#TheyAlso… Claire (1924), Kennington Bioscope with John Sweeney

Lya De Putti

Good programming from the Bioscope tonight with two films variously entitled Passions of Men and The Woman Always Pays… even in the early years there were important social questions being raised especially in Europe, in this case Germany and Denmark.

What a year it’s been for Weimar Cinema and out of the blue comes a rarity to Kennington extracted by Bioscope stalwart Tony Fletcher from the BFI archives – not lost but certainly a film that hasn’t been seen for some time.

Directed by Robert Dinesen, Claire (aka Passions of Men), stars the incredibly watchable Lya de Putti, the sharpest profile in Berlin with pencil-thin eyebrows capping sublime arches over eyes flickering the deepest darkest black… There’s something about Lya and that’s exactly what this film is about as the plot is essentially a story of her efforts to evade unwanted male attention; that might be a proto-feminist theme and it’s certainly not the only film of this period dealing in man’s inhumanity to woman.

Frida Richard playing another mum in The Path of Grete Lessen (1919)

Claire lives with a rich older man (Eduard von Winterstein, Claudius in Asta’s Hamlet) who has taken her in along with her mother (Frida Richard, who played the manically possessive mother in Lupu Pick’s New Year’s Eve aka Sylvester (1924)) with the aim of marrying her – he’s over fifty and she’s just twenty which means she was about sixteen when he made an offer that couldn’t be refused. The film repeatedly has Claire “facing the World” – a woman with little power and reliant on the kindness of male strangers.

Claire is, however, made of stern stuff and refuses the old man’s take it or leave it offer, leading the old buzzard to turf both her and her mother out immediately. He soon relents and chases after them on horseback in terrific shots along a snowy lane lined as far as the eye can see by winter trees. He loses the women and falls off his horse, losing the use of his legs in the process.

Eduard von Winterstein - a face made for drama

Claire gets a job as a poorly paid administrator whilst her mother grows increasingly frail in their one-room apartment. They can’t afford to eat properly and the old woman collapses and is almost gassed for want of a decent meal. A kindly Doctor (Theodor Loos) helps and even waves his fee after Claire tells him they can’t afford him again. Claire attendance at work is affected by her mother’s plight and she is dismissed by her boss unless that is, she would like to make up for her tardiness in kind.

On her way home she catches the eye of a con artist (Erich Kaiser-Titz) who spies the chance to romance only to have his plans interrupted by the police. He makes a break for it and hides thousands of Marks worth of forged notes in Claire’s bag. Claire gets arrested trying to buy her mother a chicken for supper… but has a lucky break when the police commander believes her story even when she opens her purse to reveal the rotten notes.

By the time she gets home her mother has passed away and, alone in the world as the Doctor says, accepts his kind offer of work as his assistant. The two go close and she frets over the visits of a woman who turns out o be his sister. The film could end with their embrace and the Doctor’s highly prominent hair fetish – he just can’t stroke it enough – where it not for the surprisingly early release of the forger.

Theodor Loos in kindly Doctor mode

This is where the plot gets a little convoluted when he works out where Claire lives and – successfully - tries to drive a wedge between her and the Doctor. Claire’s options begin to narrow but, as she has done all along, she refuses to sacrifice her independence and morality and, after a chance encounter, meets her former master’s son (Eberhard Leithoff) who pleads with her to return and look after him as his mental and physical health declines.

Trouble is, the old fellow is still infatuated with Claire and he has the gun in his pocket to prove it! Will Claire’s luck finally run out – I know it doesn’t sound like she’s had much – or is there one more twist to prevent the woman from paying?

Claire is convoluted fun and John Sweeney enlightened the narrative with romantic flourishes and dramatic interventions that ensured we were firmly focused on the extraordinary expressiveness of Lya. Michell Facey introduced and told of the Hungarian actress’ success in Germany – including Variety and her off-screen/in-trailer relationship with Emil Jannings – before she tried her luck in Hollywood. She couldn’t sustain success there and died tragically young after surgery to remove a chicken bone led to infection. By coincidence tonight was the anniversary of her death in 1931.

Asta on the tram

Claire was a rather calming experience after the Bioscope audience was left shaken and rather stirred by young Asta Nielsen’s outrageously sexual dancing in Afgrunden (1910). Colin Sell ventured that the actress might have had control of her costume design because the fabric used could hardly have been more revealing as she writhed her way around circus cowboy (Poul Reumert) in a deliberate, distended demonstration of dominance over her bound “captive”. Syncopated BDSM with a beat and a swing... as it were.

