first theme is quite explicit and explores the role of gender while the second theme is slightly more implicit and explores the imprisonment by socioeconomic status. The theme that explores the role of gender can be examined best through examination of the three main characters, the father, the mother, and the housemaid. The father is portrayed as a financial provider, a stoic man who does not stray from his morals (which can be seen by the way he reacts to the love letter given to him by a young factory worker). The mother on the other hand is portrayed as a housekeeper who obeys her husband. It seems as though the director wants to illustrate to the audience their own belief about correct roles for different genders in order to provide commentary on possible problems of creating gender roles. He does this through the use of the housemaid. Although the father is the epitome of what women think of a good husband (strong morals) should be like, he falls victim so easily to the young housemaid. I believe the director is trying to say that by putting so much trust into men’s morals is dangerous because after all men are all the same (the ending scene). In addition the director provides criticism for creating a gender role for the wife. Because the wife wants to have a happy family and be a good wife she asks her husband for a larger house (probably due to the soon to be born third child). However because of the larger house she needs a housemaid in order to help take care of the household chores, which leads to the husband’s affair.
The second theme is more implicit and examines the idea of imprisonment through socioeconomic status. Because the family is earning more money they are able to afford a larger house and other luxuries such as the television and the housemaid. The yearning for these luxuries can be viewed as what causes the family to eventually fall apart (like Biggie Smalls said almost 40 years later, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems).
The Housemaid speaks to several different relevant themes in the 1960s. The ending especially, when the main character directly addresses the viewer saying how men need to be careful as they get older, makes it seem almost like a cautionary tale for men. This paints women as a danger to men, and throughout the movie, through the use of intense close up shots of the maid, she does indeed seem a very dangerous character.
This also speaks to the changing roles of women during this time period. The fact that a woman is depicted as having the power to take a stable and devoted family and tear it apart in such a way could be a statement about shifting gender roles. The maid starts out as a mere employee, and a delinquent one at that (addicted to smoking and depicted as less than bright). But she uses her youth and sexuality to control not only the husband, but the wife too in the end.
These could be seen as contradicting points, one showing the dangers of women gaining power, the other warning men to control themselves as young women are only "pieces of meat". Somehow these two work together in the context of the movie to create a very twisted and dark story where the blame could be placed anywhere.
Elements that derive from the movie "The Housemaid" can be interpreted in several different ways. Even so, the mise en scene of each scene, the shooting styles used, and the effects used throughout the movie depict a more general theme of the importance of pride and the switching of gender roles.
The mise en scene is how everything is placed in each shot, from the interior decor to where the actors/actresses are standing. In "The Housemaid," the placement of the interior decor in the Kim's household was quite complex and not the norm. This shows that the placement of the objects themselves represent the complexity of the household members themselves.
The camera angles and types of shots also contributed to the mood of the movie, which was dark and expressive. Several extreme closeups occurred in the movie to show the heightened emotions and reactions of each character to add to the themes mentioned. For example, the importance of pride is depicted as the Mother does not want the maid to turn herself in, so there are several closeups of her face to show the panic she has. The use of music and sound was a key effect used in this film. The music played alongside with camera angle and shots to create even more expression as well as to get a certain emotional response from the audience whether it be a sense of thrill, pity, or perhaps anger.
The Housemaid (1960) by Kim Ki-Young, is the oldest film I have ever seen. Because the movie was filmed fifty years ago, the way people talk in the movie or how the movie is established can be out of style, so the movie didn’t seem interesting at first. However, as the movie expands on its storyline, I felt that the movie was very interesting, and the content of the movie could have been very sensational back in time. The movie depicts a family’s destruction by the introduction of a housemaid who sexually misbehaves.
In the movie, the contrast between Mrs. Kim and the housewife is very clear. Mrs. Kim, the wife of Mr. Kim who is a music teacher at a factory is a traditional Koran housewife. She talks very calm, and wears a traditional Korean costume, Hanbok. She gets afraid of the rat, and depicted as a delicate woman. In contrast, the housewife is like a seductive femme fatale. She doesn’t get scared by the rat, catches rat with her hands, smokes, and etc. Housewife is represented as abnormal woman which can be very controversial especially in the 1960s in Korea. Also, even when Mrs. Kim gets informed the housewife is pregnant with Mr. Kim, the housewife doesn’t get kicked out of the house. Instead, housewife presses Mr. Kim and Mrs. Kim and becomes the authoritative one in the family.
Rat is an important factor throughout the movie. It not only contrasts Mrs. Kim and the housewife (Mrs. Kim depicted as a feminine woman when she gets scared of the rat and housewife catches the rat with her hand), but it is also used as a foreshadow throughout the movie. It constructs the creepiness and a sense of fear. Along with the rat, rat poison also foreshadows the destruction of the family. Rat poison plays a big role in the movie like when housewife attempts to fool Changsoon when she lies about how she put rat poison in the water, or when Mrs. Kim tries to kill the housewife by putting rat poison into the soup.
While watching the movie, I wondered about one character appearing in the beginning of the movie; Kwak. When thinking about the movie’s main storyline; introduction of the housemaid in Mr. Kim’s family and the destruction of his family, I wonder about Kwak’s presence in the movie because her existence and the fact that she sends the love letter to Mr. Kim doesn’t seem that relevant with the movie’s plot. Other than this and some minor movie effects (which can be explained since the movie was filmed in the 1960s), the movie has very sensational plot which makes the movie to be known as a prominent Korean classic thriller.
sorry I made a mistake by posting someone else's post (wrong copy/paste). Here's my response.
I was surprised how sensational this movie was and could not believe this film was made fifty years ago in Korea. As I was watching this film, I focused on how women (housemaid, female factory workers, and wife) are portrayed throughout this movie. This film was made and published during the 1950s which was the time period where roles of two genders were clearly segregated. Husband was considered as the 'outside person' whose main responsibility is to bring income for his family. On the other hand, wife was regarded as the 'inside person' whose chief responsibility was to take care of the children and the household. Invading roles of different gender was an unthinkable act. Due to the strong image of a father and husband as a bread maker, many husbands and fathers in the houses had the final, and many wives had to live under the shadow of their husbands.
However, industrialization took place in the patriarchal society, and it has brought extensive structural change in the Korean economy and transformed Korea into a modern capitalist nation in 1960s. Thousands of young women started to work in the factories, taking a share of economic responsibility of their husbands. This led to drastic change of role of women from docile housewives into active, confident people whom now have right to let their thoughts be known and opinions be heard, as they now support their family financially as well.
I think director Ki-Young Kim is trying to portray the changing image and role of women during 1960s, in contrast to 1950s. He carried out this task by portraying Dong-sik's wife as the bread maker of the family who does sewing work to supplement most of their income while Dong-Sik fails to support his family. More importantly, the housemaid is depicted as somewhat violent, greedy, and fearless person. She fearlessly lures Dong-Sik who is the man of the house that she works under. And when she aborts her child due to the wife’s act, she revenges by killing the son of Dong-Sik. Through these frightening deeds of Dong-Sik’s wife and the housemaid, director Ki-Young Kim emphasizes that women are not to be ignored and left out, but their thoughts and voices need to be heard and respected, as they are also people with feelings and desires. These fierce and violent images of women were juxtaposed with portrayal of Dong-Sik as a weak-hearted man who is so fragile in front of temptation from the housemaid. And, at the end of the film, Dong-Sik commits suicide with the housemaid, and this shows again how a man of the house can become powerless in front of housemaid’s presence.
The movie, The Housemaid (1960), by Kim Ki Young was a movie that seems to be influenced a lot by the black comedy and noir style movies prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. The story theme was quite simple. It shows how infidelity can cause a problem and how that problem can lead to serious circumstances like dominos. It really depicts the Korean society at that time when at the ending scene we see the man Dongsik faces the camera and tell the audience that how infidelity is bad and how it can lead to serious problems. It is highly understandable considering how conservative it was in that time period. Such a movie like this is a phenomenon itself and therefore the movie had to tell the audience to not get influenced by such media. The movie also contains a lot of the atmosphere as well as social perception of that time as we can see how the wife and the housemaid acts. The wife lets the housemaid to have the authority in the house which shows how much she cares about not only Dongsiks career to maintain but also about the family's reputation. In that period in Korea "infidelity" was considered as a scarlet letter and when people know about it, their life couldnt function in an ordinary way.
Technique wise, there were many moving shots. Unlike many earlier black and white films that had still shots more, this movie has a high mobility in its scenes. Many tracking shots were made when the housemaid was walking outside on the veranda. Since the shots are made outside the window, it is special when it rains. Wecan see the rain drops along with the interior of the house. In the movie the staircase is an object that has a huge meaning. It is a pathway that separates Dongsik's family and his privacy. Also, it is where most of the death occurred. The most interesting scene was when the housemaid gains power for not accusing the infidelity to the police. She drags Dongsik to the staircase to come to her bed. She talks to the wife while the wife is bowing to her to do whatever she wants. The camera is shot from the housemaid and it looks down on the wife. The staircase in this sense can also mean going up the social ladder or gaining authority.
Overall the film is very extreme in its story plot whereas it was very delicate in details. It was a shock when the story ends up like a dream, but it was a great movie.
Bo Lee
ReplyDeleteThe movie seems to revolve around the theme of greed. The story starts out with an innocent love that was manipulated by Miss Cho. Miss Cho was the one that used a young innocent girl in to confessing her feelings to the music teacher to see how the music teacher would react to the situation. Miss Cho had greed and because of greed, her main objective in the movie was to get close to the music teacher and ultimately confess her love to him. The story then continues with the wife being greedy of living in a better house. Her greed for a bigger house leads to the hiring of the housemaid. If they had stayed in a smaller home, then they could have managed their lifestyle, but because the wife was so busy working, a housemaid was a simple option. Once the housemaid came in to the house, she became greedy of what the wife had: a husband, children, a house, etc. It first started out as obsession, but later turned to greed.
One of the key elements in the film was the rate poison. It appeared in many scenes throughout the movie and I wondered why the child thought that the housemaid put rat poison in the water the first time he asked for it. I guess it was a form of foreshadow to show that it would happen further in the movie. The rat poison was also strange how it wasn’t used until the housewife entered the kitchen for the first time. When the father first introduced the rat poison to the children, he just explained to them what it was and didn’t actually use it. A question that I thought to myself was about the husband. I wondered why all 4 of these women had love, interest, desire, lust, etc. for this character. Then I thought that the character of the husband was maybe the quintessential first love a woman can have. Also, he had the image of a loving father and husband which possibly added to his appeal as a man. His character was very interesting because in the beginning, when he received the love letter, he acted in the proper way by “reporting” it to the headmaster. This made me think that he was a man who knew what was right and wrong. But later when he spends the night with the housemaid, he still knows that his actions are wrong, but still stayed with the housemaid. The director maybe wanted to send the message that men are also the victim in those situations or that the women is at fault for seducing a married man.
Hae Jung, Min
ReplyDeleteThe movie "Housemaid" has several main characters who carry on the story. Dongsik, a good-looking piano teacher at a factory gets a housemaid introduced by one of his students, Miss Cho, who is later revealed to have fallen in love with him, but gets rejected. The major conflict in Dongsik's family starts when the housemaid enters the home, and Dongsik sleeping with her when his wife leaves home for vacation. This not only breaks the peace within the family, but also leads to the death of the housemaid's unborn baby, Dongsik's son Changsoon, and both Dongsik and the housemaid. Throughout the movie, there are certain factors that help the interpretation of the movie: 3 focused items: rat poison, piano and the stairs, and the background music.
