13th(2011)
Sweet Dream
YANG Junam
- Korea
- 1936
- 47min
- 35mm
- black and white
- 드라마
SYNOPSIS
Synopsis
Ae-sun is the vain wife of a middle-class man who has no interest in looking after her family. Her exasperated husband chases Ae-sun out and she abandons her husband and her daughter Jeong-hee to stay at a hotel with her lover. One day, Ae-sun finds out that her lover is a poor student boarder and a criminal, not the prosperous entrepreneur she thought he was.
Program Note
Ae-sun, who is married with a daughter and runs out of the house after shouting “I am not a bird in a cage!” to live in a hotel with her lover, is considered the first to portray the character of the free woman that appeared in Madame Freedom in 1956. The ad for the film at the time called it “a biography that exposes the other side of a dissipated woman and a confession of life that goes beyond the acceptable” and it is a loud illustration of the times when the new woman and modern girl became modern extrasensory icons for consumption and desire against the backdrop of the streets of colonial Kyungsung. Made 2 years after when the new woman NA Hae-seok raised a social turmoil through ‘Confession Statement of Divorce’(1934) in Samchunli, the film stars MOON Ye-bong as Ae-sun, the ‘dissipated woman’ who leaves her daughter behind at home and is completely and utterly punished by the society. When she realizes that the man she lived with in a hotel is not who he claimed to be, she immediately reports him and sets off like a moth to find another flame, and the taxi she takes to go to Kyungsung Station gets into an accident involving her daughter. Such coincidences and tragic ending drive the reality and desires of women in colonial Kyungsung in the 1930s and the hysterical and chaotically insane characteristic of the melodrama genre to the extreme. Sweet Dream stars MOON Ye-bong, a leading actress of the 1930s and ‘40s who was later acknowledged as a meritorious performer in North Korea, captures the times when the new woman and the modern girl roamed the cities, the streets of colonial Kyungsung, and the perceptions held of them. (BYUN Jai-ran)
PROGRAM NOTE
Synopsis
Ae-sun is the vain wife of a middle-class man who has no interest in looking after her family. Her exasperated husband chases Ae-sun out and she abandons her husband and her daughter Jeong-hee to stay at a hotel with her lover. One day, Ae-sun finds out that her lover is a poor student boarder and a criminal, not the prosperous entrepreneur she thought he was.
Program Note
Ae-sun, who is married with a daughter and runs out of the house after shouting “I am not a bird in a cage!” to live in a hotel with her lover, is considered the first to portray the character of the free woman that appeared in Madame Freedom in 1956. The ad for the film at the time called it “a biography that exposes the other side of a dissipated woman and a confession of life that goes beyond the acceptable” and it is a loud illustration of the times when the new woman and modern girl became modern extrasensory icons for consumption and desire against the backdrop of the streets of colonial Kyungsung. Made 2 years after when the new woman NA Hae-seok raised a social turmoil through ‘Confession Statement of Divorce’(1934) in Samchunli, the film stars MOON Ye-bong as Ae-sun, the ‘dissipated woman’ who leaves her daughter behind at home and is completely and utterly punished by the society. When she realizes that the man she lived with in a hotel is not who he claimed to be, she immediately reports him and sets off like a moth to find another flame, and the taxi she takes to go to Kyungsung Station gets into an accident involving her daughter. Such coincidences and tragic ending drive the reality and desires of women in colonial Kyungsung in the 1930s and the hysterical and chaotically insane characteristic of the melodrama genre to the extreme. Sweet Dream stars MOON Ye-bong, a leading actress of the 1930s and ‘40s who was later acknowledged as a meritorious performer in North Korea, captures the times when the new woman and the modern girl roamed the cities, the streets of colonial Kyungsung, and the perceptions held of them. (BYUN Jai-ran)
Director
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YANG JunamYANG Junam
Born in 1912, Seoul. He learned various techniques through an apprenticeship at Kyeong Sung Film Studio. He directed the sixth talkie film Sweet Dream produced by the studio in 1936, and thus became a director. During the colonial period, he didn’t direct any films but actively worked in editing and sound recording. After the liberation of Korea, he joined the film division in the TI&E Office of the Ministry of National Defense and participated in documentary films including An Assault of Justice(1951). He directed 5 films including Exorcism of Bae Baeng Yi(1957), Maternal Love, The Bell Tower(1958), Mother Earth(1960) and Miryang Arirang(1961).
Credit
- Cast MUN Ye-bong, YU Seon-ok, LEE Geum-ryong
- Screenwriter CHOI Dok-bung
- Cinematography HWANG Un-jo
- Art director KIM Un-seon
- Editor YANG Ju-nam