The alternate title for this film is The Woman Always Pays and even as early as 1910, Asta was questioning why this should be with a character who is dependent on male patronage and who cannot be free of the “male passions” that plague Lya too. They were making sophisticated films for women as well as men and you can only wonder what Die Asta – the first true European film star along with Max Linder – did for her sisters over this time?

She is famously one of the inventors of screen acting and her ability to express cinematically – nuanced and naturalistic – is something to behold. On the big screen she’s stunning, using fine-motor physical control that, as Angela Dalle Vacche has said, seemed to anticipate the close-up's subliminal impact.

Colin Sell accompanied with remarkably steady hands despite the on-screen excitement and combined so well with this remarkably advanced film which, blemishes aside, stands as one of the pinnacles of early European cinema.

"And she can dance..."

Childhood’s end… Scattered Night (2019), London Korean Film Festival Closing Gala, Regent Street Cinema

Remarkably this was co-directors Lee Jihyoung and Kim Sol’s graduation film and in the post-screening Q&A, Kim Sol said that it had even got their tutor to admit that they’d worked hard. He or she may have been very hard to please but this film is a quietly spectacular family drama that touches on many of the themes of the festival and strikes new ground in terms of the universality and deceptive simplicity of its sadness.

The story centres on a family in crisis, parents Mum (Kim Hyeyoung) and Dad (Lim Hojun) – who in the subtitles at least, refer to themselves in the third person throughout - and their children ten-year old Su-min (Moon Seunga) and her older brother Jin-ho (Choi Junwoo). Mum and Dad can no longer continue living together and have decided to move out of the family home and somehow split the children between them in separate flats the only problem being how and who?

This is a common heartbreak – how many families does this affect? - and given extra punch by the directorial team with Kim Sol focused on the cinematography and Jihyoung on the emotional, performative narrative of her script. In the opening sections a wide-angled lens is used to introduce the home and all members of the family but gradually Kim Sol shifts to a tighter focus, often hand-held, closing in on the remarkable emoting of the children and sometimes only showing their parents in part.

Make no mistake, the two youngsters give incredibly detailed performances, especially young Moon Seunga, and the directors deserve all the plaudits that they have had and will continue to get for their work. The film won both the Grand Prix in the Jeonju Festival's Korean competition (2019) and the Best Actress Award went to Moon.

Quality time? Choi Junwoo, Moon Seunga and Lim Hojon

There’s not much to describe in the way of action in Scattered Night, but there is a compelling journey made by the children… Moon is almost ever-present and to a large degree we experience the situation through her mentality with both Mum and Dad bewildering with their shifts from focused attentiveness to behaviour beyond the pre-teen’s ken. One moment Mum is focused on clipping her nails, only half-attentive, the next she gets closer to her daughter as she helps her clip her nails… the ebb and flow of everyday family engagement revealed through nail clippers. There are many such moments; a family increasingly out of its own focus.

Mum and Dad struggle to articulate and in a key discussion with the children they are shot from the side and backs as we see the youngsters put into words what they’re actually trying to say. The family completes the sense of each individual and it will take a long time for the damage being done to be fixed. The parents find it hard to use the words in their heads, perhaps they’re more scared than the children, they can see how lonely life is.

Su-min worries about awkwardness developing between herself and her brother and he responds that there already is… it’s funny in a well-observed way and the humour comes across before the subtitles translate the specific words. The timing of the performers and their expressiveness means that there’s an innocence at play and the hidden tragedy is that we see from the children that they do not fully comprehend how deeply their lives will change.

The parents offer the children three options, both can stay with Mum or one each with Mum and Dad… both staying with Dad doesn’t appear to be a runner as, in his words, Mum will get “jealous” – his most childish moment. It’s for the children to decide… and the way they live in future will indeed change everything but the film succeeds so well in making us feel this as children do. No mean feat. One to watch and cast and crew also not to be missed in future!

So Mayer provided an excellent introduction and also facilitated a Q&A with Kim Sol after the screening - just when we we all reeling from her film!

This was a splendid way to close the home leg of the 14th London Korean Film Festival, but the films carry on across the UK until 24th November, full details on their website.

I know a little more about Korean cinema than I did two weeks ago, and this has only raised more questions and connections to seek out. See you next year LKFF for #15!