By using close-up technique, the importance of rat poison in the movie is implied throughout the whole movie. It not only kills the rats, but also results in killing Changsoon, the maid and Dongsik. The use of rat poison in killing people was warned at the beginning of the movie, in the wife's dream, in which the dead rats had a face of people. Second item, the piano, is considered as the core reason of conflict throughout the movie. It is used as the means that brings Miss Cho into the house and connects the housemaid and Dongsik's family. Additionally, the use of the piano room as a background of the seduction of the housemaid represents the piano as the core origin of conflict. The last focused item is the stairs, which are used as a background of 1) death and 2) representation of the hierarchy. Not only the death of the maid's unborn child occurs on the stairs, but also Changsoon falls down, and it is the place where the maid dies and tries to hold Dongsik's legs to keep him with her. Not only are the staris used to show the death, but it is also used in representing the hierarchy of the characters. It is not just the steepness of the stairs that symbolizes the hierarchy, but the camera angle when filming the stairs also shos the chanaged hierarchy of the maid. When the maid did not have any power and was doing choirs, middle shot was used, while when the maid had the power and was controlling everyone's behavior, low-angle shot was used, aggrandizing the maid, and making us feel that she has the authority.
In addition to these items that were focused, there were other components that affected the plot and the audiences' perception of the movie. By using intense background music and the maid's loud piano sound, audiences were able to anticipate that something bad was going to happen, and intensified the interpretation of certain scenes.
Through these different components such as camera angle, focused items, and background music, the movie was able to share the story to the audiences in a much more realistic way and help concentrating in the plot for the whole duration.
TINA KIM
ReplyDeleteCamera Position and Objects to Express Feelings-The Housemaid
In the Housemaid, there were many objects that were used to express the character’s emotions. For instance, the mirror in the scene of where the camera is focused on Kim Jun-kyu and his reflection in the mirror represented his feelings of shame. Mr. Kim can be seen looking into the mirror only to cover his face and this can be seen by the reflection of the mirror. The mirror expresses Mr. Kim’s feelings by not being able to look at himself after cheating on his wife. The rat poison is another object which is used in many scenes to express desperation, a source of escapism, and also hatred. The position of the camera, which was shooting the movie from outside or inside of the house, was unique in expressing the character’s feelings.
In this discussion, I will focus on the usage of the window frame to help express the character’s feelings. The camera shot the video with the characters either inside or outside of an area through the windows. This helps express the character’s feelings of either being an outsider or being trapped. In the scene where Kim Jin-kyu was intimately teaching Miss Cho how to play the piano and where his housemaid was looking from outside of the windows reveals how she felt out casted from the house and from Mr. Kim. Another scene where she is about to commit suicide with Mr. Kim is shot with her inside of the house with Mr. Kim. This shows that she is part of the household and with Mr. Kim. For Mr. Kim, he is feeling trapped with this woman in his own house! There were also several scenes taken by the camera where Mr. Kim is alone behind the window screen looking lost and miserable. In the scene where he was inside of the bus ready to go to his son’s funeral, the camera was positioned with only him inside of the bus and included the sides of the bus windows which created a prison for him. This again helps express Mr. Kim’s feelings of being trapped by the housemaid. The window frames increased the effect of his feeling of confinement by the housemaid. After, the housemaid forced an abortion with Mr. Kim’s child; the camera took a shot of her through the windows of her room. She is inside of the house but is confined. This scene shows her feelings of lost, remorse, and the feeling of nowhere to go. She was pregnant with a married man and murdered her own child. She is much like a criminal and victim at the same time behind these “bars”. There were also shots of the wife where she was sewing nonstop. Again, the shot was taken with the window frame in between. The wife felt trapped because of her need to keep her husband’s scandal a secret in order for him to keep his job. She is also under the control of the housemaid and she had no way out because she realizes that they need money for their children and for their new house.
Ji Hee Lee
ReplyDeleteIn this thriller movie "Housemaid", the image of happy looking middle class family begins to fall apart when the young housemaid comes into the house. Although they wish to live in a bigger house, both wife and husband are too busy making money, they needed help with housekeeping. Unlike what husband said about "housemaid" in the very beginning of the film, this new girl shows irregular behavior like smoking or catching a rat with bare hands.
(the class differentiation shown in the behaviors somewhat reminded me of Eliza Doolittle in the beginning of "My Fair Lady")
The housemaid seemed to envy Miss Cho getting piano lessons and continuously show eager to learn piano with her agitating piano sound. Similar to Eliza Doolittle, education becomes the key to ascent of social status. The housemaid eventually seduces the husband, have his baby, thinking she could become part of his family. The husband couldn't handle the guilt and tell his wife about his mistake and the wife makes the housemaid to abort her baby. The housemaid goes mad when she feels rejected, she starts to threaten the family to tell other people. The wife and husband tries hard to keep this secret but the husband ends up drinking the rat poison with the housemaid.
I thought it was very interesting to see how the wife seemed to be more troubled and afraid of other finding out about their situation, loosing job(incapability), than her husbands' betrayal. It was also interesting to see changes made in the role of "housemaid" later in the film.
Kevin Gunnels
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid.
Greed. This movie centers around greed. Greed for money, people, things. The movie is used to show that greed can corrupt even the purest of people. The music teacher was portrayed as a very pure person. Yet even he was not free from the power of greed. Despite all his efforts to remain pure, even he collapsed. Ultimately it is all traced back to the greed of the wife. It is shown in the constant shots focusing on her sewing as a second job of hers. She displays more greed by asking for the second house, and asking the music teacher to perform piano lessons. This introduced the character Miss Chocolate who wanted nothing but love from the piano teacher. She was so greedy that she pushed her friend to also fall for him and get suspended from work. This caused her to leave the company from shame and eventually die/commit suicide. The greed of the wife also brought in the Housemaid. The Housemaid is the one eh o eventually tempted the music teacher enough to corrupt him. The ultimate reaction to this movie is shown at the end where I the characters are pulled back to a reality where it is known that it was only a possible story and not the actual one. They point out and use this story to show that non one is immune from greed and if the situation is right anyone can crack.
In “The Housemaid,” the director, Kim Ki-Young, utilized many cinematic effects to portray the dramatic, thriller/horror tone found throughout the entire film, in the end creating a lasting feeling of uneasiness and gripping terror within the audience.
ReplyDeleteOne way the director established this tone was by panning from the piano parlor to the housemaid’s room from the balcony. Often shooting through the glass panels, this method of transitioning from one room to another showed how the housemaid was able to control multiple areas of the house. Through the balcony, she was able to gain access to the piano parlor, popping out of nowhere, ultimately creating a sense of fear in not only the family members, but the audience as well. This aspect contributes to the horror feel of the film. Moreover, this kind of panning shot gives the audience a new perspective on the actual size of the house, which is actually much smaller than what the audience initially perceives it to be. This new angle and frame gives the sense of a cramped and prison-like house, which is exactly what is becomes for the family when the behavior of the housemaid becomes even more erratic, controlling, and obsessive. Thus, the panels on the balcony doors represent the bars in prison cells, in which the family is trapped.
Another cinematic effect that was used throughout the movie was the numerous upward shots of the dark staircase. The focus on the staircase acted as a foreshadowing of what was ultimately to come. The staircase eventually became a symbol of death and destruction as the setting of both the son and the housemaid’s deaths as well as where Miss Cho’s almost death took place. The wife and the children are usually downstairs while all the death, betrayal, deceit, and manipulation takes place upstairs. Often panning from the first floor of the house upwards toward the stairs, the director creates a feeling of uneasiness as the focus of the usually high-tension scene becomes more up-close in the view of the audience. In this way, an upwards shot from the stairs represents getting closer to destruction and terror. An example of this is during Miss Cho and the husband’s fight. As he threatens her by pointing out he could kill her by simply pushing her off the ledge, the camera pans from the bottom of the stairs up towards the two characters. By doing this, the director makes the audience really feel the high intensity and emotions being enacted by the actors. Another example of this kind of shot is when the housemaid is convinced by the wife to throw herself down the stairs in order to induce an abortion. Before she does it, the camera pans up towards the housemaid, providing a close-up to her face. Even before anything happens, the audience can feel the tension rising, knowing something terrible is about to happen. In these ways, the stairwell became the director’s ominous symbol throughout the movie for all things shocking, dramatic, and destructive.
Kelsey Savoy
ReplyDeleteKim Ki-young’s 1960 film, The Housemaid, chronicles the unsettling collapse of an upper-middle class Korean family. The film opens with an almost ‘Kodak Moment’ shot of the family in perfect domestic bliss: the children are in the foreground playing games, the wife is in middle ground sewing, and the husband is reading the local newspaper in the background. The balance of this shot is disrupted as the camera moves in on the husband and wife from the outside window as if the audience is viewing the family from a voyeuristic intruder’s perspective. The picturesque view of the family is further disjointed as an extreme close up depicts the older sister and younger brother’s cat’s cradle game. The repeated tangling and weaving of the string while the credits roll foreshadows the incoming “tangling” of their precious household by the ultimate intruder by which the film is entitled: the housemaid.
This theme of intrusion is perpetuated throughout the film. As the husband and his piano student, Miss Cho, practice piano, the housemaid views the pair from the same window as the beginning scene. She peers into the room longingly and the camera follows her eyesight almost implicating the audience’s own eavesdropping. When the housemaid seduces the husband, the audience once again views the scene from the outside of the window into the room. Rats have invaded the family’s new home and constantly terrorize the frail wife and daughter causing them to never feel at ease in their own home. Close-up shots of closing and opening doors continue throughout the film reflecting this theme of private space and enclosure illustrating the literal boundaries of the family’s domestic space. The housemaid is the ultimate invader because she has not only encroached physically into the family’s home but she has disrupted the balance of the private sphere of domestic life.
The Housemaid was released in 1960, a time in Korea where occupation by the Japanese has ended a little more than a decade earlier and “penetration” by foreign countries, like the U.S., is still very present (Bruce Cumings, KPS). The Korean people’s lingering anxiety of intrusion and destruction by an outside source is very literally represented within this Hitchcockian thriller with voyeuristic camera movements and disturbingly close up shots of minute details.
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ReplyDeleteSangbin Park
ReplyDeleteResponse: The Housemaid
The Housemaid starts with an intense and somewhat horrifying music that immediately captures the audience’s attention. The music almost suggests the audience of introduction to a horror or a monster movie. As the title of the movie shows, the movie could be mistaken for a ghost or a mysterious story as the word “housemaid” is a term that arouses eccentric feelings. These assumptions are quickly vanished as the story progresses. Throughout the movie, the usage of the settings was very limited. There were two main settings: the house of Dong-Sik (the teacher) and the music classroom in the factory. Most of the movies important scenes occur within those two settings. This is almost as if the director wanted to show the narrowness of the characters’ perceptive of the world through the limited settings. Even within those settings, the camera did not capture a large area of the surrounding space. In other words, the long shots and the extreme long shots were almost nonexistent. There were only a few long shots of a train used to signify the passage of time or change in scenes. Medium shots were commonly used minimizing any appearance of unnecessary objects in the shots. Close-up shots were used in instances to emphasize a moment or object like rat poison. The common usage of medium shots shows the directors effort to concentrate the audience’s attention on the characters and their behaviors and words. It seemed that the director relied heavily on the actors to convey the messages of the movie.
The movie was shocking and unfamiliar to me. The fast escalation of the problems were somewhat rough to understand and awkward. However, the movie surprises the audience with the themes it holds that are reflective of the Korean culture at the time. Introduced in 1960, the movie was premiered only seven years after the ceasefire of the Korean War. Thus, the movie was introduced to the public who were suffering from social, economic, and political problems prominent at the time. In a sense, Dong-Sik (the teacher)’s wife’s obsession with material goods and economic stability is understandable and representative of the struggles of many Koreans who worked tirelessly for economic wealthy in pursuit of happiness. To many people, economic stability meant happiness. Perhaps, Dong-Sik and his wife’s decision to not to escalate their son’s death to the police and obey their housemaid in concern of losing Dong-Sik’s job was probably agreeable to the audience back then. Their decision may seem absurd to many of the audience today, but the devastated economy and poverty that characterized Korea during 1960’s would have given a different perspective to the audience. Furthermore, I found that the movie contained fantasies and idealism of the society. Dong-Sik’s unshakable love of his wife and his wife’s strong mindset to protect her family from economic instability at all cost were all seemingly driven by fantasy and idealistic views of the Korean society. Moreover, the movie portrays the greed of the people. For example, the housemaid wanted to possess Dong-Sik all by herself and unveiled her greed of him through drinking rat poison with him. In addition, Dong-Sik’s and his wife’s greed were shown through their obsession to materialism. His wife’s obsession was apparent as she worked the sewing machine restlessly to afford more materials. Dong-Sik’s obsession with materialism was revealed in extremity when he told Ms. Cho to keep coming back for piano lessons even after her confession to him so that, he can pay for his newborn son.
