New school… Tuition (1940), BFI Early Korean Cinema Season

This film was only rediscovered in 2014 in the Chinese Film Archive and of the dozen or so featured in this joint season of the BFI and Korean Culture Centre, it might well be my favourite. Based on a story by a fourth-grade schoolboy it tells the story of a similar boy’s struggle to get by in the face of poverty and illness. In comparison to other more overt melodramas, it offers the most naturalistic take on life under the Japanese whilst still offering a compelling and very satisfying narrative.

Korea was a Japanese colony from 1910 to 1945 and by the forties, as tonight’s supporting feature Patriots Day in Joseon, showed, the province was being told to be more grateful and supportive of the empire as the Sino-Japanese war progressed through its third year. By this stage Japanese was the chosen first language and yet, Tuition, though originally scripted entirely in that language was re-written to include extensive sequences in Korean.

As if that wasn’t challenging enough it also showed the poverty that could affect even the most hard-working and able of families with a story in which a young boy is left looking after his grandmother as his parents leave to make money as peddlers. That hard work and ingenuity plus steadfast loyalty and love triumph in the end is one thing but these are not necessarily Japanese traits despite the warmth shown by the Japanese school teacher who is the only major non-Korean character.

Directed primarily by Choi In-gyu (Angels on the Street) and Bang Han-joon who stepped in after the former was taken ill, the film is very well-made and seemingly went down a storm both in Korea and Japan where it was praised for illustrating “… the possibility of Joseon filmmakers to produce art films unstained by commercialism.” This point gets to the heart of Tuition’s enduring appeal, it presents as an honest film, treading a path the makers wanted to and telling a sentimental tale with humour and astute observation almost as if the original intentions of the 11-year old writer had been fully carried through.

At one point our young hero, Wu Yeong-dal (Jeong Chan-jo) is arguing with his deadly rival, the smartest girl in the class, An Jeong-hui (Kim Jong-il), over wood they are collecting until they look down to see rice fish in the stream; they immediately stop and work together to catch them. Thus, are friendships made by a mutual fascination with nature whether it be free fishes or even just the cucumber plants Jeong-hui sketches; are you interested in science asks the teacher, “no, I like drawing…” comes the reply.

The film shares its young protagonists’ fascination with discovery and, culminates in Yeong-dal’s epic 24-kilometre solo walk to seek help from his auntie in which we share his brave delight in finding his own way across his country via foot, ox-cart and bus.

We first encounter the two friends-to-be arguing over a football in the playground and then competing to impress their tutor, Mr Dashiro (Susukida Kenji) in class. Jeong-hui outdoes Yeong-dal by drawing their town on the map of Korea fibbing that her father had taken her there on the train. She’s got front and that rubs the boys the wrong way but soon she and Yeong-dal are united by shared interests and their mutual difficulty in paying their tuition fees.

At home Yeong-dal lives with his grandma (Bok Hye-suk) who struggles at the best of times until she falls ill and he must care after her as the money and food begins to run out. He’s not heard from his parents in months and begins to give up hope as everyday the mailman passes them by. He begins to skip school even as neighbours pitch in to help and even when Mr Dashiro subs him the two dollars to pay his school fees, he ends up having to give it to grandma’s landlord… there seems no end to their poverty trap until, in desperation, grandma thinks of her distant sister.

Will there be a happy ending? It doesn’t matter when a film is this engagingly charming and when you already know that Mun Ye-bong was playing Yeong-dal’s mother, you can expect a big finish and the bucolic dénouement does not disappoint.

The acting from the youngsters is especially impressive and is credit to the direction and a generosity of spirit that still leaps from the screen. Definitely one to watch out for and proof that even in the dark days, creativity and hope continue to drive us onwards from the screen.

Mun Ye-bong - perhaps the major film star of the colonial period in Korea?

Sex and the city… Sweet Dreams (1936)/Fisherman’s Fire (1938), BFI Early Korean Cinema

Mun Ye-bong, the first Korean film star? 

Sweet Dreams was rediscovered in the Chinese Film Archive in 2005 and is the earliest surviving Korean sound film and a fine example of the melodramatic fare that typified the cinema of the time. The dialogue is in Japanese with Korean subtitles and reflects the increasing control of the colonial government even though this is not a propagandist film, except for a strong message on the importance of road safety and motherhood.