Kim Sol gives As to So Mayer's Qs post screening

To the heart... Aimless Bullet (1961), London Korean Film Festival

“Maybe we can change our fate.”

“The wall of fate divides us and we cannot bring it down with a gun.”

“Why not? Why not!”

Yu Hyun-mok’s dark tale of a family’s struggles eight years after the Korean War is regarded as one of the best films of the period and in all Korean cinema. It’s a rough ride but it does not disappoint and has an intensity that is still startling.

At one point, on the run from the police after committing a bank robbery, Yeongho (Choi Moo-ryong) is chased through underground sewers, only stopped, momentarily, by the body of a mother hanging dead from the ceiling, her child strapped, still alive to her back. It’s almost ludicrous and yet it hits you hard as a symbol of a desperate country still overrun with the American soldiers and with so many living in poverty with no future.

There are a number of deaths in the film and most happen off screen, casual carnage among an aimless people lacking hope and direction with the exception of the odd lucky movie star, hardworking streetwalkers and dentists. A beautiful woman is pushed to her death by an obsessed young poet who dives after her, if he can’t have her there’s no point in life, a women dies in childbirth and yet her husband, all too defeated to properly process her passing, leaves the morgue and jumps in a cab to, well, nowhere…

Cheolho trudges home

The story is centred on the family of an underpaid accountant Cheolho (Kim Jin-kyu) whose bed-ridden mother (Noh Jae-sin), is still living with traumatic stress post-war and keeps on shouting out: "Let's get out of here!". But, of course, the family cannot, eking out a living in a shanty town with Cheolho's Wife (Jung-suk Moon) barely able to provide for their children and his sister, Myeongsuk (Seo Ae-ja) forced into prostitution, earning money from the American soldiers still serving in Seoul – there were some 57,000 in 1961 when this film was released.

Cheolho spends the film nursing toothache, unable to afford getting his wisdom teeth sorted out and putting his family first with his meagre wage not even allowing him the bus fare to get to work. He trudges from home to the city every day, hopeless… without purpose, just clinging on.

The veterans, Yoon Il-bong centre

Cheolho’s brother Yeongho seems to have more spirit, a war veteran who still dresses well and spends his time drinking with his former soldiers some of whom carry the marks of the war, one has a metal hook for a hand, another can only walk with crutches (Yoon Il-bong, who is ridiculously handsome).

Yeongho also has a good-looking girlfriend, Miri (Kim Hye-jeong) who is an actress and tries to get him a part in the film she is making. The director interviews Yeongho and tells him he’s looking for a veteran with the exact same wounds as his – shrapnel entry and exit wounds on the torso. Yeongho is disgusted and refuses to sell his wounds for entertainment.

“Change the story. Change it so that he has no eyes, no nose and no legs. That way it will sell more. So, what you need is not me but my rotten scars, and you want me to sell them? I didn’t get shot at for fun!”

Yeongho runs into Seol-hui

Yeongho has already been evolving a Plan B after meeting the beautiful former nurse Seol-hui, (Mun Hye-ran) who shows him her top floor “apartment” atop an industrial building and, as the two drift together there’s hope in love. But this is Korea in 1960…

Seol-hui shows Yeongho a service revolver and wants him to have the gun. He has had enough of respecting the rules and decides to be more “daring” … setting up a bank robbery with his former comrades in support; what options are left in a destructed world of shame and poverty?

Yu Hyun-mok directs with rawness and economy giving the two brothers adequate focus and allowing the supporting actors their chance to establish rich characters. It is a highly accomplished film and rightly lauded in the canon of Korean film.

Impossible choices for Myeongsuk

This sparkling restoration is a highlight of the London Korean Film Festival, it’s a film I would recommend very highly so tell your taxi driver to take you directly to the Picturehouse Central on Wednesday 13th at 6.30pm!

It's also being screened at:

Edinburgh 18th November

Belfast on 19th November

Manchester 23rd November

The root of all evil? Alraune (1928) with Stephen Horne and Martin Pyne, Barbican

So good to be back at the Barbican for a rare silent screening and with expertly inspired accompaniment from the two-man band of Horne and Pyne: four hands, ten instruments?

Directed with sure-footed competence more than style by Henrik Galeen, Alraune doesn’t rank with the best of Weimar cinema but it is still a very interesting film and one I’ve always wanted to see projected with live accompaniment. There are long passages when little happens but human interactions and the music sustained the film in these quieter moments. Variously known as Unholy Love, Mandrake, or A Daughter of Destiny, Alraune is missing a few key segments and again the accompaniment stepped in to offer thematic uplifts as well as emotional context throughout.