The conclusion of the movie left me disturbed. While a movie made in today’s society would have ended at the scene where Dong-Sik died nearby his wife, The Housemaid ended with a scene that almost seemed like a professor lecturing his students on the topic of moral. It gave me an impression that the story of the movie was quiet shocking at the time and the director saw a need to make a different approach for an easy consumption of the movie by the public, a conservative society.
Kimberly Thach
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid takes place in the 1960s or 70s. During this time period, the appearance and the idea of being successful or wealthy are important for the people, especially the middle class. This living style has been influenced by the Americans.
Mr. Kim, the music teacher at the local female factory, and his wife consistently talk about improving their home and the lives of their children. The both of them are constantly working to earn more cash to buy material luxuries for a comfortable living style. From the start of the movie, we learned how Mr. Kim’s family is preparing for a move into a two-story house. They used to rent places to stay from other homeowners, which made them move around often. Now, they are the owners of their own house. Also, after the purchase of a piano, Mr. Kim advertises private piano lessons to his music class and openly tells his students that his family needed the money. Furthermore, when the newly purchased TV arrived, the daughter exclaims how their family is the only one that has a TV in the neighborhood. The house, piano, and TV all symbolize how the Kims are the richest in their neighborhood and how material goods represent wealth.
In addition, another sign showing whether or not a family is wealthy is the ability to hire a housemaid or a servant. However, having a housemaid around the house can create some fear for the family, especially for the wife, because of the sex temptation. As the movie progress, we were able to see Mr. Kim’s idea of the affair story between the businessman and maid that was read from the newspaper at the start. Only after the story was told did we realize “it was all a dream.” Mr. Kim’s laugh and explanation about man’s behavior and temptation at the end reveal that sex is the least of the worries for middle class families considering having a maid around the house.
Most, if not all, of the scenes in this movie primarily took place in two locations: inside the teacher’s house, and inside the classroom. I noticed that the director used many of the same techniques when filming different scenes that all take place inside the classroom. First, the camera focuses on the window; then, it zooms out so that the frame captures the teacher on his piano and all the women in his classroom. This repetitive image portrays the women functioning as a single unit whether they are singing or even when they share thoughts/opinions about their teacher after Kwan’s death. There were also several medium shots of Cho next to another woman that usually accompanied these classroom situated scenes. This is done to remind the audience that Cho (I think that’s her name) plays an important role in this film: it is Cho’s love for the teacher that causes those around her to suffer. Her best friend Kwan had passed away and Cho tore the teacher’s family apart by introducing him to a housemaid she thought she could trust.
ReplyDeleteOne scene in particular, after the teacher confesses to his wife about impregnating the housemaid, had a dramatic impact in establishing the wife’s character. At first the wife is shocked with disbelief about her husband’s disloyalty, but within seconds she turns around (motivated camera movement) and says she’ll handle the situation. She exits the door and the camera shoots a low angle shot of the wife walking up the stairs to talk to the housemaid. The music that accompanied the transition between these two shots reveals to the audience how much family means to her and how she’s willing to do something as humiliating as getting down on her knees and begging the maid in order to salvage her family. I feel that this scene strips her husband of his masculinity as the wife’s strong will and determination to act on his behalf to resolve the problem (convincing the maid to have an abortion).
Esther Oh
ReplyDeleteIn The Housemaid, different techniques are used to emphasize the thriller aspect of the film. Although it is not a horror movie filled with ghosts and demons, film technique were used to bring shock and emphasize certain points. One of the most obvious methods to emphasize the thriller part was the use of music. The use of eerie music was used to dramatize and foreshadow certain scenes. When the housemaid held the knife, dramatic music was cued to let viewers know that something bad was going to happen. There was also dramatic music when the rat died to foreshadow that rat poison would be an important part of the film.
Another technique used was the use of camera distance from certain subjects. This highlighted what the audience should focus on during that particular scene. The camera would often start close-up on a certain character or object and then show the whole setting relative to that focus. In one scene, the camera focused on in the glass of water that the housemaid said had rat poison in it to show the importance of that glass of water. The focus on the glass of water made the audience focus on that glass of water and see the significance of that water in the plot of the story.
The use of different scene lengths created focus. Certain scenes such as the rats dying and close-ups on the housemaid stood out to me more than the longer scenes. The short and sudden close-ups of the housemaid’s face were used to instill surprise and catch the audience off guard. The plot twist at the end was also unexpected as it goes back to the beginning scene, revealing that the whole movie was not actually reality.
Andrew Song
ReplyDeleteThe film, the Housemaid, starts with well living main character Dongsik, who teaches how to play piano to factory women. He becomes to be seduced by a filthy housemaid and eventually suicides with her. In general, a housemaid, in terms of social role, is supposed to devote herself to her job and the family she serves, or somewhat in socially low status, but in this film the housemaid plays as a murderer and a life threatening character with her ambition. I was shocked about the fact that this movie was produced in 1960 when people still hold Korean traditional conservative point of view. Also the plot of this movie, especially the way the women is portrayed, is very sensational, considering the time period.
In my opinion, social mobility is an important theme in this film. In this time period, two-story house was just brought up to the wealthy people from western countries. Building a such house shows the social mobility of people in the period. In the movie, there are many scenes to show the stair of the house. As physically going up the stair, the desire to socially go up is shown as a metaphor of the characters’ greed. The stair becomes the place where tragic death happens. Changsoon, a little son of Dongsik, falls down the stair and dies. Also the housemaid loses her baby by falling down. By setting the stair as the background of these deaths, the director implied bright and dark side of the social mobility. In addition, rat poison is an important device of murder. The subject of killing is supposed to be a rat, which is tiny and powerless. In this movie, the housemaid threats Changsoon and her sister to poison them. When killing rats with the poison, the housemaid becomes almost almighty god, since she can control a life or a death. Actually the housemaid does not have any power or money, but she fulfills her desire to become powerful by having the poison on her hand. Eventually, the rat poison kills herself and Dongsik who has been having an inappropriate affair with her.
Yunhwa Choi
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid (1960), as we can see from its title, is the story about what happens after a woman works as a housemaid in Mr. Kim’s house. As she enters Mr.Kim’s house, the destruction of one happy family begins. Several factors help interpreting this movie: rats and rat poison, stairs, and the door of balcony.
In the movie, from the beginning to the end, rats and rat poison often show up because they are important factors that form tensions and fear of the movie. Unlike any other characters, the housemaid is the only character who is not afraid of rats, even holding them with hands. Especially, her behavior is contrasted with Mr.Kim’s wife, who fears of rats, and the difference in their attitudes toward rats forecast the conflict between two women. Rat poisons, not only kill the rats, but they also can kill the people. In the characters’ lines, there are several warnings that the poison can kill the people, and this actually happens. The son of Mr.Kim dies by falling, as he is astonished by the fear that the housemaid gave him poisoned water, and both the housemaid and Mr.Kim kill themselves by drinking the rat poison. Moreover, mostly, the story takes place in Mr.Kim’s house, which is composed of two levels. On the first level, there are living room and sewing machine that Mr.Kim’s wife uses. On the second level, there is a room where the piano Mr.Kim plays is, and this place is important in the movie in that the starting point of main event happens there. Stairs connect those two levels, and in my opinion, as two characters, Mr.Kim’s young son and the housemaid die at the stairs, stairs also symbolize the place of death. Additionally, there is another important place in this house: the balcony and its door. There are quite many thrilling scenes that the housemaid peeped through the glass-door of the balcony into the room where the piano is. She watches Miss Cho’s taking piano lesson from Mr.Kim, and becomes that she wants to learn to play piano as well. When she peeps through the door of balcony, audience feels like being the housemaid herself watching what is going on in the room.
Michelle Kim
ReplyDeleteForeshadowing throughout the movie was quite explicit. For example, when the family moves to a new, big house, rats become a new issue, an issue that they have never faced before when they were not so wealthy. The sudden appearance of the rats is the cause of the collapse of Dongsik’s wife and a problem for every family member. Dongsik shows a rat poison, which is the most important and recurring theme of the movie, for the first time to his children and explicitly says that this poison can not only kill rats but people. Also, the camera shows a close-up from above of mice painfully dying after eating the poison and right afterwards shows Dongsik’s wife screaming and waking up from a nightmare. These scenes foreshadow that moving to a big, new house will bring an unseen problem to the family and that a rat poison will be a solution to terminate the problem. Later, when the housemaid goes to Dongsik’s house for the first time, she kills the rat, and we know that now the rat of the house, or a new problem to the family, is the housemaid.
The camerawork of the movie seemed sophisticated. When there is a scene of Dongsik and the housemaid, happening at the second floor of the house, it was not taken as separate shots but as one, uncut shot. For example, when the housemaid lures Dongsik from the piano room, which symbolizes his connection to the women who falls in love with him, and takes him to her room, the camera follows their movement. Also, after learning the pregnancy of the housemaid, Dongsik heads to a bar and haves a drink with his mentor. Dongsik, who values his family the most, is shocked by his mentor’s opinion about the adultery and takes a taxi to go home. His confusion and mental struggle are shown in the screen as a blurry, shaking front window view of the taxi.
The movie begins with the main character Dongsik and his wife talking about the adultery with a housemaid and ends with Dongsik teaching the audience a lesson not to commit adultery. This frame narrative structure of the movie and the way Dongsik directly points at and speaks to the audience were unnatural and unfamiliar to the contemporary audience. I wondered why the director chose to use such methods to present the story. The Korean audience at the time the movie was made was much more conservative and closed than today. The director Kim might have believed that the plot is way too shocking and controversial for the audience and could have chosen the frame narrative in order to soothe the shock of the audience.
Grace Chang
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid portrays complicated relationships that revolve around Dong-Sik and his piano; Dong-Sik values his piano as one of the most important properties in his household, but his piano ends up to be the central object that attracted "rats", causing a chaotic breakdown of his family. The director Kim Ki-Young blends in some metaphorical factors in the film and notifies the audience that the main characters are all rats trapped in a house. The father gives his disabled daughter a squirrel as a present to encourage her to continuously try to walk and develop her leg muscles. The housemaid who first captures a rat by her hand was told to use the rat poison from now on, so she scoops plain, white rice from the rice cooker on a plate and pours the poison on top of it. The rat food seems no different from what Dong-Sik’s family (human beings) eats regularly, which reminds the audience that the entire household is being compared with the mischievous rats.
While Dong-Sik fails to protect his family due to his sexual greed, Dong-Sik's materialistic wife gets crushed by her greed in properties. When Dong-Sik confesses to her that he had a secret love affair with a woman, she thinks that his secret lover is a worker from the factory and immediately tells Dong-Sik that it would have been better to hear that Dong-Sik is dead. However, when Dong-Sik admits that he shared love with the housemaid, she becomes calm and soothes her anger. Her sudden change in emotion might have occurred because (1) the housemaid is someone whom she can persuade and control under her force or (2) the fact that Dong-Sik would not lose his job as the music teacher in the factory since the workers would not know about this incident. She regrets later on by saying that it was her mistake that they got a new house. Lastly, the housemaid has both Dong-Sik and his wife’s characteristics as she wants to win over materialistic success and Dong-Sik. She ends up treating Dong-Sik as one of her properties.
Although the film itself is rather provocative if we consider the time period and Korea's cultural aspect in 1960, the audience could sense the atmosphere of Korea back in the days throughout the settings, background, and the gender role. Dong-Sik is the main bread-earner, the patriarchal figure who has to support his family especially in a financial aspect while his wife portrays the traditional house wife who stays at home and does a side work to support the family. All the workers in the factory were women, which indicate women’s role in society and their limited chances of getting white collar jobs. Becoming a housemaid was another option that provided food, shelter, and money, and it may have sounded attractive to young women in their 20s.
