〈장군의 수염〉 한국 모더니즘 영화의 양식적 특징 : 스타일적 일탈과 제도적 승인의 결합

Abstract

What led to The General's Mustache becoming the defining modernist film in Korea? The assessment of Korean modernist cinema in the 1960s was typically based on critical discourse and institutional judgments instead of a meticulous analysis of the film's content. Initially, The General's Mustache was not categorized as a modernist film. What did the critical discourse of that time period signify when it labeled The General's Mustache as ‘problematic’? Is it possible that the oscillation between the traditions of realist and modernist cinema in the film is due to the internal elements of the film's content, rather than solely based on critical discourse? This study aims to analyze the style of The General's Mustache, which is considered a representative Korean modernist film of the 1960s. The goal is to explain the unique characteristics of the Korean modernist style. The General's Mustache was intentionally included for recognition in the Excellent Film Reward Policy program. The film's planning stage included well-known artistic figures for active promotion of The General's Mustache. The institutional favorite, The General's Mustache, was highly regarded due to the credentials of its key staff. Additionally, The General's Mustache was an incentive for the public to watch intellectual and artistic films, as seen in its box office performance. To clarify, The General's Mustache involved a wide range of artists from its inception and was considered a high-quality work of art. Given this context, the film's aesthetics were widely accepted as artistic. The film's modernist style, which features jump cuts, sounds that defy classical realism, and flashbacks in black and white, is rooted in classical norms. Korean modernist cinema of the 1960s often aimed to foreground modernist styles and integrate them into a comprehensible classical context, and this is exemplified in this film. The rise of Korean modernist cinema is also attributed to this stylistic shift. The goal of Korean modernist cinema was to blend artistic and popular cinema. The formal attempts of film texts combined with economic demands allowed films to break conventional expectations and categories while remaining popular. The distinctive style of Korean modernist cinema originates from its attempt to be acknowledged as a literary cinema and to transform popular films into artistic ones. During this period, filmmakers tended to make stylistic deviations from classical forms of cinema and glamorize them, in line with the system's demand to be approved as excellent cinema. In Korean cinema, modernism gained popularity when the combination of stylistic deviation and institutional approval became a strategic approach.