Long before Jung Woo-sung and Gao Yuanyuan’s romance “A Good Rain Knows” (2009), there was Kim Jin-kyu and Lucilla Yu Ming’s “Love with an Alien” (1957).
The first Korea-Hong Kong joint production film has been rediscovered and its digitized version will be screened for the first time in Seoul next month. Co-directed by Korean director Jeon Chang-geun and Shanghai-born, Hong Kong-based director Tu Gwang-qi, “Love with an Alien” is also the oldest surviving color feature film archived in Korea.
The Korean Film Archive learned last year that the romance film had been kept by Hong Kong’s film company Shaw Brothers. The Korean state-run institution obtained the film in May of last year, and created its digital version for theater screenings with IMAGICA Corporation, a Japanese post-production film company.
 |
Scenes from “Love with an Alien,” the first Korea-Hong Kong joint production film released in 1958. (Korean Film Archive) |
Set in Hong Kong in the 1950s, the film tells the story of a young, beautiful Hong Kong singer Bang-eum (played by Hong Kong actress Lucilla Yu Ming), who falls in love with a Korean composer Su-pyeong (played by Korean actor Kim Jin-kyu) when he makes a brief visit to Hong Kong. Their romance infuriates Bang-eum’s parents, seemingly because Su-pyeong is a foreigner.
The drama of the film intensifies as the two lovers plan to escape Hong Kong, and Bang-eum’s supportive and caring mother, Bing-shim, reveals the secrets of her past. Bing-shim had been married to a Korean man (played by Korean actor Choi Moo-ryong) and lived in Korea, and had two children ― a daughter and a son ― there. She took Bang-eum, one of the two children, for a visit to Hong Kong, but when she returned to Korea, her husband and their son were nowhere to be found. She is terrified that Bang-eum in fact may be in love with her long-lost biological brother.
“The scenery of Hong Kong in the ’50s is one of the gems of this film,” said Min Byung-hyun from the Korean Film Archive. “It’s also interesting to see Korean and Hong Kong actors star in the same movie in the ’50s.”
A total of 308 films were produced in the 1950s in Korea, but only 57 of them remain, including the newly discovered “Love with an Alien,” Min added.
The Korean Film Archive is unveiling the film for the first time to the press and cineastes on April 4. Actor Yoon Il-bong, who stars as a clerk at the Korean Embassy in Hong Kong, will attend the event to talk about his experience shooting the film.
The institute also found a Korean woman who claims to be the little girl briefly appearing in the movie. She is said to have lived in Hong Kong at the time, as her father was working there. She had no interest in acting even as a child, but made her appearance after the crew ― who desperately needed a child actress on the spot ― contacted her parents for help.
The woman, who never starred in any films afterward, is to bring a number of photographs of her taken on the film set in 1957.
The Korean Film Archive said they were thinking of holding a “byeonsa” performance in the future, with a byeonsa ― Korean term for silent film narrator ― “performing” each and every action of the movie.
The institute has been enjoying much success with its byeonsa screenings of “Crossroads of Youth” (1934), the oldest surviving Korean silent film. “Love with an Alien” was made as a talkie, but its original sound file is missing.
By Claire Lee (
dyc@heraldcorp.com)
