Pusan Film Festival Reviews 1.
The Arch of Chastity (Shin Sang-OK)
Shin's 1962 film was long thought lost, but a workable print was found in China and restored for its first public screening in over 40 years at the latest Pusan International Film Festival. This film, shot in 'scope, is a rather common sort of story in east Asia about the battle of tradition and modernity in the minds and hearts of the people. The film is set in a period of not-too-distant Korean past, perhaps the turn of the century (it's never made clear). In the beginning of the film a widow is shown her in-laws' family scroll, hung over the doorway, on which is written the old adage, "A man cannot serve two kings, and a woman cannot serve two husbands." The young widow is expected to be chaste for the rest of her days after the tragic loss of her pre-adolescent, crybaby husband. She is told by her old grannie-in-law, who was also widowed young,"Whenever I felt the urge to be with a man, I'd take this little knife and stab it into my thigh, like this," and then demonstrates.
Meanwhile, a lusty young farmhand rolls into town and remarks at how the forces of modern thinking have started to make themselves felt in the long years since his absence ("Even the old teacher has cut off his topknot!"). He soon falls in love with the widow, but she must keep her virtue and her in-laws' good name intact. One night the farmhand, unable to control himself any longer after finding himself stuck in the barn with the widow to avoid the rain, decides it is time for them to consummate their relationship - and the widow ends up pregnant. Problems ensue.
Far from being bad, "The Arch of Chastity" is still pretty creaky and dated, and much of the acting is a little broad. Like many Japanese movies of the previous decades, the female character is willing to completely destroy any chance she may have at happiness because she's so stubbornly willing to martyr herself for her virtue. The family is horrified on finding out that she's pregnant and keep her out of sight until she has her baby - then they give the baby to the father and tell him to leave town and never return. The topper is at the end of the film, when the widow is old and poor and still stuck taking care of the grandmother who never dies. The grandmother hates the woman passionately for breaking her chastity vow, and uses every chance to spew bile at her. Then the son, now fully grown, shows up at the doorstep. It's decades later, and everyone in the family is dead save for the hateful old shrew (and thus there's no reason to retain the front) and the widow still tells her son that his mother is dead. I don't think I imagined an audible groan in the audience.