The music was eloquently varied, featuring more than just the duo’s prime instruments of drum and piano. Martin’s vibraphone, played with bow as well as soft mallets, lead the line in plaintive and eerie interplay with Stephen’s piano and as the two switched instruments they worked superbly well in support of the events on screen. There was magic in the air on and off.

On screen the magic stemmed from the Germanic Middle Age legend of the Mandrake root (the Alraune of the title), which – and listen carefully here - if left to absorb a hanged man’s “essence” in the ground under his execution, was capable of giving life either by enabling pregnancies or helping witches produce children without the aid of a living sperm donor. Such progeny were said to have no souls and sound far more trouble than they’re worth but, you know, there’s always someone ready to give it a go: to mess with Nature.

First of all, find a hanging man.

Step forward our mad scientist for the day, former Golem of this parish, Paul Wegener who plays Professor Jakob ten Brinken who has become interested in the nature versus nurture debate and this has somehow led him onto the legend of the root. By using the mandrake, he hopes to engineer a human being in order to establish “whether the parents’ genetic make-up, has a purely random effect on the offspring.” Can he create something pure and free from hereditary conditioning? I think you know where this is heading.

The professor grows the Mandrake as required and gets his nephew Franz Braun (Iván Petrovich) to help him find a lady of the “lowest order” - Die Dirne (The Whore) played by Mia Pankau - to act as the incubation chamber for the new being. Just as the woman arrives at the Professor’s apartments, turning in shock to see him emerge in white coat, the film jumps forward almost two decades… some sense lost through censoring perhaps?

Oh, mother... Mia Pankau

Alraune ten Brinken (Brigitte Helm) is the fully grown experiment, now at boarding school and is first seen toying with fly as it attempts to escape from a glass of water, she reaches out, not to rescue but to push it back; not the behaviour of a well-educated young woman. There is more to come as she leads her classmates into acts of rebellion, she dances, wears cologne and plants a stage beetle on the mother superior’s robes.

Clearly Alraune has out-grown school and to facilitate her escape has lured a young man, Wölfchen (Wolfgang Zilzer) into loving her: he is to steal money from his family and they are to run away. Once on their train to freedom she orders champagne and starts flirting with a likely lad who spies her from the corridor. Wölfchen tries to fight him off but there’s to be no respite as a troop of circus performers join the train. Alraune is immediately impressed by the magician’s sleight of hand especially when in one sexually obvious moment he lets a mouse run up her skirt; she leans back and looks him straight in the eye when even Bad Maria might think twice.

Paul Wegener and Brigitte Helm

At the circus things move on and Alraune is seen sharing a cigarette with the lion tamer (Louis Ralph) standing so close that she can light his fire with her own as it were. Chided for her wanton troublesome-ness Alraune walks into the lions’ cage challenging the beasts to come and have a go if they think they’re cat enough. The animals don’t move until the Tamer rushes in with his whip.

So, a heartbreaker with nerves of steel and a twisted sado-masochistic streak… is this what the Professor wanted to find out? How would a woman born from the human stew of a prostitute, a murderer and the mysterious root vegetable work out?

He’ll soon be able to find out as he finally catches up on his “daughter” after years of searching. He whisks her off to polite society where she plays tennis with Der Vicomte (handsome John Loder out of The First Born) who soon proposes… But, he’s not the only man to have fallen for Alraune and the Professor blackmails her into staying under his “care”.

He's behind you... 

From this point one it’s a battle between the scientist and his creation and we all know how those usually turn out or do we? The film has more than a few tricks and turns up its sleeve … there’s an irony in the impact of the Professor’s own true “nature” on the “nurture” of his subject perhaps?

 Alraune is worth watching purely for Brigitte Helm’s performance alone. I love her physicality and dancer’s contortions: she seems almost too frail to be an evil thing and yet there’s considerable strength behind her movement as the Professor will find out. She has the range too and whilst it’s fun to watch her evil contortions we also see hints of a growing humanity… or do we? Paul Wegener is pretty good too, mad science-ing with consummate abandon and obsessing intensely about his creation, Frankenstein with a mid-life crisis and unrealistic expectations.