Alice Kwon
ReplyDeleteAs my peers have mentioned above greed and rat poison were central themes/aspects of the film. Another point of interest was the concept of the wheel/moving as indicated by the squirrel's running and the whirring of the sewing machine. I related this point to the extent that one action led to a series of uncontrollable events.
I found it extremeley interesting how conflicted and complicated Mr. Kim's character was. On one hand his qualities had single-handedly brought on the attraction of three women. His role of provider, handsome music teacher, caring father encapsulated classic patriarchal ideals; these were also the qualities that made the women go to extreme lengths to earn his affection and carry out their loyalty. However there exists a certain disparity between this masculine image of Mr. Kim. He increasingly relies on his wife to defend him from the housemaid. Having revealed his infidelity, he retreated to hide behind his wife's decision making and judgement to deal with the matter at hand. Ultimately, he succumbs to the insistence of the housemaid and commits suicide by rat poison. Mr. Kim seemed to lack the authority to make his own decisions, albeit the severity of the situation.
The film moves at an incredible pace. The Kims do not even have time to mourn the loss of their first son before things continue to escalate. As such I felt the film left little room for proper digestion and recovery.
However, greed is an overwhelming theme throughout the film. It is the root of all the conflicts within the film. Moving to a bigger house, seeking a housemaid, etc.
Milee Lyoo
ReplyDeleteThe housemaid shows a grotesque and horrifying depiction of a woman and result of one’s affair.
In the film, the director portrays how woman can be extremely obsessive towards another, and how woman can turn out to be a fearful creature regardless of femininity.
Through out the movie, Mr. Kim faces three women who all love him, but fail to be loved by him.
First one is Kwak, who eventually dies after she was suffered from not being loved by Mr. Kim. Second woman is Kyunghee who was the one trying to get close to Mr. Kim through Kwak and piano lessons. Thirdly, the housemaid loves Mr. Kim thus, her love becomes way too obsessive, and cruel which makes her poison Mr. Kim’s son and threaten his family and his wife. All the moves, facial expression, gestures, and behaviors such as standing outside the veranda staring inside the room, weirdly peeking onto Mr. Kim when he’s playing the piano, and making a dissonance sounds by smashing the piano all creates the housemaid’s image of weirdness, abnormality, and insanity. Because of the housemaid who repeatedly threatens Mr. Kim’s family, his family had to live with fear and horror. All that horrifying situations were derived from Mr. Kim’s fault at one short moment.
The object that caught my eye from the beginning of the movie till the end was the rat poison.
The first scene that shows a rat and rat poison was when Mr. Kim’s wife found a rat on their kitchen shelf and fainted; after that scene, there was a quick close up framed scene of rats died from the poison. Whenever the rat poison was shown in the frame, the soundtrack shifts into the fast beat, dissonant notes, and sometimes there are thunders and lightening sounds that creates the mood of horror. From my point of view, the scene of rats died from the poison shows the intent of what will happen in the future. Later on in the movie, Kim’s son, Changsoon, Mr.Kim and housemaid all dies by the rat poison. The director may or may not intended, but the scene of Mr. Kim’s wife dreaming about dead rats lying on the kitchen floor matches with what had happened later on in the movie.
Although the technical aspects were not highlighted in the movie, the pace of the film moves very quickly, and the plot was very intriguing to stay focused though out the whole film.
At the end, when Mr. Kim speaks to the audience was another scene that I had never expected when watching the movie.
Response to The Housemaid (1960)
ReplyDeleteTo me The Housemaid is hard to predict the next scene compare to other movies. Some movies are very easy to read through what’s going to happen in next couple of scenes because the intention of producers or directors will eventually reach that point. I think the reason why it is such a hard to read the consequences is because the character “housemaid” is unpredictable even though she is not hiding anything behind the scene. So, I have developed my analysis based on the camera movements and the housemaid’s standing location where the camera is following.
The audiences happen to follow the camera. In my perspective, The Housemaid has more than just objective view of the characters. The camera movements seem to be a viewfinder for the audiences but it has certain intention of tracking the scenes more than representing the watcher. For instance, the very first scene, camera is showing the piano teacher and his wife. Then, at some point, it moves out and shows two children playing with thread. Here in our subconscious, the audiences already recognized that there were two children except the housewife and the husband. The camera is intentionally trying to ignore the fact and reveals is later on. So basically, kids were in the frame but not recognized until the camera brings them into the frame.
The exiting part is this kind of shooting characters are shown in many other scenes through out the movie, especially when the camera is tracking the housemaid. The room where housemaid is staying is across from the piano room. Often she uses terrace to move to the piano room. The terrace is very thematic place. Generally, it’s not considered as outdoor but also not the opposite. And she watched piano room from there. I assumed that the glass doors created another frame. When the housemaid was watching through the glass door hidden in the terrace, she was out the frame but in the scene. So again, she was there out the frame (the glass door) and the camera brings her in. There is the intention of exposing the character and its characteristics but hiding the meaning of character’s action.
To divide the shot in three areas from top to bottom, in the movie, the housemaid is often on the bottom of the scene representing her social status. Through out the movie, she was positioning on the ground or below knee level of sitting husband. However, when the film gradually reaches the climax, the angle of camera shooting has changed. When the housemaid finally took over the house and the social rank became upside down, there is shots often placing the housemaid on the top area and the couple on the bottom. This indicates that the power in the house is inverted from the couple to the housemaid.
Overall, the last scene was indicating frame narrative method. The jealous, psychopathic housemaid is gone in a second, but she still shows up bringing tea in. The beginning and the end connect smoothly but as an audience, it was quiet a shocking moment because all the spectacle moments were not true. Few hours later after watching the movie, I thought the director was being playful because at the end, the housemaid looked very innocent. Maybe that’s the reason why Kim Ki –Young is praised as a genius in Korean cinema.
The opening credits to “The Housemaid” was a medium-long shot of the family and then it zoomed in focusing on the string game, Cat’s Cradle, foreshadowing the never-ending complexity the family will soon face. The director used the off-screen sound of the piano as a foreshadowing device for the viewers. The piano pieces that were played during the beginning of the movie were brighter and lighter, but as the movie progressed and became darker, so did the pieces played. Another thing the director did to add to the suspense and development of the plot was abrupt scene changes. These abrupt scene changes seemed to be used to help show that time has passed during the movie because in one scene Mr. Kim and his housemaid had intercourse and the next scene was the housemaid showing signs of pregnancy. It left a lot of room for the viewers to fill in the blank themselves and try to figure out what happened.
ReplyDeleteGender roles played a great part in the relationship dynamics that developed throughout the movie. The director used a lot of medium shots when showing the interactions between Mr. Kim and the women in his life. Majority of these shots helped portray women as submissive to this one man. Mrs. Kim, Ms. Cho and the housemaid were all practically at this man’s feet in majority of the scenes. The director also used medium-long shots when showing the housemaid’s obsessive behavior. An example is the scene of her standing outside the piano room in the rain staring into the room. This obsessive behavior is a way to show the high value and importance of Mr. Kim in her life – he is so important to her that she is willing to commit suicide just so she can be happy to have him by her side before they die.
Donghee Kim
ReplyDeleteFrom the movie "The Housemaid", the director Kim Ki-Young portrays social irrationality of that era through the destruction of Mr. Kim's family. Unlike many other women from that time, Mr.Kim's wife illustrates her desire toward money and wealth for the family. But the more she wants things, the more her family experiences destruction. For example, not only when the housemaid comes into the movie causing all the hardships within the family as Mr.Kim's wife wanted the bigger house, but also the wife gets to find out about her husband's betrayal after she acquired the television. Along with these factors, the housemaid's craving over Mr.Kim's love illustrate the consequences of excessive greediness in thematic matter.
Moreover, this movie sets overall dark and horror tone through several factors such as rat poison, piano, weather, and the stairs. The rat poison is the foreshadowing element where we can observe two similar scenes throughout the movie. The children of Mr. Kim were being suspicious of the housemaid handing out water to themselves which eventually was used as a revenge factor at the end for her dead baby. And this factor was highlighted by numerous close-up scenes. Additionally, the sound of unbalanced piano, heavy rain and the lightening builds up the dark mood especially from the turning point where Mr.Kim fell for the housemaid one night due to his sadness. Last but not least I think the stairs in the house play an important role as a transition or some kind of medium for division in the family.
Fang-chieh Lien
ReplyDeleteIn the beginning of this movie, Aesoon and Changsoon were playing the rope games together making intertwining patterns over and over again. I believe that those intertwining patterns actually indicate the complicated relations between main characters of this movie. To me, the key elements in this movie include the rat poison and the stairs. Rat poison is something that links the whole story. First, when the housemaid just entered the family, her cruelty was soon revealed by killing the rats without any hesitation. And Changsoon was killed indirectly by the rat poison. Also, the housemaid and Mr. Kim used the rat poison to kill themselves in the end of the movie. Hence, it seems that the rat poison served an important role in evoking fear and showing cruelty. Next, stair was the place that most of the conflicts happened, as the stairs could also represent the social classes. When a person is not satisfied with his/her given class, conflicts occur. As we can see in the film, the housemaid wanted to own Mr. Kim completely and did not consider herself in a lower class; she expressed her anger, envy, and agitation directly through the sound of piano like she did not care about what other people think. The desire to own Mr. Kim eventually led to their deaths; she believed that this was the only way to own him forever.
In addition to rat poison and stairs, there is another point I found very interesting: the dress. In the first half of the movie, the housemaid usually wore white dress or white tops; however, after she was pregnant and found herself have the ability to dominate the family, she started to wear black dress. The dress made her emotions extremely apparent to the audiences in this black-and –white movie. It is obvious that housemaids raised many social issues in the 1950s and the 1960s, as Mr. and Mrs. Kim talked about this kind of issues more than once in the movie. Director, Kim Ki-young, made it very clear that the whole story was meant to warn people about the possible consequences of giving into temptation. In the end of the film, Mr. Kim even talked to the audiences directly about this movie’s main theme. I was actually very surprised when I saw this since this kind of ending is very rare in contemporary movies.
Kathryn Brown
ReplyDeleteKim Ki-Young's “The Housemaid” is very over-the-top, especially by today's standards. The acting in the film is exaggerated, only pushed further by other factors, such as the dramatic music and camera techniques. To enhance this effect, shots start wide, often coming into a close up of one of the characters to show reactions and facial expressions. At these moments, the music crescendos to add to the extreme level of drama. Also, the camera will move, exposing someone outside a window or around a corner for a shocking effect. Characters are sometimes shown only in part, often without their faces, as hands or feet, usually when there is some sort of misdeed being carried out. The camera often captures characters by looking up at them from below, or down from the top of the staircase, which creates some definite tension. The housewife is shown literally above other characters, such as the wife, which is a way to represent the balance of power. Usually dressed in dark colors, as opposed to Mrs. Kim's white, traditional attire, she represents a very dark mentality as she maintains control over the family. This film is a good representation of how Western cultural ideals had spread into Korea, permeating daily life. Mr. and Mrs. Kim, perfect pictures of the middle class of the time, very concerned with matters of materialism. The family has problems paying their electric bill promptly and are forced to work all the time, which even takes a toll on Mrs. Kim's health. However, they have no problem upgrading to their two-story home and splurging on a television, making them “the richest family in the neighborhood”.
There are several important motifs that carry on throughout the film. Water is prevalent throughout, whether it be the rain splashing against the windows or drinking water poured into a glass, deceptively harmless. It sets the tone for many of the more intense scenes, such as the one where Kyung Hee confesses her love to Mr. Kim. As their disagreement develops inside, all you see of the housemaid is her feet outside the window in the storm. She reveals herself, dripping wet and makes her demands for Mr. Kim's affections. The window also acts as an important element, creating a sort of frame where one can see outside, or peer in on the madness happening inside. It relates a lot to what Mr. Kim mentioned about how squirrels continue to run around, despite being trapped in a cage. This is also important, as the story itself is set up as a frame, which is revealed with the strange conclusion. The director also uses the upstairs window as a tool to transition between the housemaid's room and the piano room, both very crucial to the events in the movie. The piano is one of the most significant symbols and, though it is not necessarily in the forefront, it is the source of trouble for everyone. It is what brings Kyung Hee into the house and, ultimately, the housemaid as well. The staircase is another important setting. Here, several confrontations occur and everybody that dies does so in this place, with the exception of Mr. Kim, who barely crawls down only to die next to his wife. In the end, she leaves Mr. Kim with no choice but to take his own life with her, using the rat poison that was seen throughout the entire movie. It is used by the characters to kill and manipulate, while foreshadowing the deaths of Mr. Kim and the housewife with those of the two rats at the beginning.
