Lee Eun Shim (pictured above) wins in Hanyo (The Housemaid, 1960), an old Korean flick about a creepy housemaid who terrorizes a family after she seduces the man of the house. She peeks through slightly-open doors, breathes heavily in the rain outside of windows, picks up rats by their tails, and smokes cigarettes with a weirdo cuteness. What differentiates this film from other creepy-woman-scorned melodramas, besides its superb directing, is a layer of class criticism. The target of director Ki-young Kim’s critique isn’t the maid, nor even the man for his indiscretions. Its the whole notion of bourgeois aspiration–the wife working tirelessly to buy more shit like that new TV they don’t really need, the husband taking side jobs to supplement his modest teacher’s salary–that he goes in on. Where the desire to own things, including, ultimately, another human being, becomes dependence, becoming death. The noirish audio/visual style constructed around this story, with the constant rain and dissonant piano stabs, is impressive. Restricted camera movements and well-angled shots reinforce a feeling of entrapment. But its the terrorizing innocence of Lee Eun Shim that completes this work.

Watch Hanyo (Ki-young Kim, 1960) at The Auteurs