But, as with all the very best silent film screenings, it was the mix of film, music – excellent audience! – and, of course this wonderful venue! There’s more to come at the Barbican in the New Year and here’s to more screenings like this!!

Details on the Barbican website!

Love and worship… A Hometown of the Heart (1949), Korean Film Festival

This year’s London Korean Film Festival is celebrating a century of Korean film but sadly much of the first 30 years is lost which is why Yong-Gyu Yoon’s striking, bitter-sweet film is to be treasured all the more. It’s a beautifully shot film that finds pain even in peace and is a fearless examination of family, maternal bonds and mortal sin: do we deserve happiness, is it even a natural state?

A young boy is abandoned aged three by his mother and left in the care of monks at a Buddhist temple in the hills far outside Seoul. She is poor and unable to care for one more child and as we join the film we see the boy Do-seong – played with remarkable tenderness by Min Yu – a few years on, trying to understand why he was abandoned and clinging on to the hope that someday she will return.

The chief monk (Ki-jong Byeon) won’t reveal the truth and wants Do-seong to complete his spiritual journey in order to atone for the sins of his mother but, as those around tell him tales can he attain this higher level in ignorance? The temple worker (Heon-yong Oh) who tells him his mother will return when he has grown taller or when the next year has passed, means well but this only keeps him in a childlike state of grace.

Other boys hunt for birds as Do-seong lives in discipline and hope.

Min Yu and Eun-hie Choi

A widow (Eun-hie Choi) and her mother (Geum-seong Seok) visit the temple, seeking to make sense of her loss by contributing to the upkeep of the sacred site. Grief attracts loss and the boy and widow become drawn to each other. Eventually the widow asks to adopt Do-seong and take him to live in Seoul where she will pay for his education and he will live well… it’s an answer to the boy’s prayers, a new “mother” to fill the void he has always struggled with.

The widow has a fan made from feathers and Do-seong starts killing birds to make a similar fan for his mother who he is certain he will meet in Seoul. The need for his mother leads him away from Buddhist instruction and there can only be trouble when she does indeed arrive, unknown to him, to argue with the master that she should have him back. The priest is unbending and, for the boy’s spiritual wellbeing, insists that he stay.

Clearly there is going to be a conflict between the strictures of faith and maternal love and the film deals with this in unexpected and thought-provoking ways. It says much that speaks to the modern heart and the juxtaposition of Do-seong’s turmoil with the peaceful surroundings subverts expectations: there is no peace without love and loyalty is a poor substitute for family.

Yong-Gyu Yoon’s understands the mind of a child and balances his emotional narratives with sublime external cinematography. His challenge to the audience is both subtle and respectful, you cannot watch this film without taking sides, forming opinions and, ultimately being surprised.

The London KoreanFilm Festival continues until 14th and then heads out around the UK; full details on the website!

RW Paul the 2nd & Adolphe the 1st... The King on Main Street (1925), Kennington Bioscope with Colin Sell

"Yes, yes, by all means sure-fire box office values ... the Menjou fans will eat this up ... it is mighty fine entertainment, and they will like it!" Film Daily

Mr Kevin Brownlow was rather incredulously reading out some of the notices for The King on Main Street with one paper claiming it was up there with Valentino in The Eagle and The Big Parade as one of the best releases of the month although the King’s budget could barely have covered a week of Vidor’s epic. We were seeing Kevin’s 16mm print and this has some parts missing, namely the starting reel and the saucier aspects of Greta Nissen’s role, excised for the home market and, rightly so judging by the way the actress was wearing silk in her Paris boudoir.

In truth the film is a modest effort but it does feature superb playing from Adolphe Menjou as the runaway King Serge IV of Molvania who, on a business trip to America nips out from the confines of royal duty for a day of adventure at Coney Island. Here he meets a young kid who shows him the ropes vis-à-vis hot dogs and the business of fun including a memorable roller coaster ride filmed with the camera close-up on Menjou as he acts his way up and down and, indeed, around Coney’s biggest dipper.

Gotta love Bessie 

He is also reacquainted with the excessively lovely Bessie Love as the all-American Gladys Humphreys who has already thrown her iced bun at him in Paris overcome with the sight of royalty. As Kevin explained the film was cashing in on the royal fad sparked by the handsome Prince of Wales, Edward the Abdicator, albeit a few years before our King ran for his life.