"Housemaid." The title itself doesn't give much clue about what the movie is going to be about. However, in the beginning of the movie, when the credits are being displayed, I was able to sense what this movie is going to be about.
ReplyDeleteAs the camera slowly moves closer and closer to the family, it passes a window with bar-like frames and also a wooden chair (also with horizontal bars) which reminded me of jail. It didn't stop here, the walls in the background had bar-like designs AND the children were playing a string game. Therefore, I sensed and guessed that this movie will probably be about being trapped. It's amazing how the beginning sequence can subtly give the audience a clue about what the film is going to be about -this family ends up being trapped by the crazy housemaid.
The black and white film also had film noir elements such as the stairs, femme fatale, and the shadows. I specifically want to talk about this movie's femme fatale, the housemaid. A femme fatale "is a mysterious and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers in bonds of irresistible desire, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and deadly situations." This wiki definition is very accurate to Mr. Kim's situation because as a married man, this handmaid seduces him to sleep with him. She ends up getting pregnant which leads to compromising (fall down the stairs to kill the baby inside), dangerous (housemaid uses rat poison to kill Mr. Kim's son; everyone gets violent), and deadly situations (stabbing, voluntarily drinking rat poison, suicide). One wrong keeps leading to another wrong.
Ng Hui Shin
ReplyDeleteIn ‘Housemaid’, the scene begins with ideal morals of marriage and honour, with the wife representing honour by admonishing news of adultery. The husband, on the other hand, appears to be more accepting of adultery. This seems to have a sense of foreshadowing for the audience, preparing us for the future adultery that the husband commits.
Same locations with relatively strict compositions were also used throughout the movie, with each location representing different categories of people, and different values. For example, the old house appears to represent morals and honour, the new house crime and sin, and the classroom as societal expectations. It also appears ironic that the new place, which was meant to be built for joy, happiness, and ‘a better life’, becomes a place for sin and crime, not just for sexual crimes among adults, but also for arguments among the children. It also becomes a place of death, where both the housemaid’s unborn child and the wife’s son die.
The use of rats in the movie symbolizes dirt and shame, which was portrayed by the housemaid, where her actions appear convulsed like a rat. Her entry to the household, then, appears to symbolize the degradation of honour, which was to be replaced by dirt and shame. A sense of foreshadowing was also presented when the wife became startled by the rat, seemingly symbolising the start of Mr Kim’s adultery.
There thus appears to be a juxtaposition of honour and dirt and shame as well, with honour being symbolized by the wife and the old house, while dirt and shame becomes symbolized by the new house and the comparison of the housemaid to rats.
The shot of the housemaid convulsing on the stairs after falling down the stairs is also contrasted with the image of the dying rats after they had eaten the poisonous rice. It appears that like the rats, the housemaid was going to meet her death as well. However, a reversal of power takes place instead, disrupting the balance of power between the characters.
This theme of power and control was symbolized by cigarettes. Cigarettes were initially used to control the housemaid when she was in a lowly rat-like status. In the later part of the movie, however, when Mr Kim was forced to sleep with her every night, cigarettes were brought to him instead, symbolizing the shift of power – Mr Kim was being controlled by the housemaid. This is in contrast to the beginning, when Mr Kim offered the cigarettes to the housemaid.
Sexual connotations were also portrayed in the movie during shots of Mr Kim teaching Ms Cho the piano. There were many hints of intimacy between the two of them. However, Mr Kim was not able to express his sexual interest, but could instead only express intimacy in the next shot with his wife. These alternate shots of restrained intimacy and expressed intimacy changes however, when the housemaid claims possession of Mr Kim. During Ms Cho’s last piano lesson, the housemaid used to knife to injure Ms Cho, where the knife seemingly symbolizes the cutting off of the love tangle between Mr Kim and Ms Cho.
The break-up of a family was also portrayed in the middle of movie, when Mr Kim’s family comes back after their trip and where the housemaid threatens to tell Mr Kim’s wife about this betrayal. Here, the quality of the movie becomes choppy; shots appear chopped up and disconnected. As with the break-ups in this movie, this seems to demonstrate the break-up of a family as well.
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ReplyDeletestudent number: 2013841579
Yoonil Cho
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid directed by Kim Ki-young in 1960, shows and criticizes the 50s and 60s conservative middle class family. Mr. Kim Dong Sik who is a music teacher represents the conservative father of the 50s. When he receives kind of love letter from Ms. Kwak Sun Young who working at textile factory, he reports this to dorm inspector. She suspends for three days and goes back to her home and Ms. Cho Kyung hee who likes Mr. Kim comes to Mr. Kim’s house to learn piano. From that time the films shows Mr. Kim’s changes and ruin their family because of these seductions.
The movie starts with a happy family with two children and Mr. Kim Dong Sik and his wife. This is because to compare the family after they hired a housemaid at the end. In the film they show lots of scenes with stairs. When Ms. Cho who is worker and Mr. Kim who is rich going up to do piano lesson, it represents her desire to elevate her life when she got his love. However, it also shows collapse of their life. Such as a son of Mr. Kim fall down the stairs after he drinks rat poison and housemaid also fall down when Mr. Kim’s wife knows all about her pregnant. At the end of the film, Mr. Kim gives some advices to the viewers. It is not usual in nowadays movie so it was interesting.
Shi Hui Chen Lin
ReplyDeleteResponse to The Housemaid
In ‘The Housemaid’, various objects were employed as important symbols to convey and represent the movie’s core ideas and themes. Rats, for instance, were a central symbol in the movie. The importance of rats was shown through several close-ups in the movie, such as when the housemaid lifted one up by her bare hands and when they struggled for life after eating the poisoned rice. Rats are considered as a dirty, harmful and sometimes eerie pest in households. These characteristics seem to also describe how the housemaid was to the Kim’s family. Recalling the first appearance of a rat in the movie in the kitchen’s cabinet, where it startled Mrs. Kim to the point that she almost fainted and had to stay in bed for days, I think the rat somehow has a symbolic connection to the housemaid and foreshadows the traumatic events that her entry to the house brought to the family. On the other hand, it can also be seen to resemble the Kim’s family. The housemaid’s first deed when she came to the family was catching and killing a rat, just like how she gripped the Kim’s family later in the movie. Similar to how she killed the rat, she killed the young boy using rat poison and committed suicide with Mr. Kim using rat poison as well.
The eerie tone of the movie was established using techniques such as close-ups and the use of dramatic music. A close-up or a medium close-up given to the housemaid’s face outside the window almost always startled the audience, accentuating the uneasy and creepy feeling of the movie. The bad weather and the sound of thunder also help in building up tension and anxiety. Most importantly, I think the sound of thunder not only serve as a building element to the atmosphere, but also as a moral judgment and showed how unforgiving the events were. For example, when the housemaid drank the poison with Mr. Kim and their hands held together, there was a very loud sound of thunder at that moment, almost like an angry sound from the heaven.
A review about the movie suggests that the story aroused thoughts of westernization in the Korean community in 1960s and how this took a toll on the traditional moral standard and value of the society. The Kim’s house was fully decorated in western style. There were actually several close-ups to decorative objects that depict such style, such as the doll on the side table in the master bedroom. Piano seems to be a symbol of status. Mr. Kim would not allow the housemaid to touch the piano yet she insisted and kept on playing it. It seems to suggest that Mr. Kim was drawing a line between his class and the housemaid’s class while the housemaid constantly tried to cross the line.
The ending of the movie was extremely unexpected, showing that all the unnerving events did not really happen to the family. However, the ending does tie up with the occasional humor and peculiar feeling throughout the movie. Mr. Kim’s direct address to the audience seems to provide a comic relief to the tension and uneasiness that the movie created and the return to the opening scene draws a full circle for the story.
Reference: http://armchairc.blogspot.kr/2011/01/housemaid-1960.html
Individuals perpetually desire for ideal lives and establish various courses of actions in pursuing happiness. Korean society has promoted the value of equality where people can enjoy their rights over various aspects of society as sovereign subjects regardless of class and gender. Unlike Confucianism-based tradition that stresses hierarchy through oppression and unequal distribution of resources, Korean society has envisioned an ideal society where everyone can equally pursue their happiness. During the course of modernization, the boom for industrialization enhanced and the aspects of the people’s struggles were also vividly visualized. As clearly reflected in the film “The Housemaid”, contemporary standard of happiness was confined into a socio-economically stable life without knowing what their genuine ideals desire. Moreover it was significantly notable to see an uncomfortable coexistence of inequality and stability that deeply lies in the dominant notion of society
ReplyDeleteDesires for class mobility crucially encourage individuals to exert their passion and enhance their strivings. Mr. Kim accomplished his dream of having his own house where his family can happily live in without concerns. His family clearly visualizes an ideal aspect of middle class family that has socio-economic stability and a desirable standard of happiness in the contemporary society. Such aspects are also enhanced through the elements such as a two-story house, a piano, and a housemaid. In spite of the strivings for class mobility, the housemaid critically plays a key role in not only disrupting a pursuit of happiness of an ordinary middle class family, but also visualizing the inequality a powerless female housemaid has to confront, which is especially portrayed in the scene where the housemaid aborts her child. The aspect the emergence of her child was undesirably not accepted whereas Mrs. Kim’s new child is born in encouragement and happiness dramatically visualizes her unequal access of entry into the mainstream society. Furthermore, portrayal of the struggles of the protagonists is vividly enhanced with the cinematic effects and filming techniques. Firstly camera focus on settings of two spaces, a factory filled with numerous female workers and a wealthy house of a happy middle class family effectively represents the contrasts of the two different socio-economic classes. Such repetitive focus reminds the audience of aspects of not only the contemporary strivings, but also class differentiation. Furthermore, dramatic sound effects embedded in the scenes where the housemaid holds a knife and a rat dies of poison crucially contribute to suggesting a misfortune to be brought upon the family of Mr. Kim (Housemaid eventually stabs Kyunghee and rat poison crucially contributes to tragic setting of Mr. Kim’s family). Lastly, the camera technique such as close-ups on certain objects such as the glass of water offers its significance as a metaphor for the tragic death of Changsoon. As reflected in the assertion of Mr. Kim toward his wife, “All you want is money”, the dominant conceptualization of happiness (that stresses economic stability) not only generates familial disruption, but also enhances inequality, which is portrayed through the polarization of gender and class differentiation.
The Korean black and white 1960’s film directed by Ki-young Kim, The Housemaid, centers on a music teacher and how his family is put into a disastrous downfall by the involvement of a housemaid. Despite the seemingly straightforward premise, the director is able to create tension and shocking scenes through some dreary aesthetics and camera shots ranging from close-ups to long takes.
ReplyDeleteThe opening credits give the audience its first taste of what type of movie The Housemaid is. It involves one camera angle filming two children playing a game taking turns knotting string between their fingers. Other films may usually show their opening credits cutting through various scenes focusing on a character, or pan through scenery. However, unlike other films, Kim creates a shot that is over minute watching the designs of the string showing the complexity and discord that will ensue. The length of the credits forces the viewers to watch the take for just that long, which will build up suspense waiting for the next cut to the next scene. Along with this, the font and transitions of the credits bleed or drip in and out as if from a horror film. Both the credits presentation and the long take of the string in the opening credits plays to the director’s ability to create some tension and discomfort before the movie really even begins.
Another scene that makes use of a long take in order to build up suspense revolves around the abortion of the housemaid’s child. Here, the camera shot shows a medium close-up of the husband and wife in the foreground with the wife reassuring the husband while the housemaid can still be seen from the waist down in the background at the top of the stairs. The scene proceeds for over 30 seconds and tracks backwards following the spouses into the next room while the wife closes the two sliding doors in order to shield her, her husband, as well as the audience’s eyes from what will happen. Just like the opening, the length of the scene is suspenseful in that it forces the viewers to wait. Then, the camera slowly closes in on the wife as she waits to hear a loud scream and crash. Each tracking shot and the hidden view of the housemaid add to the tension and eventual release giving off the shocking outcome of the take.
