I not-so-secretly suspect that Greed is the worst of all vices in that it is the vice that most often teams up with other vices to get the job done. Here the sin of avarice manifests in the mother of a village maiden (Kim Sam-hwa) when the parent becomes covetous of gifted silk. With such rich fabric on her mind, she sacrifices her daughter to the town bully (Park Am), a spoiled brat whose lust for the young girl becomes a destructive obsession. Naturally, obstacles exist — like the betrothed (Jo Yong-su), a poor lad whose father died some time ago and left his family poor as dirt — but Greed and Lust have made a pact. Nothing and no one will stop them. Things do not turn out so good for anyone.
The oldest surviving film of Kim Ki-young, Yangsan Province is an exquisite piece of filmmaking. The performances are highly stylized with the actors often striking poses as if they were recreating a 19th-century melodrama or pressing their faces together while facing out towards the camera like a pair of lovers in a silent film romance. The moment when the young woman slowly sinks out of the camera frame as she joins her seducer on the ground is particularly memorable. The soundtrack is also a stunner orchestrated with traditional Korean instruments that crescendo into an opera of sorts when the doomed young man's mother (Ko Seon-ae) believes her son has died. My favorite part of all may be when the score is integrated into the action as a masked troupe of traveling performers appears to mimic the movie's storyline just in time for the wedding/funeral/suicides. Highly recommended.
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