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| A still of director Han Hyung-mo's 1956 box office hit "Madam Freedom" / Korea Times file |
US scholar revisits 1956 box office hit, filmmaker's cinematic style
By Kang Hyun-kyung
Director Han Hyung-mo's 1956 box office hit "Madam Freedom" was a scandalous movie as it created a cinematic character who was "unthinkable" of in the 1950s when the nation was reeling from the devastating consequences of the Korean War.
It portrays a free spirit, upper-class woman Oh Seon-young (Madam Oh) who is privileged and seemingly has no good reason to complain about her life ― from the viewpoint of ordinary Koreans at that time. Leading a luxurious lifestyle, she becomes involved in an affair with a married man.
Her choice to leave her marriage to a professor in order to live her own life as an independent individual -- as opposed to being an obedient housewife -- put the patriarchal Korean society into shock and provoked debate about modern women.
The movie popped up in public discourse whenever film experts discussed Korean cinema. In most cases, they focused on culture shock ordinary audiences of the time had felt about the female character and her overtly open-mindedness toward Western culture.
Despite the decades-old discussion, few have given a convincing explanation for the huge success of the movie that dealt with a social taboo. How could a movie dealing with a topic that breaks existing norms and a filmmaker who was ahead of his time be able to captivate the conservative general public and become a mega hit?
Christina Klein, an English Department professor at Boston College in the United States, gives her explanation of the phenomenon in her new book, titled "Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema."
In the 1950s, the author concludes the time was ripe in Korea for a masterpiece feminist film like "Madam Freedom."
According to her, a culture of feminism began to sprout with the presence of two iconic women leaders ― educator Helen Kim and Lee Tai-young, the first Korean woman to have passed the state bar exam. Klein also says U.S. foreign policy to spread Western ideas, including freedom and women's rights, to counter the influence of communism played a part in creating a favorable atmosphere for cinema featuring the emancipation of women as a theme.
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| Christina Klein, an English Department professor at Boston College in the United States and author of "Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema," says "Madam Freedom" is a fabulous movie. / Courtesy of Christina Klein |
Klein calls "Madam Freedom" a fabulous film.
"As I watched, I was captivated by an overwhelming sense of familiarity combined with a curiosity-piquing sense of difference," she said in an email interview with The Korea Times. "It was the film's style, however, that stood out to me. I was struck by director Han Hyung-mo's mastery of classical Hollywood conventions: the confidence of his analytical editing, the boldness of his moving camera, the destiny of the film's mise-en-scene, and the abundance of its music."
Klein says Han was "a very talented filmmaker whose work has not been fully appreciated by film scholars."
In "Cold War Cosmopolitanism," the American author rediscovered the Korean filmmaker and his signature film "Madam Freedom" and delved into his distinct cinematic style and the supportive filmmaking environment of his time which helped him pull off the "masterpiece" against all odds.
Klein said she watched "Madam Freedom" in 2009 and it inspired her to publish a book about Korean cinema.
"I discovered the older films in 2009 when Harvard University hosted a semester-long workshop on Korean cinema from the 1950s and 1960s. As I began reading up on these films, I came across many references to Madame Freedom as the most famous ― and scandalous ― film of the 1950s," she said. "When I watched it for myself, I was sept away by it."
Among others, she said she was intrigued by the film's depiction of a modern woman who challenged the patriarchal norms of the day with her assertion of her own will and desires in a Confucian society.
In "Cold War Cosmopolitanism," the author raises a question: How was it possible to make such a technically polished film only three years after the end of the Korean War?
She finds the presence of the U.S. military in Korea before and after the war served as a watershed event that exerted a great deal of influence on the modernization of Korea, albeit not the only factor. The U.S. military bases came into existence with a breeze of Western culture. The three-year war killed many men and Korean women had to shoulder the burden of becoming breadwinners. The U.S. military bases created some jobs for women.
"Watching (Madam Freedom), I could sense the presence of the tens of thousands of American soldiers and the millions of dollars of American aid that seemed to be hovering just beyond the edges of the movie's frame," she said. "It made me curious about the relationship between the style of this film and the political, military and economic presence of the United States within Korea during the 1950s."
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| "Cold War Cosmopolitanism: Period Style in 1950s Korean Cinema" by Christina Klein |
Klein argues that the modernization of Korean cinema in the 1950s, however, was much more than Americanization as the country was encouraged to interact with other parts of the free world under the U.S. government's careful foreign policy approach to promote universal Western values, such as freedom and capitalism.
"Actually, the most interesting thing I discovered was Washington's effort via The Asia Foundation, which at that time was a CIA front organization, to promote the Korean film industry," she said. "American diplomats in Asia during the early 1950s were very concerned about the success of left-leaning filmmakers in Japan, Hong Kong and of course China, which targeted the large Chinese population in Southeast Asia. Their response was to funnel resources to non-leftists commercial filmmakers across Asia so that they could make more entertaining films and thereby attract larger audiences."
She said the Asia Foundation's most successful project was in Korea. "It financed one of the country's first film studios, which later became known as the Jeongneung studio and ushered into existence an organization called the Korean Motion Picture Cultural Association, which managed the studio and rented out equipment to commercial filmmakers."
Klein is a Korean cinema fan and published an article about director Bong Joon-ho in 2008.