Finally, there are multiple times where sudden cuts to a close up of a character’s face accompanied with dissonant chords of music. The most prevalent include the housemaid at the balcony looking in through the window. These abrupt shots may be considered more associated with horror a film which in turn makes The Housemaid seem like one at times. The unpleasing imagery in the opening credits and the variety of suspenseful takes throughout The Housemaid creates a compelling film from straightforward events.
Eunice Choi
ReplyDeleteDespite of the ludicrous reception of Housemaid by people today, the movie is strikingly sophisticated and complex at the time of 1960. Thus, this movie is a significant work to be discussed thoroughly. The work is a compilation of dark themes, symbols, and unique techniques of camera angles, as well as the development of characters.
Each character in this movie has his or her own inner conflict, which eventually complicates the relationship between other characters. For example, Miss Cho uses her friend and her desire to learn the piano as an excuse to gain sympathy and favor to get close to him. Her patience explodes and threatens the teacher to accept her love. Another well-developed character is the wife, who is a perfect model of a traditional wife who cares for her husband and her kids. On another level, however, her greed for materiality (bigger house, a maid) shows through her actions and words of seduction to her husband. She is a loving mother and wife, but she is also cold-hearted to be securing only her family’s auspicious reputation despite of her loss of husband and her son. Perhaps the wife is powerless and hopeless to be confronting the maid directly, who is already engulfed in rage and despair for the loss of her child.
Many symbols are apparent in this movie. The emergence of the rat is a crucial part of the movie because the use of the rat poison becomes the main player in creating a climax to the movie. The wife has a dream of a rice bowl drenched in rat poison with one rat already dead and another in the vicinity. The scene leaves a strong impression even after the movie because of its powerful visual and foreboding connection to two scenes: the scenes of two children on the stairs (the teacher’s son and the still-born baby) and the death scenes of the maid and the music teacher. The piano is also symbolic because the music seems to portray the psychological state of the characters. Miss Cho takes patient steps as she approaches the music teacher, as she learns how to play step by step. The maid never made any music, only dissonant sounds. The piano expresses the ugly and twisted tantrum of the maid, who will never create a sound, harmonic relationship with the teacher.
The film is very distinctly Korean because of the visuals and the cultural references. The fashion style of wife and the maid contrasts greatly, creating the balance of the good and the evil. The wife dresses in white Hanbok, showing that she is Korea’s ideal housewife, who is true to fidelity. The maid dresses in tight black dress showing her figure, personifying her dark, lustful mind, or Heuk-shim. Scenes of bad omen can be taken as cultural allusions. During the thunderstorms, lighting sparks a fire on a tree, forecasting a striking turn point in the movie. The maid drops and breaks a dish, and the daughter’s squirrel she received from her father dies. These scenes of omen are undoubtedly universal, but they stand out as they reflect traditional Korean culture of taking superstitions very seriously. Along with the elements of Korean culture, the movie reminds the viewers a similar approach used in Hollywood movies. The dramatic shots with the camera quickly zooming into a close shot paired up with the dramatic sound effects allude to scene storm western movies especially Hollywood, like Psycho (1960). Perhaps, Korean slang, "Hollywood action," meaning exaggerated expressions in a dramatic or action scene in a movie originated from such scenes.
Dameun Lee
ReplyDeleteResponse To The Housemaid
This thriller movie “housemaid” by Kim Ki-young, old Korean traditional movie, It is a story about a crazy housemaid who ruined a whole Mr. Kim’s family life and finally led to commit suicide because of obsession about Mr. Kim. At first, her behavior was simply obsession about Mr. Kim but later turned to greed and jealous of everything such as a husband, house and baby and so on.
This movie in general deals with the power of desire. Desire for living in bigger house triggered hiring the housemaid and eventually led to a hideous situation. Without greed, Mr. Kim’s family could live happily together. Moreover, I believe that the director Kim Ki-young highlights no one can reject irresistible greed by expressing Mr. Kim as a man who is a fairly pure man. But he also could not resist by greed.
In this movie, piano plays a significant role as a source of greed. When housemaid saw that Mr. Kim was teaching piano to another girl, she felt extreme anger and this jealousy made her being crazy. Heavy deficit by buying piano led to teach piano to the girl to earn money was the starting point of death of housemaid, Mr. Kim and his son’s in the end. The piano also was used in uplifting of atmosphere in the movie.
Another thing I want to mention is a rat poison. It was used in method of killing person. It symbolizes how violent people are in an extreme situation. The housemaid worked off her anger by killing Mr. Kim’s son, using rat poison. Mrs. Kim also poured it in housemaid’s soup, trying to kill her. Whether good person or bad person, in an extreme situation, they become violent and sordid.
Last thing I want to consider is nightmare. One day, Mrs. Kim had a nightmare. In her dream, there were two dead mice looked like human face. It foreshadowed death of housemaid and Mr. Kim. I thought it was interesting.
Overall, the director wanted to send the message that no one can resist greed and people become abominable in an extreme situation.
Seungyoon, Mok
ReplyDeleteThe housemaid is the first black-and-white film I have seen. Surely, it is the oldest film I have seen. The main male character 'Dong-sik' is a music teacher in a factory who support his family. As his family moves to bigger house, they hire a housemaid. However, he has a sexual relationship with the housemaid and make her pragnant. Therefore, Dong-sik and his wife make the housemaid cause abortion. After abortion, the housemaid becomes crazy, obsesses to Donng-sik, and finally threats the family. One his mistake makes a big tragedy.
In this film, Dong-sik's family represents the middle class which made success and pursue bigger wealth. He and his wife constantly seek happiness and comfortability. I think a old-fashioned factory and wife's part-time job shows the reality of the era the film created. A mysterious opening music, artificial set of house, unnormal acts of children makes the film's atmosphere heavy and dark. Also, I felt that the sound of a sewing machine which is constantly working with the housmaid's obsession reflects the confused society of 1960 in Korea.
After screening, many people laughed. It can be seen a strange movie because of a funny ending, ridiculous story, and exaggerated characters. But, I think many parts of movie actually 'meant' something. Dong-sik makes big mistake and does very unmoral thing and trys to hide his fault with his wife's help. Their actions make the housemaid unhappy and be miserable. The only reason they trys to hide his fault is for their own comfortability. They worked hard for a long time and seems that they almose get to thiere goal, happiness, the wealth. As the housemaid obsesses to Dong-sik, They also obsesses the comfortability. So, they cannot take any action against the housemaid's unnormal request. I think this film shows the family's efforts for better life in 1960 of Korea. For better life, a man can destroy the lower level's woman and the man's wife can help her husband. There is not morality in the era of this film. The innocence of morality causes a tragedy. The film's last comment of Dong-sik also meant the era which the story like this can not be understood. I think this film reflects the period which middle class's people pursue the wealth, heavy, confused society.
Won Jae Chang
ReplyDeleteIn the film, “The Housemaid”, the director, Kim Ki-Young, has adopted an expressionist style in which image and sound, as well as acting styles, are exaggerated and distorted in order to create an emotional effect. There are few outdoor scenes and most of the scenes primarily took place inside two stairs house and music class room at factory. First floor represents the middle class area where Kim’s family live in. Second floor represents the low labour women area. Therefore, the stair between first and second floor can be seen as border of social level. After housemaid gains major power, she has kept staying on second floor and commanding Kim to stay with her. At the beginning of the scene, Kim’s finds the rat poison bottle. The camera focused on this bottle which indicates the next future scene.
The director has used lighting effect to show the actor’s face to be darker because the lights are set on the wall and usually stood behind the actors. Due to the contrast of brightness, the house and characters look more mysterious and fearful. After the Kim and housemaid have sexual relationship, the lighting (thunder) suddenly show up and this lighting effect was used as a sign of tragic event that can easily be understand by the audience. The director also has used sound effect to make the film more horrific. These background sounds are used at serious scene so, the audience can possibly feel fearful or surprise. For example, the director has used loud and horrific sound at the scene where the rat was dying due to poison.
Melody Chi
ReplyDelete7-8-13
YISS, Summer 2013
Korean Cinema
Prof. Steven Chung
Movie Response #1: The Housemaid
In The Housemaid, the positioning of objects in a frame becomes crucial as the movie progresses, because it signal that Mr. Kim is losing both the audience’s sympathies and his superior position in the household, while his housemaid is gaining control over the family. For instance, the day after Mr. Kim has sex with the maid, he stares himself down in a mirror. Mr. Kim can perhaps initially be seen as being the subject in control of the scene, as he is the only subject in the frame and is also positioned in the center foreground in comparison to the mirror and other objects in the scene’s background. However, it becomes clear that Mr. Kim’s status as both the one in control of his household and a character that the audience can sympathize with is deteriorating. For example, in the scene, Mr. Kim’s back is to the camera, while his reflection is what the audience can fully view. The fact that Mr. Kim is turned away from the camera (and thus the audience) signals that the audience is losing their sympathetic viewpoint of Mr. Kim; while previously the audience was encouraged to support Mr. Kim when he was being a devoted husband, father, and teacher, the watcher is now withdrawing their positive viewpoint. In fact, that the audience can only see Mr. Kim’s face through the reflection in the mirror symbolizes how the audience is scrutinizing and judging Mr. Kim for his betrayal, as he himself is doing in this scene.
This idea that Mr. Kim is beginning to cede control over his household is emphasized when the housemaid intrudes into the scene from the bottom of the frame. First, this unconventional introduction from the bottom of the frame gives the audience (or at least, me) the impression that the housemaid is a threatening predator encroaching on its prey (in this case, Mr. Kim); this implication obviously promotes the housemaid as more powerful and more in control. In addition, when she is introduced into the frame, she is positioned very clearly in the foreground, and she is portrayed with a close up camera shot. The housemaid thus seizes the role as the main subject and relegates Mr. Kim to the background, a less powerful position. Her prominent positioning in the frame (as a subject in the foreground who completely blocks Mr. Kim from the audience’s sight) parallels the beginning of her domination over Mr. Kim, and through him, his entire household.
Ja Hyun Kim
ReplyDeleteThe main theme of the movie, “the Housemaid”, I believe, is jealousy: jealousy of the music student, the housemaid, and the wife of the music teacher. The jealousy of music student is completely hidden behind the scene. She pretends that she is a nice girl who is kind to the children and the wife of the music teacher. However, she is actually the one who slyly devises a way to completely destroy the life of music teacher after his refusal of her love. The jealousy of the housemaid ends up with obsession, revenge, and even death. Her obsession of “possessing” the music teacher, however, does the exact opposite of what she wants. Uncontrollable anger leads her to commit a murder of a child of the music teacher, in revenge of the miscarried baby who was purposely killed by the wife.
It was certainly not a pleasant movie. This movie was full of disastrous events: an affair, attempts of murder, and suicide. Through “the Housemaid”, the director, Kim Ki-Young, revealed that the human nature is evil. Characters continuously and frankly express their emotions that belong to the evil side. Although, in the beginning of the movie, the music teacher and his wife were pictured as if they were roll models of not only the best couples but also the best parents. However, the director exposed bits and pieces of evilness in each character. For example, human nature of looking down on people who have disabilities is well illustrated when the younger brother makes fun of the older sister for not being able to walk freely.
YoonJu Bae
ReplyDeleteThe major themes in this movie are love becoming obsession and the importance of trust.
Mr. Kim's wife says she will always be beside her husband even if he committed robbery or even worst murdered a person. However she feels disgusted and cannot forgive her husband immediately when she hears that he slept with another woman. This could be because their love and trust was great and she fully believed that she was the one and only woman to her husband. Since the trust is broken in their relationship, all the bad happenings in the house continues on.
