Na Woon-gyu - Film Career

Film Career

Though Na Woon-gyu has been described as short, and with a toad-like face which suited him for the peasant roles he often played, the anger and frustration he was able to project on the screen suited the situation and mood of the Korean people at the time. Na first came to public attention in the role of the father of the title character in Lee Kyong-son's 1925 film, Simchong-jon (The Story of Shim Chong).

His first film as writer/director/star, Arirang (1926), was a national sensation in Korea. Films in Korea underwent censorship and restrictions by the Japanese authorities. Scripts had to be submitted to, and approved by the occupying Japanese government before they could be produced and distributed. Criticism of the government was censored, leading most films to be in the melodramatic, sentimental style known as shinpa. Na's innovation in Arirang was finding a way to express Korean opposition to the Japanese occupation metaphorically by unifying the shinpa style with a spirit of nationalism. He thereby made cinema in Korea no longer mere entertainment, but a vehicle for an expression of national resistance to the Japanese occupation.

Financed by Park Sung-pil, owner of Dansongsa Theater, Na founded Na Woon-kyu Productions in September 1927 and opened his production company in Changsin-dong, near Dongdaemun. In contrast to the Japanese-run studios, the company's goal was to produce films by Koreans, for Koreans.

Na's 1929 Salangeul chajaseo was an epic film employing more than a thousand extras. As with Arirang, a period of Na's own life could be seen as an inspiration for the story. It dealt with Koreans crossing the Duman River, as Na himself had done, in search of freedom from Japanese oppression. The film was banned at first, but was finally released, though in a heavily revised and edited form. The failure of Beongeoli Sam-ryong (1929) soon forced the closure of Na's studio.

Arirang had initiated the period of nationalist film in Korea which continued from 1926 until about 1930, when harsher suppressive measures were undertaken by the authorities. After Arirang, tear-jerker shinpa-style movies that did no more than entertain, without appealing to a deeper national need, were criticized by the Korean press. Indeed, some of Na's own later films were also criticized in this way. Korean director and film historian Yu Hyun-mok states that Na's appearance with a Japanese woman as his romantic interest in the 1931 shinpa film, Geumganghan (The Grief of Geumgan), was seen as a betrayal by the Korean people, and had a profoundly negative impact on his career.

Due to the time he spent in prison and the torture he underwent there, Na suffered from poor health throughout his life. He died at the age of 34 (or 36 by Korean counting) of tuberculosis in 1937. Short though his career was, he was the most prolific filmmaker of the era known as the "Golden Age of Silent Films" in Korea. In a period of about ten years he acted in twenty-six movies, and directed fifteen.