The Housemaid (1960) Review

I saw the 1960 movie The Housemaid (aka Hanyeo) last week on Turner Classic Movies. It’s from South Korea and apparently, there are versions dubbed in English; however, the one I saw only had English subtitles.

Produced, written and directed by Kim Ki-young, who is considered one of Korea’s greatest film directors, the film is considered a classic. Some tweets, describing the title character as scary, piqued my interest.

It’s a domestic melodrama, obviously about a woman hired to help a family who instead destroys it. From my point of view, it sounded like a Lifetime seduction film. The Lord knows there are a bunch of Lifetime movies based on that theme. I watched it all the same.

It’s about a music teacher and his wife who are trying to build a better life for their family. They have two kids and one on the way. They buy a larger house but now have bigger bills to pay. The wife slaves over a sewing machine at home. The husband teaches an all female music class at a factory. For ease of reference, here are the characters’ names:

• Mr. Kim, music teacher, husband, father
• Mrs. Kim, wife, mother
• Myung-sook, the housemaid
• Kyung-hee Cho, factory worker, piano student
• Seon-young Kwak, factory worker who commits suicide

In music class, one student (Cho) encourages another (Kwak) to leave Mr. Kim a love letter. He reads it and marches straight to the bosses with the letter and says something must be done about such behavior. Something is done: Kwak gets fired. Mr. Kim returns to class and offers private piano lessons at his home because he needs the money. Kwak can’t get a job after that scandal and she kills herself. Kim feels bad but he still thinks he did the right thing.

Meanwhile, Cho has taken him up on the piano lessons. Through her, they also gain the services of a housemaid (Myung-sook). Cho says Myung-sook smokes and is a little weird. Feeling guilty about Kwak, Cho confesses to Mr. Kim that she was the real author of the love letter and not Kwak. She begs for his love but he kicks her out. The housemaid has been spying on them the whole time. She wants Mr. Kim, too. At this point, I’m just wondering why Mr. Kim is such a chick magnet. Even if he is to them, after what happened to Kwak, you’d think they’d have enough sense to chase after a single guy.

The housemaid, however, is dead set on seducing Mr. Kim and when she succeeds, there’s a big lightning strike outside to signify the end of life as the Kims knew it. I’m not going to spoil the whole film after that point but let’s just say, it’s pretty messy and involves blackmail, poison and worse!

The film got a 7.3 rating on IMDB and I read the user reviews after I saw it. None of them saw the film the same way I did. How did the situation get so out of control? The first part with a disgraced Kwak committing suicide colored my opinion on the wife’s behavior. She was more worried about being disgraced and losing status than anything else.

Notes: I ignored the beginning where Kim starts to read the story to his wife from the newspaper as well as the tacked on “it could happen to anyone” ending.

If you watch it in the original language, you’ll learn how to say “darling” in Korean.