해방기 조선영화 <해연(일명 갈매기)>과 멜로드라마적 정치성

Abstract

A Sea Gull(1948) directed by Lee Gyu-hwan, who led the revival of the Joseon film during Japanese occupation and established the foundation of postwar Korean film, was rediscovered and open to public in July 2015. A Sea Gull, a literary film, was the first work of art by the Art Film Corporation based in Busan. Its filming began at the end of 1947 and lasted about a year to its completion in October 1948. It premiered at Jungang Theater and was screened for about two weeks until the government authority confiscated the film at Busan’s Bumingwan Theater. The reason why the government authority confiscated the film is conjectured that the film had to do with the filmdom’s massive defect to North Korea. The American military government and the right wing oppressed South Korea’s leftist artists and the political situation after the establishment of South Korea’s separate government in 1948 worked against the filmdom. The common goal found in writings on the outlook of the Joseon film was that it had to be ‘an enlightenment film that embodies national culture.’ For the filmdom in the post-liberation period the immediate task was to set the direction for and the rebuilding of the ‘Joseon Film,’ and they all agreed on that their mission was to make lyrical and nationalistic enlightenment films within the altered political environment after the establishment of the government. A Sea Gull was born of such a discursive situation. In A Sea Gull, the ‘national culture’ is embodied in realistic representation of rural life and the ‘enlightenment’ is realized in its narrative development that ends with the triumph of moral values in melodramatic framework. In the infertile moviemaking soil of post-liberation Joseon film the melodrama became a dominant genre. The post-liberation melodrama was mediated within specific politico-social subtexts and it was a practical form that could achieve its content and function in relation with its social context. The film’s narrative begins with an enlightenment message for the youth who are supposed to take up the role of shaking off the colonized consciousness and setting up a new nation. The film’s autonomous female character embodies the filmmaker’s enlightenment intention to raise women who can be helpful to nation building. The female characters, much more resolute and competent than male, shook off the images of violated sisters under colonial oppression. A Sea Gull embodies melodramatic duality of conformity and subversion and carries out its supposed role of an enlightenment film incorporating national culture.