Thursday, September 27, 2007
4:00 AM
Lorch Hall/ 611 Tappan Street
A Flower in in Hell (Shin Sang-ok, 1958, 87 min, b&w)
Shin Sang-ok was one of the leading lights of what has become known as the Golden Age of Korean cinema in the late 50s and early 60s. Filmed on location, A Flower in Hell’s milieu is the black market economy of thievery and prostitution feeding off of an American military base, where an innocent young man goes in search of his prodigal older brother, who has fallen for a tough-talking prostitute (played by Shin’s wife, Choi Eun-hee). It is at once a gripping drama and a remarkable visual document of devastated postwar Seoul.