Angels on the Streets

     I finally got around to cracking open "THE PAST UNEARTHED: Collection of Feature Films in the Japanese Colonial Period". It's a 4 DVD box set of Korean films from the early 1940s. In 2004, the Korean Film Archives found them in China, in a vault. The first movie in the set is titled "Angels on the Streets"

     The picture and sound quality made the experience rather trying. I could barely hear the Korean above the static and the picture was very dark. Thankfully, the producers included quality English subtitles. The extensive booklet is also written in Korean and English. The movie is 73 minutes long and I watched it in two parts, to make the experience more tolerable. 

     This movie is about the street urchins, which refers to the thousands of homeless children. They are never referred to as angels in the film. While the quality of the movie left much to be desired, the story and acting were not so bad.

      At the end of the movie, all of the actors (all Koreans) got into formation and pledged allegiance to the Emperor of Japan, under the crimson eye of the Japanese flag. I seriously doubt that was voluntary.