Love’s always a treat and here she absolutely rips the floor up as, ukulele in hand she Charlestons the heck out of the carpet at small-town Little Falls reception for the King arranged by her beau John Rockland (the disturbingly Ford Sterling-esque Oscar Shaw). Wikiparently, Love’s rip-roaring helped popularise the dance in the US and strictly speaking, she’s 10+ in comparison with the Saturday night kids we get from the BBC’s dance show.

Theatre Magazine was definitely impressed "... Bessie Love gives a perfect exhibition of the Charleston, proving that it can be danced with extreme grace and agility, and yet without a single hint of wriggling vulgarity. We hereby award Miss Love the palm as the greatest Charleston expert on the screen if not on the stage -- which is by way of being a miracle, for ordinarily a film dance looks as silly as the capering of goats".

There’s some business involving selling oil to unscrupulous American Arthur Trent (Joseph Kilgour) – how little things change – and the King may even be forced to betray his country’s best interests in order to protect Gladys’ honour but, y’know, it’s probably a “great deal” when you look at it closely. The King also finds a way to smuggle Greta’s saucy Therese Manix by getting her to marry his butler Hugo (Londoner Edgar Norton) and it makes a man of him in scenes largely cut to preserve our frail morality.

Monta Bell directs with straightforward efficiency influenced, as Kevin pointed out, by his time working alongside Chaplin on A Woman of Paris a couple of years earlier – Adolfe was also in that too. Other existing elements of The King on Main Street include two sequences filmed in early two-strip Technicolor which might explain its success along with the charm of the King and his women. Lois Wilson is also an uncredited "guest" extra in a hotel lobby scene – I think I spotted her but I do see her everywhere I go.

Colin Sell accompanied and riffed in divine style on By the Light of the Silvery Moon as well as launching into a spirited Yes, We Have No Bananas as the jazz band at the reception tried to find something that would pass as the Molvania national anthem.

Is Spiritualism A Fraud? (1906) 

The first half of the evening had featured Professor Ian Christie continuing his birthday tribute to RW Paul with some films he hadn’t shown at the BFI last month. One particular delight was A Soldier’s Courtship (1896, repeat 1896!) which has a good deal of performance and plot as a young couple on a bench are disturbed by an old woman as they canoodle leading the titular soldier to upend the seat and the bothersome intruder. Made the same year as Edison’s The Kiss, this film is far ahead in style and entertainment.

Edison’s failure to extend the patent for his Kinematograph to Europe was, possibly, because he was wary of a legal wrangle with William Friese-Greene’s very similar machine and there is another major step up the Ladder of Recovery currently being climbed by Bristol’s finest “father of cinema”.

This laid the way open for Paul to manufacture his own version and to advance the design and implementation of the technology. His wife Ellen, featured in heavy disguise as the annoying old lady in the first film, introduced Paul to more theatrical ideas and collaborations and the first couple of British film became established as both innovators and commercial hits.

A Soldier’s Courtship... well, they'll have to get wed after *that*!

Paul’s illustrated catalogues make it clear that his film’s were colourised even from 1896 and exhibitors would pay a pretty penny to see the likes of Comic Costume Race (1896), The Twins' Tea Party (1896) and – Christie’s suggestion for the first two-act film - Come Along, Do! (1898) recently completed with an animation based on just two frames by his son. A further four frames have now been found by the BFI and so there is more to be done.

Christie is hopeful that there will be a lot more to come as archives around the world begin to re-evaluate their possible-Pauls.What we have is fascinating and, as at the BFI, it was interesting to see how the filmmaking developed into longer-form with trick camerawork as in Artistic Creation (1901), the bizarre The Magic Sword (1901) – knight loses girl to giant devil and wins her back thanks to Fairy and Sword (I think) – up to Is Spiritualism A Fraud? (1906) a rather violent take down of the fad for communication with the dead.

The Magic Sword (1901)

Once again Paul’s documentary work was also covered including two films he made of the tragic events around the launch of HMS Albion in 1898 – 34 people were drowned when the huge wash smashed into the pontoon on which they were standing. Though criticised by former collaborator Birt Acres for exhibiting the films, Paul gave them away for free and a fund was set up to help the families who had suffered. Paul was using an electric camera which kept on running and the proof of the pudding is in the striking close-up of Ellen on the boat approaching the launch.

John Sweeney accompanied these cinematic gobbets with his uncanny period feel and sense of dramatic timing; many of the films are missing starts and ends and could catch out the unwary. Nothing got past the safe hands and quicksilver thematic inventions of Mr Sweeney though!

