SYNOPSIS
LEE Sin-ja, living in exile with her daughter Ju, ekes out a living with the help of LEE Sung-jin, a friend of her passed away husband during the war. But while helping her, LEE’s sense of obligation becomes his love for her. LEE\'s wife, who notices this and interrogates him out of jealousy and hysteria, tries to fill the emptiness from a young man named Taek. One day Taek saves Ju from drowning in the sea. Taek’s attitude toward LEE’s wife then changes. LEE tempts Sin-ja, but she falls in love with Taek. She even decides to send her daughter away to someone else’s to live with Taek. But Taek\'s lover, Jin whom he thought to be dead during the war, appears out of the blue. Taek settles in with Jin. Taek’s breaking up with Shin-ja devastates her. Sin-ja raises a knife out of despair. (KMDB)
 

PROGRAM NOTE

 The Widow is the first and last film directed by the late PARK Nam-ok known as Korea’s first woman director. This 1955 film missing the ending scene and a few soundtracks can be best defined as an anti-maternal melodrama. It explores how a lower-class widow learns about the economics of gender in a patriarchal society as the narrative unfolds around a series of love affairs in Seoul in the 1950s. It also describes the mother-daughter relationship as something tragic since their relationship easily falls apart because of “money.” The film begins with the widow and her young daughter bickering over money, which suggests to the extent it is a story about motherhood completely broken down by the economic determinism and the myth of maternal instinct. Only Mr. and Mrs. Lee who belong to the leisure class succeed in maintaining their relationship till the end of the film. Unlike Mr. Lee who used to have feelings for the widow and Mrs. Lee who cheated on her husband with Taek, the widow feels insecure and unhappy in her relationships on the verge of ending. Relationships change over time just as money never stays in your hand. Nevertheless, in this film, money is the key to stabilizing rocky relationships. In short, The Widow is a realist melodrama that does not transform social issues into personal or psychological troubles of a woman character. Instead, it shows the stark realities of life women face in the 1950s by looking closely at the social status of a window and her relationships with others. [Sunah KIM]