Could you call the housemaid's love towards Mr. Kim a 'real love'? At first, the housemaid started having interest in Mr. Kim because of the jealousy towards her co-worker learing piano to Mr. Kim. The housemaid says that she does not want to be considered below her and wants to be better than her. Jealousy was the main reason to the start of her obsession. As time passes, the housemaid realizes that she was used as a one time enjoyment by Mr. Kim and there was no space for her to fit into this family. This leads to her trying to take over the place of Mr. Kim's wife and break their relationsip. Lonelines, betrayal and anger made her to take such horrible acts such as putting Mr. Kim's children in danger to gain Mr. Kim. However, in the end, even when she decides to die together with Mr. Kim, Mr. Kim leaves to die beside his wife. Begging to stay with her did not stop Mr. Kim from being beside his real love. From the beginnng until the end, housemand was alone. Convetting what is not hers and being obsessed about did not find her happiness but actually brought misery to her life.
Since the movie is made well before, the flow from one scene to the next had some oddness and was not as smooth as the movies made now. There was a lot of exaggeration to the acting by all actors, and in my opinion this was because the whole movie takes place in one setting, Mr. Kim's house, and in order to show all the emotions and intensity of the scenes, exaggerated acting and also the catching sounds of background music was used.
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ReplyDelete(Ju Hyun Lee)
ReplyDeleteIn the movie "Housemaid," the main theme of the movie was love; that once was trust, excitement, and hope that later turned to obsession, jealousy, and death. It was a little bit obvious to hear many foreshadows in the movie, like the news on the newspaper in the beginning, closed up focused camera shots of rat poison, etc. The movie started off with this pure love towards Mr. Kim from various women. The first woman was Mr. Kim's wife who worked very hard to support Mr. Kim and to accomplish his/her dream of getting bigger house, having more luxuries, and stuff. She was very submissive to her husband and they both loved each other dearly. The second love was from this woman from work who gets kicked out from the factory because she wrote love letter to Mr. Kim whom was a music teacher/already married man. The third love was another woman from the factory who was the laid off woman's friend who tried to earn Mr. Kim's heart quietly by bringing cookies to his children and learning piano at his house. However, her quiet love turned to a violent petition which led Mr. Kim to abuse her and to kick her out from the house. She later on covers Mr. Kim's wrong doings because she still loved him. The last and the most violent love was his housemaid's love toward him. She tried hard to earn Mr. Kim's attention and interest at first which led her to feel jealous towards his wife and the woman from the factory that again led her to act violently towards them that later on hurt the woman and killed Mr. Kim. The most scary thing about the housemaid was that she never felt guilty about anything but she still felt lonely and sad. When she killed that rat at first, it showed that she was not scared or feeling anything towards killing something. This showed that her ego was not controlling her, which later got her to kill the little boy, attempt to kill her friend from the factory, and killed both Mr. Kim and herself, because she was not getting what she wanted--Mr. Kim's love.
I think this movie have done a great job specifying the social and cultural aspects of people in Korea in the earlier years where social class was divided. Also, the overall feeling of the movie was dark and moody; the director did very good job using the light source and the camera using. The light was always in a perfect position to show the shadows on both on actor's faces and in the house which made the whole atmosphere to look sad and horrific. The camera focused and had a long shots when it was showing the important elements of the movie, like rat poison, piano, water, cigarette, etc. that symbolized obsessed love turning into a great destruction.
Tae Kyu Kim
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid
When I first saw The Housemaid today in class, I was just stunned. The movie is such a dark and twisted melodramatic film that I did not even imagine existed during the 1960s. However, thinking again, Korea was a very conservative country back then, and it still is although a lot less now. During that period, people wouldn’t dare go on an affair with another person because they would be “scarred” for life or looked bad upon the community. The film perfectly depicts the concept of fear as of being “branded” as an offender of adultery. In one example, it was so absurd when the housemaid killed Mr. Kim’s son, Changhoon , and Mr and Mrs Kim did not even report it to the authorities. Instead, they agreed to the housemaid’s proposal of having Mr Kim sleep with her at night in exchange for not exposing the adultery committed by Mr. Kim. This incident would have probably been too exaggerating even during that period but I think the director really wanted to clearly point out that adultery was an absolute sin and that people would do anything to prevent it from being exposed to the public. Ultimately, this film is surely the most twisted and mind-fucking black and white film I have ever seen, yet the film is so uniquely and superbly directed.
Although the film itself is disturbing and twisted, it is nevertheless perfectly directed by Kim Ki-Young , who does a stunning job constructing the melodrama film with the proper props and styling. For example, Kim Ki-Young adds the perfect background music whenever disturbance is shown in the scenes. The background music is very ideal, which sort of seems like the genre is rather a complete horror film instead of a mixture of both horror and melodrama. Another example of Kim Ki-Young’s superior directing is the props used in the film. First, the house of Mr. Kim’s shown in the film is equivalent to a haunted house. It’s made out of wood that makes creaking sounds when walked on and house is very dark with just a bit of lightings added to it. The rat poison is also a symbolic prop Kim Ki-Young uses throughout the film. In the very beginning of the film, the rat poison is shown to the audience immediately before the audience is aware of any disturbance yet to happen. The rat poison really emphasizes that the story will become extremely dark. In the end of the film, Kim Ki-Young intelligently finishes off and compensates for the twisted plot shown to the audience by revealing the whole story was a “what if…” with Mr. Kim giving the audience a lecture or lesson learned from whole story. I believe this finishing was an essential part of the film because it relieves the audience of such pain and disturbance.
MinJoon Choi
ReplyDeleteIn this movie "housemaid", the main theme in my opinion was money, trust, and love. It portrays the significant conflict between relationship and status in the society. Mr. Kim and his wife clearly can take the maid to the police station. But they cannot because they understand that doing so will bring their social status down (losing his job and criticism from the society). Thus, they cannot do anything against it. This in a sense portrays the capitalistic society where fame and money is significantly valued.
Another instance where we can catch this is the housemaid's action. The housemaid does not seem to have "true" love for Mr. Kim. But rather wants stable lifestyle but also from jealousy of her co-worker who was learning piano from Mr. Kim. Instead of striving to have a stable life herself, she takes the easy out by deceiving and murdering the family members of Mr. Kim. This again, portrays how the social status is so significant for these citizens. It is hard to spot true love in this story. Even the Wife has strong desire for stable life. She has been Mr. Kim's wife for so long, but when she faces the threat of the maid which can potentially ruin the family's fame, she just listens to what the housemaid says and just lets Mr. Kim sleep with her. If her "true love" was strong enough, there is no way that she will accept this.
To conclude, I saw a strong conflict between "true love" and "Social status"
Hyungwoo Kim
ReplyDeleteActually I only saw Sang-Soo Im’s “Housemaid” that is Do-Yeon Jeon acted in 2010. Ki-Young Kim was well-known movie director who was good at psychological description and melodramatic scary movie. He was usually focused on female actor’s psychological description. He made unusual and unique movie at that time. in 1960, when he was be a movie director, his works were not be recognized as much as nowadays.
The movie “Housemaid” was played in enclosed space as suspense movie that is hero’s house. His house has 1st floor, 2nd floor and stairs. Each rooms and stairs are place that moving plot and took on overtone of story. In 1st floor, wife who is substantive household has sewing machine and also living room is in 1st floor. Director located sewing machine in 1st floor so we can understand actual power in family members. In 2nd floor, husband’s working space and “Piano” is in it. 2nd floor is more closed place because of stairs. 1st floor showed a desire of harmonious family but 2nd floor showed human nature’s pure instinct and all events happened. Stair’s meant “Death”. Ki-Young Kim gave a sensation of fear to audience by rat. Rat gave a sensation of fear and important role in movie. First I saw this movie in class, a monochrome film and dubbing’s awkward was little bit funny but after rat came, several kinds of directing skills and equipments made me fell into this movie. In movie, there were not violent and heady scenes. Only rat made us feel scary.
Actually “Housemaid” also showed reality of society at that time. He criticized society in that period. Housemaid wanted to move a step up in a society and he showed that desire. He wanted to describe how society’s vertical structure was unconditional. Main conflict of this movie was wife’s desire of save family and housemaid’s desire to move step up in society’s clash. Even though housemaid was trigger of events but director didn’t describe housemaid as weak in directly. Because all characters are incompleteness objects in movie.
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ReplyDeleteJihye Park
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid (1960) by Kim Ki-Young, is the oldest film I have ever seen. Because the movie was filmed fifty years ago, the way people talk in the movie or how the movie is established can be out of style, so the movie didn’t seem interesting at first. However, as the movie expands on its storyline, I felt that the movie was very interesting, and the content of the movie could have been very sensational back in time. The movie depicts a family’s destruction by the introduction of a housemaid who sexually misbehaves.
In the movie, the contrast between Mrs. Kim and the housewife is very clear. Mrs. Kim, the wife of Mr. Kim who is a music teacher at a factory is a traditional Koran housewife. She talks very calm, and wears a traditional Korean costume, Hanbok. She gets afraid of the rat, and depicted as a delicate woman. In contrast, the housewife is like a seductive femme fatale. She doesn’t get scared by the rat, catches rat with her hands, smokes, and etc. Housewife is represented as abnormal woman which can be very controversial especially in the 1960s in Korea. Also, even when Mrs. Kim gets informed the housewife is pregnant with Mr. Kim, the housewife doesn’t get kicked out of the house. Instead, housewife presses Mr. Kim and Mrs. Kim and becomes the authoritative one in the family.
Rat is an important factor throughout the movie. It not only contrasts Mrs. Kim and the housewife (Mrs. Kim depicted as a feminine woman when she gets scared of the rat and housewife catches the rat with her hand), but it is also used as a foreshadow throughout the movie. It constructs the creepiness and a sense of fear. Along with the rat, rat poison also foreshadows the destruction of the family. Rat poison plays a big role in the movie like when housewife attempts to fool Changsoon when she lies about how she put rat poison in the water, or when Mrs. Kim tries to kill the housewife by putting rat poison into the soup.
While watching the movie, I wondered about one character appearing in the beginning of the movie; Kwak. When thinking about the movie’s main storyline; introduction of the housemaid in Mr. Kim’s family and the destruction of his family, I wonder about Kwak’s presence in the movie because her existence and the fact that she sends the love letter to Mr. Kim doesn’t seem that relevant with the movie’s plot. Other than this and some minor movie effects (which can be explained since the movie was filmed in the 1960s), the movie has very sensational plot which makes the movie to be known as a prominent Korean classic thriller.
This movie "housemaid" contained the meaning that one fault can make disasters.
ReplyDeleteIn this move, i could see some skills of camera
Basically, zoom in and out was main skills and long shots too. However, i could see some interesting skills such as focusing out when the mr. Kim tried to kill the housemaid. The camera showed the points of view of housemaid and represented the moments that her vision becoming unclear or blurry. Also, at some point zooming in to one object or a part of the body was effectvely showed to me.
One thing that i realize in this movie was the society of past and today is similar. People who earn more money get higher authority. Also, there are no limit in love even at that time the men and women's social status was totally different. However, one thing that i couldn't understand was the behavior of housemaid. She killed a person to revenge and she did everything to get mr.kim's love. However, in the first of the film, she only needs the money. It means, she choose the love instead of the money and do horrible things that is not related with any authority or wealthy.
In the last of the film, mr.kim said whatch out the woman if you don't want to ruin your life or family. According to mr.kim, there is a still gap between women's social status and men's social status because he tried to say the message of the movie to only men not women. However, interesting thing is, in the movie, there were some differences between men and women but men was gentle and women had the authority in their home. Thus, i could feel the director tried to reduce the gap between the men and women social status through the movie
Sang Won Jee
ReplyDeleteDongsu Jo
ReplyDeleteThe movie 'housemaid ' shows how young housemaid destroys happy family’s life. Since the movie was taken more than 50 years ago, it has some interesting points such as inflexible Korean background and old movie style (limited way of portraying ideas) that they have to do in 1960's
It is interesting that movie has an inflexible Korean background in 1960's. In the first part of movie, Miss Kwak gets a suspension, just because she sent a love letter to his music teacher and he thought it was unethical. According to the film, love is something a person should be in shame and should be hidden. The movie shows problem of capitalism, money. Even though housemaid killed the son, they don't call the cop because wife doesn't want her husband-teacher losing his job from the factory. It seems like the money is important than anything here. I think it is similar with today's problem like the last movie we watched, 'Cast Away’; Mr. Kim tried to suicide because of the financial issues.