Quartet… The Day a Pig Fell into the Well (1996), Regent Street Cinema, London Korean Film Festival

The Day a Pig Fell into the Well was Hong Sangsoo’s directoral debut and it’s a sophisticated tale of four interlinked characters that, for a man reputed to have no more than a dozen DVDs, shows an envious depth of cinematic convention.

The people in the film are flawed and erratic, especially the men, and, as film programmer Simon Ward said in his introduction, in films such as Grass – also shown last night – Sangsoo shows some influence from Antonioni. Whilst he wasn’t referring to this film there is the same communicative distance as in the Italian’s work with men often unable to express themselves to women except through sex and anger.

One of the men is Hyo Seob (Eui-sung Kim) like Marcello Mastroianni in La Notte, a writer and yet he cannot give verbal expression to his heart. He’s having an affair with an elegant married woman Bo Kyeong (Eung-Kyung Lee) who, married to the sexually stale husband Dong Wu (Jin-seong Park), is perhaps attracted to his youth and passion - everything she has lost in marriage.

Eun-hee Bang and Eui-sung Kim

Hyo Seob declares his love for Bo Kyeong and yet he is still conducting an affair with the much younger woman (Eun-hee Bang) who he is stringing along. It’s hard not to see the director in the character of Hyo, but then you have to write about what you know!

Hyo’s a fitfully published author hanging on for his next paycheck and fetishizing the process of creation, making his own notebooks and handwriting even in an age of desk-top computers of which many wonderful vintage models are shown. As with one of the character’s pagers, they’re a reminder of how much has changed in just twenty-odd years.

Not human nature though and Hyo’s true colours are revealed when he gets drunk with friends and tries to force one woman to drink too much and then picks a fight with a waitress who spills food on his only shirt. He ends up with a week in jail despite an eloquently-hollow defence.

Eung-Kyung Lee

To see what Bo Kyeong sees in him we have to follow her husband on one of his business trips. He’s a very particular man with OCD germophobia who is clearly not that important as his meeting is delayed throughout the day leaving him stuck in a hotel hoping to see his client the next day. It’s humiliating and yet that seems his lot. He orders a prostitute and asks just for a conversation… he’s completely lost any intimacy with his wife and probably all through his own inward obsessions. The woman lights a cigarette – there’s a lot of smoking throughout, I was gasping for a Woodbine and I don’t even smoke – and says that men like him are the real perverts…

When finally he does get what she thinks he’s asked for, the condom breaks and he’s in a serious spin trying to clean away potential disease as she laughs. He goes for a test and, after Bo Kyeong finds out, the result hangs over the rest of the film, right up until the climactic finish.

Hong Sangsoo weaves his four-sided narrative carefully; it’s an ambitious first feature and as the character arcs get closer together the time spent on each one gets shorter and shorter as we had towards a collision between these careful orbits and, indeed, the satellites revolving in separate circuits around each main player.

Jin-seong Park and Eung-Kyung Lee

This film was made about a decade after South Korea was democratized and times where tough with almost all the characters short of money. The young ticket girl played by Eun-hee Bang gets a break voicing video games but when she is asked to add “vocalese” to a animated porn film she draws the line. Her regular work is hanging by a thread and she is pursued by another man who

He wants to posses her just as possession drives the other men; money, commodification and insecurity are the results of the hard-won freedoms the nineties brought.

The characters are wonderfully drawn and the performances generate real sympathy and antipathy as the director pursues his vision to the profoundly uncompromising end. The supporting cast is also especially vibrant and one of them was Song Kang-ho in his film debut: so many arrive fully formed like Hyo’s neighbour who loans Bo some money and notes that he’s now growing chilli and the waitress who just won’t take any of his drunken abuse.

Eui-sung Kim and his ever-present cigarette

Ultimately you get the feeling that this new freedom requires a more spirited response from not just the characters in the film but everyone. This much is true everywhere. The pig long ago fell into the well in the UK… and we need to pull it out.

The London Korean Film Festival continues in London until 14^th November and then around the UK until 24^th – full details are on the website.

There must be more...

From the land to the sea... The Seashore Village (1965), London Korean Film Festival opening gala with Kim Soo-yong, Regent Street Cinema

“And the wives live their lives with a yearning in the heart.”

