Cinema
The Stray Bullet
오발탄
Yu Hyun-mok · 1961
Synopsis
In Seoul, in a neighbourhood where many refugees from the North live, Cheol-ho, an office worker, struggles in poverty with his pregnant wife, his mother, whom the war has driven mad and who keeps crying out that they must leave, his brother Yeong-ho, a jobless former soldier, and his sister Myeong-suk, who lives on American soldiers' money. Tormented by a toothache he does not have treated, Cheol-ho endures more than he acts, while the others each look for a way out.
Context
The screenplay by Lee Jong-gi and Lee I-ryeong adapts a short story by Yi Beom-seon published in 1959. The film was released in Seoul on 13 April 1961, with Kim Jin-kyu, Choi Moo-ryong and Seo Ae-ja, and was withdrawn and then banned after the military coup of May; according to the Berlinale, the censors accused it of sympathy for the North. The negative is lost: only the English-subtitled print made in 1963 for the San Francisco festival survived, from which the Korean Film Archive made a restoration completed in 2015, shown in Berlin in 2017 and in Bologna in 2019.
Who it is for
A black-and-white film of about one hundred and ten minutes, dark and fragmented; the restored version circulates with English subtitles.
Prizes and reception
Voted best Korean film of all time several times by the country's critics, according to the Portuguese Cinematheque.
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