The film was originally seven reels and was badly damaged when found, and there are some narrative jumps that result that can’t be laid at the door of director, Yang Ju-nam, who has some interesting ideas. A fight occurs off screen with appropriate sounds and the odd character falling into view, there is a good use of space, overhead shots of characters in pivotal conversations, tracking shots and extensive close-ups of the film’s star, the very striking Mun Ye-bong as things reach their fateful conclusion.

There are also some glorious shots of the streets and buildings of this distant Seoul, wide streets populated by very few cars – unimaginable now – and fascinating glimpses of hotels, cafes and theatres.

Tense reflection, Lee Geum-ryong and Mun Ye-bong

Mun Ye-bong plays Ae-soon a discontented house-wife married to a serious man, Lee Seon-ryong (Lee Geum-ryong) who frets over her continuous shopping and general galivanting. We see a bird in a cage, an image of how Ae-soon sees herself, even as she ignores her daughter Jeong-hee (rather splendidly played by Yoo Seon-ok). The couple row and Ae-soon leaves amidst genuinely distressing scenes as she pushes her daughter back as she slams the door… father walks slowly back into the room and comforts his daughter.

Ae-soon is picked up by a dodgy-looking chap with a sharp suit and spivvy moustache, Yoon Byeong-ha (Lim Woon-hak), who offers her the chance of the good life even though he’s all mouth and must steal to maintain the lifestyle. Ae-soon becomes bored and flirts with a theatre performer, sending him flowers which he gives to another performer, getting the measure of this her: “pretty flowers have thorns…”

As Ae-soon follows her dream of the sweet life through wealthy-male acquisition, her daughter dreams constantly of her mother’s love and the loss of happiness; it’s manipulative but believably painful. As with all melodrama there will be a balance and as Ae-soon shops her boyfriend after he pulls off a messy robbery, fate is about to intervene…

Mun Ye-bong and Lim Woon-hak

On this evidence, Mun Ye-bong was deservedly a star and has the emotional flexibility to accompany the looks. She is also in three of other extant films from this period, also included in the BFI/Korean Culture Centre’s season – Angels on the Street (1941), the full-on propagandist Military Train (1940) and Straights of Chosun (1943).

I watched Angels at the KCC and it’s a fascinating film about two orphaned children saved from the streets by a priest and his family. It was the first Korean film to experiment with live sound recording and has a neo-realist feel way ahead of even the Italians. Well worth seeking out and director Choi In-gyu deserves more recognition for a film that has gorgeous locations and smuggles plenty of native wit despite a full-on propagandist resolution complete with salutes to the Japanese flag.

Angels on the Street (1941)

 Fisherman's Fire (1938)

“She is old enough to do housekeeping here.”

“Housekeeping? Your wife can do housekeeping…”

This film was a different kettle of fish… but with the same melodramatic drivers and a stricter, more old-fashioned underlying morality. Young girl leaves the fishing village for the bright lights of Seoul; what could possibly go wrong?

Director Ahn Chul-yeong paints a lovely picture of the coastal life and this is a well-edited, visually poetic film with lingering shots of tumultuous seas set against a patient shoreline and a strong-featured cast. It looks idyllic and you wonder why anyone would want to leave it for the smelly old city unless, the y had to. The dialogue is recorded in studio and has the ambience to go with it, early days but Sweet Dreams sounded more naturalistic to me.

In-soon (Park Rho-kyeong) has just come of age and whilst her conservative fisherman father is keen for her to do the washing and cleaning she wants to explore, get educated and earn the money he is struggling to make… Sadly Dad gets lost at sea and, in debt to the dastardly money lender Mr Chang, her mother agrees to sell her to him only for his son, Chul-Soo, to offer to clear the debt… He has reasons of his own, of course, and is trying to steal her away from her true love, handsome fisher-boy Chun-Seok.

She ends up going with Chul-Soo to Seoul and things get very complicated and, frankly, very frank despite her pal Ok-Boon trying to lead her onto the straight and narrow. One thing leads to another and destitution may surely be followed with serious moral and physical consequences unless there’s a way of returning to the simple bliss of fishing.

A lovely-looking film and another precious snapshot of a lost age.

In-soon (Park Rho-kyeong) and her city "host" Chul-Soo

There’s still one week to go with the quietly-subversive Tuition (1940) on Tuesday 26^th (Mun Ye-bong is in that too) and Hurrah! For Freedom (1946) on 28^th – appropriately completing things with a celebration of Korea’s liberation from Japanese control after a quarter of a century. Details on the BFI and KCC sites.