I Choose Evil - Lawbreakers Under the Military Dictatorship
2019 marks the official celebration of 100 years of Korean cinema. In 1919, the owner of a Seoul movie theater decided to put some of the money he had earned from screening imported films into shooting a local production. The result was Fight for Justice, the story of a man who tries to prevent his greedy stepmother from stealing the family fortune. It turned out to be a hit, although whether or not we should be calling Fight for Justice a film is open to debate. It was a kinodrama: a blend of live performance by actors and screened film footage. For this reason, some film historians argue that we should really be celebrating Korean cinema’s centennial in 2023, when the first full-length features were made. But for better or for worse, Fight for Justice has been granted official status as Korea’s first film.
If we look back at some of the previous anniversaries of Korean cinema, we can see what a rocky path Korean filmmakers have traversed over the past century. No one would have cared to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Korean cinema in 1944, when Japanese colonial rule had reached the height of its oppression, and the only films being made in Korea were Japanese-language propaganda features to support the war effort. The situation looked more positive at Korean cinema’s 50-year anniversary in 1969, when local production had reached its peak (229 Korean films released in theaters) and the film industry was bursting with talent. But in retrospect, Korean cinema was about to embark on almost three decades of decline, due in part to strict censorship and harmful film policies that stunted the film industry’s development. At the 75-year anniversary in 1994, the Korean film market had been opened to foreign competition, Hollywood studios were aggressively expanding their presence in Korea, the market share of local films had just reached a new low, and many feared that Korean cinema was at the brink of collapse. It’s only been in the past two decades that the film industry has put itself on a solid footing, and rapidly expanded.
There was a time in the not-too-distant past when Korean classic films were barely known abroad, and garnered little respect even in Korea. But thanks in part to the tireless work of the Korean Film Archive, which has restored old prints, supported research and located many previously-lost films, the accomplishments of past filmmakers are now much more widely recognized.
Here at the Far East Film Festival, we have screened a wide variety of classic Korean films, beginning with our first retrospective on 1960s Golden Age Korean Cinema in 2003. We have highlighted the 1950s melodramas of director Shin Sang-ok, programmed Korean musicals and comedies as part of the Asia Sings! and Asia Laughs! retrospectives, delved into the Darkest Decade of the 1970s when Korean filmmakers were at their most constrained, and also presented a selection of digitally restored classics from the 1960s up to the 1980s.
To celebrate the centennial of Korean cinema we have prepared something slightly different. Rather than focus on a particular time period or genre, we are screening a selection of eight standout works that, although quite diverse in terms of content, style and the era in which they were produced, all share something in common. They were all made during the period of military rule that extended from Park Chung Hee’s coup in 1961 to the inauguration of president Kim Young Sam in 1993, and they are all centered around people who break the law.
In this regard, our focus is not on crime films per se, but rather on complex characters who for various reasons end up “choosing evil.” The image of the lawbreaker plays somewhat differently during the period of military rule, when leaders placed a strong public emphasis on law and order. In the case of cinema, the government used censorship and other forms of pressure to ensure that filmmakers presented a positive image of South Korea as a fair and orderly society. Censors did not object to the depiction of criminals in South Korean films, but it was generally expected that characters who broke the law would be punished, and the audience would not be made to overly sympathize or identify with such characters.
However the protagonists of the eight films in this retrospective are exceptions. They are contradictory characters who in a moral sense represent an intriguing mixture of dark and light. The laws they break are various – smuggling, prostitution, organized crime, adultery, theft, abortion, insubordination, ideological crimes and/or murder – but their reasons for doing it are complicated, and the audience often feels a deep sympathy for them. When reasonable people “choose evil,” it is often because they find themselves in a world that is corrupt, devoid of meaning, and deeply unfair.
In this sense, the lawbreakers in this retrospective often function as an indirect (or sometimes quite direct) critique of South Korean society, and the regime that oversees it. Their actions and decisions reflect the world in which they live, and in this sense the social criticism of these works are embedded in the characters themselves. Sure enough, several of these films did get cut by censors, or even banned outright, because of their critical, pessimistic themes. But thankfully we are now able to screen them in their original, uncensored versions.
The phrase “I Choose Evil” is taken from Lee Man-hee’s iconic 1964 gangster movie Black Hair. The gang boss who utters these words is a fascinating character who projects both menace and charisma in equal parts, and despite his cruelty, he ultimately ends up carrying the audience’s sympathies. In a similar way, we believe viewers will find the protagonists of all eight films in this retrospective to be unique and unforgettable.
Both Black Hair and Lee Doo-yong’s masterpiece The Last Witness (1980) are rarely screened abroad because of their complicated copyright status, but thanks to the persistent efforts of festival staff and the cooperation of the Korean Film Archive, we have at last been able to bring these works to Udine. We are also tremendously grateful to the Korean Film Archive for commissioning two new remastered DCPs of Jo Keung-ha’s little-known but fascinating The Body Confession (1964) and Kim Ki-young’s dark, delirious Promise of the Flesh (1975). Generous support from the Korean Film Council has also been essential to getting this retrospective off the ground.
* The full text appears as Introduction in the book 100 Years of Korean Cinema: “I Choose Evil” – Lawbreakers Under the Military Dictatorship, Udine 2019.
Darcy Paquet