In the end of the movie, it has a very shocking reversal, which summarizes the whole story as a novel that wife reads and the husband give advice to audience. I don't know it is a style of 1960's movie or just some random part placed just to quickly end the film.
It is funny that the movie has very unique style; very different from many movies I’ve seen. This movie is my first Korean black and white movie that has non- natural acting accent. The way to show actor’s thoughts was interesting. Some parts were taken literally just like when Miss Cho reads out her letter to let the audience know what it is about. Also kiss scene and bed scenes were taken out. I know it is not illegal to portray such images in 1960's but it bothers me to focus movie since those scenes were chopped off from the film even if the scenes makes sense without what’s taken out. The funniest part was when the housemaid kiss the teacher, she grabbed her hair first to block her mouth to and fake kiss with him. But even if movie was old and had some weird parts, I still liked the movie because it had lesson that we can still understand today.
Esther H. Cho
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid
With an intense and penetrating introduction, the beginning of the movie gives the audience an immediate presumption that the movie will fall under the category of a horror and thriller movie. The combination of the intensifying background music and the exaggerated camera zoom-ins on the character’s faces when they talk creates a powerful aura to the viewers. Throughout the movie, the audience is exposed to the suspense and fear of how a Korean middle-class family is intruded by a daunting housemaid. As the housemaid smokes cigarettes (unlike many women around the 1960s), grabs a rat by its tail, and even becomes a murderer, she is portrayed as a sexually predatory femme fatale. Later on in the movie, as the housemaid threatens and becomes superior, the audience can easily find out that greed is a central and significant theme of the movie. Not only the housemaid, but also the other characters are also portrayed to be greedy: Miss Cho who convinces her friend to confess her love to the music teacher so she can be aware of how he would react and the music teacher’s wife who wanted to live in a bigger house.
From the beginning to the end of the film, rat poison serves to be a significant part of the movie. For example, many of the characters die due to consuming rat poison. During the 1960s (when the movie was filmed), rats served to be a big problem in Korea. Therefore, rat is a symbolism of trouble and distress. For example, when the music teacher’s wife first encounters a rat in the cabinet, the scene is very dramatic. A little later during the film, as the housemaid grabs the rat by its tail, the scene is again very dramatic. In the end of the movie, the music teacher turns to the camera and says that this kind of situation can happen to anyone. As sort of a moral lesson, the viewer can interpret the ending as a way of telling men to avoid all temptations. The way the character smiles and turns to the camera, I found it a little sarcastic and comical.
After watching Kim Ki-young’s The Housemaid, two reoccurring themes persist throughout the film. The first theme is quite explicit and explores the role of gender while the second theme is slightly more implicit and explores the imprisonment by socioeconomic status. The theme that explores the role of gender can be examined best through examination of the three main characters, the father, the mother, and the housemaid. The father is portrayed as a financial provider, a stoic man who does not stray from his morals (which can be seen by the way he reacts to the love letter given to him by a young factory worker). The mother on the other hand is portrayed as a housekeeper who obeys her husband. It seems as though the director wants to illustrate to the audience their own belief about correct roles for different genders in order to provide commentary on possible problems of creating gender roles. He does this through the use of the housemaid. Although the father is the epitome of what women think of a good husband (strong morals) should be like, he falls victim so easily to the young housemaid. I believe the director is trying to say that by putting so much trust into men’s morals is dangerous because after all men are all the same (the ending scene). In addition the director provides criticism for creating a gender role for the wife. Because the wife wants to have a happy family and be a good wife she asks her husband for a larger house (probably due to the soon to be born third child). However because of the larger house she needs a housemaid in order to help take care of the household chores, which leads to the husband’s affair.
ReplyDeleteThe second theme is more implicit and examines the idea of imprisonment through socioeconomic status. Because the family is earning more money they are able to afford a larger house and other luxuries such as the television and the housemaid. The yearning for these luxuries can be viewed as what causes the family to eventually fall apart (like Biggie Smalls said almost 40 years later, Mo’ Money, Mo’ Problems).
Kevin Ling
Katie Allis
ReplyDeleteThe Housemaid speaks to several different relevant themes in the 1960s. The ending especially, when the main character directly addresses the viewer saying how men need to be careful as they get older, makes it seem almost like a cautionary tale for men. This paints women as a danger to men, and throughout the movie, through the use of intense close up shots of the maid, she does indeed seem a very dangerous character.
This also speaks to the changing roles of women during this time period. The fact that a woman is depicted as having the power to take a stable and devoted family and tear it apart in such a way could be a statement about shifting gender roles. The maid starts out as a mere employee, and a delinquent one at that (addicted to smoking and depicted as less than bright). But she uses her youth and sexuality to control not only the husband, but the wife too in the end.
These could be seen as contradicting points, one showing the dangers of women gaining power, the other warning men to control themselves as young women are only "pieces of meat". Somehow these two work together in the context of the movie to create a very twisted and dark story where the blame could be placed anywhere.
Laura Markou
ReplyDeleteElements that derive from the movie "The Housemaid" can be interpreted in several different ways. Even so, the mise en scene of each scene, the shooting styles used, and the effects used throughout the movie depict a more general theme of the importance of pride and the switching of gender roles.
The mise en scene is how everything is placed in each shot, from the interior decor to where the actors/actresses are standing. In "The Housemaid," the placement of the interior decor in the Kim's household was quite complex and not the norm. This shows that the placement of the objects themselves represent the complexity of the household members themselves.
The camera angles and types of shots also contributed to the mood of the movie, which was dark and expressive. Several extreme closeups occurred in the movie to show the heightened emotions and reactions of each character to add to the themes mentioned. For example, the importance of pride is depicted as the Mother does not want the maid to turn herself in, so there are several closeups of her face to show the panic she has.
The use of music and sound was a key effect used in this film. The music played alongside with camera angle and shots to create even more expression as well as to get a certain emotional response from the audience whether it be a sense of thrill, pity, or perhaps anger.
The Housemaid (1960) by Kim Ki-Young, is the oldest film I have ever seen. Because the movie was filmed fifty years ago, the way people talk in the movie or how the movie is established can be out of style, so the movie didn’t seem interesting at first. However, as the movie expands on its storyline, I felt that the movie was very interesting, and the content of the movie could have been very sensational back in time. The movie depicts a family’s destruction by the introduction of a housemaid who sexually misbehaves.
ReplyDeleteIn the movie, the contrast between Mrs. Kim and the housewife is very clear. Mrs. Kim, the wife of Mr. Kim who is a music teacher at a factory is a traditional Koran housewife. She talks very calm, and wears a traditional Korean costume, Hanbok. She gets afraid of the rat, and depicted as a delicate woman. In contrast, the housewife is like a seductive femme fatale. She doesn’t get scared by the rat, catches rat with her hands, smokes, and etc. Housewife is represented as abnormal woman which can be very controversial especially in the 1960s in Korea. Also, even when Mrs. Kim gets informed the housewife is pregnant with Mr. Kim, the housewife doesn’t get kicked out of the house. Instead, housewife presses Mr. Kim and Mrs. Kim and becomes the authoritative one in the family.
Rat is an important factor throughout the movie. It not only contrasts Mrs. Kim and the housewife (Mrs. Kim depicted as a feminine woman when she gets scared of the rat and housewife catches the rat with her hand), but it is also used as a foreshadow throughout the movie. It constructs the creepiness and a sense of fear. Along with the rat, rat poison also foreshadows the destruction of the family. Rat poison plays a big role in the movie like when housewife attempts to fool Changsoon when she lies about how she put rat poison in the water, or when Mrs. Kim tries to kill the housewife by putting rat poison into the soup.
While watching the movie, I wondered about one character appearing in the beginning of the movie; Kwak. When thinking about the movie’s main storyline; introduction of the housemaid in Mr. Kim’s family and the destruction of his family, I wonder about Kwak’s presence in the movie because her existence and the fact that she sends the love letter to Mr. Kim doesn’t seem that relevant with the movie’s plot. Other than this and some minor movie effects (which can be explained since the movie was filmed in the 1960s), the movie has very sensational plot which makes the movie to be known as a prominent Korean classic thriller.
sorry I made a mistake by posting someone else's post (wrong copy/paste). Here's my response.
ReplyDeleteI was surprised how sensational this movie was and could not believe this film was made fifty years ago in Korea. As I was watching this film, I focused on how women (housemaid, female factory workers, and wife) are portrayed throughout this movie. This film was made and published during the 1950s which was the time period where roles of two genders were clearly segregated. Husband was considered as the 'outside person' whose main responsibility is to bring income for his family. On the other hand, wife was regarded as the 'inside person' whose chief responsibility was to take care of the children and the household. Invading roles of different gender was an unthinkable act. Due to the strong image of a father and husband as a bread maker, many husbands and fathers in the houses had the final, and many wives had to live under the shadow of their husbands.
However, industrialization took place in the patriarchal society, and it has brought extensive structural change in the Korean economy and transformed Korea into a modern capitalist nation in 1960s. Thousands of young women started to work in the factories, taking a share of economic responsibility of their husbands. This led to drastic change of role of women from docile housewives into active, confident people whom now have right to let their thoughts be known and opinions be heard, as they now support their family financially as well.
I think director Ki-Young Kim is trying to portray the changing image and role of women during 1960s, in contrast to 1950s. He carried out this task by portraying Dong-sik's wife as the bread maker of the family who does sewing work to supplement most of their income while Dong-Sik fails to support his family. More importantly, the housemaid is depicted as somewhat violent, greedy, and fearless person. She fearlessly lures Dong-Sik who is the man of the house that she works under. And when she aborts her child due to the wife’s act, she revenges by killing the son of Dong-Sik. Through these frightening deeds of Dong-Sik’s wife and the housemaid, director Ki-Young Kim emphasizes that women are not to be ignored and left out, but their thoughts and voices need to be heard and respected, as they are also people with feelings and desires. These fierce and violent images of women were juxtaposed with portrayal of Dong-Sik as a weak-hearted man who is so fragile in front of temptation from the housemaid. And, at the end of the film, Dong-Sik commits suicide with the housemaid, and this shows again how a man of the house can become powerless in front of housemaid’s presence.
The movie, The Housemaid (1960), by Kim Ki Young was a movie that seems to be influenced a lot by the black comedy and noir style movies prevalent in the 1950s and 60s. The story theme was quite simple. It shows how infidelity can cause a problem and how that problem can lead to serious circumstances like dominos. It really depicts the Korean society at that time when at the ending scene we see the man Dongsik faces the camera and tell the audience that how infidelity is bad and how it can lead to serious problems. It is highly understandable considering how conservative it was in that time period. Such a movie like this is a phenomenon itself and therefore the movie had to tell the audience to not get influenced by such media. The movie also contains a lot of the atmosphere as well as social perception of that time as we can see how the wife and the housemaid acts. The wife lets the housemaid to have the authority in the house which shows how much she cares about not only Dongsiks career to maintain but also about the family's reputation. In that period in Korea "infidelity" was considered as a scarlet letter and when people know about it, their life couldnt function in an ordinary way.
ReplyDeleteTechnique wise, there were many moving shots. Unlike many earlier black and white films that had still shots more, this movie has a high mobility in its scenes. Many tracking shots were made when the housemaid was walking outside on the veranda. Since the shots are made outside the window, it is special when it rains. Wecan see the rain drops along with the interior of the house.
In the movie the staircase is an object that has a huge meaning. It is a pathway that separates Dongsik's family and his privacy. Also, it is where most of the death occurred. The most interesting scene was when the housemaid gains power for not accusing the infidelity to the police. She drags Dongsik to the staircase to come to her bed. She talks to the wife while the wife is bowing to her to do whatever she wants. The camera is shot from the housemaid and it looks down on the wife. The staircase in this sense can also mean going up the social ladder or gaining authority.
Overall the film is very extreme in its story plot whereas it was very delicate in details. It was a shock when the story ends up like a dream, but it was a great movie.
JEONGWON MOON