Kim Soo-yong is in amazing spirits for a 90-year old man who has just flown 14 hours from Seoul to London but this director of some 119 films had every right to be as he introduced his mesmeric seaside adventure romance from 1965. Even through his highly-proficient and quick-witted interpreter, Soo-yong’s sense of humour and spirit shone through and as he praised us Brits for staying to the end of the Q&A unlike say the French or the Italians… his charming of the full house at Britain’s oldest cinema was complete!

This is the 14^th London Korean Film Festival and The Seashore Village is an excellent choice for openers as it reflects the festival’s themes of the impact of modernity on old traditions. The story is set in a traditional fishing village where, even in the sixties, old values constricted women in particular; a town full of fisherman’s widows who rarely if ever get a second chance at marriage. Soo-yong was asked about his reputation for foregrounding women’s issues but this is more from his inherent sense of fairness than, he says, any defined support for feminism.

Ko Eun-ah

The main character Hae-soon (Ko Eun-ah who was in her second year at university at the time) loses her husband to a storm after just ten days of marriage and is left on the collective shelf along with a dozen others who have lost their men to the risky business of fishing. We are lulled into a sense of security by beautiful panoramas of the sea and the village from  cinematographer Jeon Jo-Myeong who’s imagery will be so important to the story, as the villagers are introduced along with the themes of superstition, fear and gender roles that will run through the film.

We see a variety of characters, the helmsman and his pregnant wife who worries about the gloomy dreams she had last night, a boy trying to avoid school as his life will – probably – be just like his father’s, fishermen only need to learn their trade… a girl asks for money to attend school and her father promises it after he returns from the fishing trip. There’s a fluid light touch about these moments and that camera is everywhere around the players.

The boats get ready to leave

The two Seong-gu brothers are late, as usual, older brother Soon-im (Jeon Gye-hyeon) dallying with his pretty new wife and younger Seong-chil (Lee Nak-hoon) trying to hurry him along. We get the first glimpse of Hwang Jung-seun as their mother as a flicker of dread crosses her face when the blinds are pulled back and she looks out to the sea. She’s a remarkable actress and carries so much story value in her expression. Her husband died at sea and she watches and waits for the seeming inevitable.

They’re hurried up by opinionated misfit Sang-soo (Shin Young-kyun) a rebel without cause save for a fascination with Hae-soon, glancing back at her as he follows the boys to the boat. He’s not fishing today; is he not as brave as the others or just too canny.

The boats leave the harbour and before long a typhoon quickly breaks and rips across sea and land as panic erupts, the women pray with the fate of their men in the lap of the sea gods. All this in the first ten minutes…

Hwang Jung-seun (centre)

The family mourns the loss of Soon-im and the ritual is fascinating, as his mother cradles his “spirit” and returns it home to her side even as his body is lost miles under the sea. Tradition dictates that Hae-soon must join the other widows in dutiful mourning and this group is part work-team – diving under the water to lay the communal fishing net – and self-help group. The women laugh and joke, sharing their experience of loss and trying to keep on living, missing their partners but, shockingly, not necessarily missing sex – you don’t need a man for everything.

Sang-soo would disagree on this point and he steps up his advances to the point at which, to my surprise at least, Hae-soon relents and the two begin a relationship. Sang-soo brags of his conquest and gets a beating from Seong-chil who quickly realises that this may be his sister-in-law’s last chance of happiness. He helps to persuade his mother to allow her to head off with Sang-soo.

Shin Young-kyun

In the 1953 novel by Oh Young-soo, the story ends as the couple heads inland to live in the mountains but Kim Soo-yong takes us on a different path. The couple have a series of adventures inland and do indeed find each other in the mountain stillness, thrown together against a beautiful backdrop highlighted by Jo-Myeong’s camerawork yet again.

The mountains and the sea inspire Hae-soon in a similar way but whereas the sea beyond the shore is an elemental force, in land the dangers are man-made. Human nature versus nature… one unchanging and the other more cruelly unpredictable. Will Hae-soon find happiness amongst men with her man or will her sisters by the shore prove more steadfast.

Supportive, argumentative... sisters.

Kim Soo-yong made a, thought-provoking, philosophical film and yet tonight he said that he wasn’t quite satisfied with the film after it was made with the young actors more interested in playing their parts than in supporting his over-arching themes. He accused his young stars of now being “too stuck up” to attend their early work – they should be proud of this film.

The London Korean Film Festival now runs until 24^th November and there are dozens of excellent films screening across London and elsewhere celebrating a century of Korean cinema.

Full details are on the website.