이만희 영화와 시적 사실주의 -프랑스 시적 사실주의와의 관계를 중심으로

Abstract

Focussing on the facet of the cinematic realism had been the leading trend in the Lee Man Hee research. On the contrary, the approaches from the standpoint of the authorship are currently dominant. However, these attempts have a strong tendency to the formalistic interpretation of genre-elements in Lee Man Hee`s works. In this paper, an integrative alternative is suggested which encompasses the cinematic realism and the auteurism. In concreto, it is to consider Lee Man Hee`s films in the perspective of the critical reception of the French poetic realism that had sociocultural influence on the Korean cinema in the ``60s. This tries to give an overview of the symptoms of the gloomy zeitgeist that are found in the Korean movies from the 60`s; and these are to be re-read in the grid of the French poetic realism. A self-reflexivity of the ``modern`` alienated human is here subtly articulated. The concrete, depressed background of the times is projected onto the artificial, mental background of the fiction in film. The literature-based films of the `60s resonate with the ``modernistic`` nuance of the French poetic realism; the idea of the autonomy of the art-form develops itself to the photogenic sensibility of the film-image. Existential desolation is densely permeated simultaneously. In general, the thrillers of the sixties emphasize speed, mood or suspense instead of the concentrated narrative, reminiscent of the nihilism and pessimism of the French poetic realism. In addition, the melodramatic coloring that is characteristic for the Korean thriller of those times makes room for a metaphysical subjectivization of the theme: the ontological question of the life and death itself. In this essay, Lee Man Hee`s films are analyzed in detail from the perspective of the French poetic realism, primarily (1964), (1967) and (1968). Thematically, tragedy rules. But the death of the male protagonist, in sharp contrast to the French poetic realism, goes through humane sublimation and the ``observers`` near and around him get involved mentally in that process and change. Lee Man Hee`s pessimism shows vivid sympathy with the sorrow of the life while that of the French counterpart is essentially abstract and ahistorical. Then, the stylistic point follows that Lee Man Hee`s films have the mood of the female melodrama, and that of the modern, emancipated women. The woman, ``waiting for and enduring`` the male protagonist, has the role of the virtual subject in itself, is the center of the collective emotion, decides for herself and survives at the end. The innovative element of the Lee Man Hee`s thrillers lies in the productive mixture of woman and urban space, where the dialectical process of her inner mind with the ``estranging modernity`` goes on. The absolute passive but destructive female character of the French poetic realism is not the case in here.