a template, Kim was able to emphasize different aspects of the scenario, and to concentrate on different details and aspects of the central situation with each new re-telling. Mid-career Kim solidified his break with cinematic realism by following The Housemaid with two more films exploring styles and mixing genres, radically new for Korean cinema at the time. The Sea Knows (1961) transcended its roots in the standard anti-Japanese World War II film to become a distinctive examination of humanity, sadism, greed, lust for power and sexuality. The box-office success of this film enabled Kim to buy his first house, in the Namsan district of Seoul. Goryeojang (1963), dealt with a similar subject matter as The Ballad of Narayama (1983), directed by Shohei Imamura, a filmmaker with whom Kim has often been compared. Kim's version of the story is marked by his mixing of genres. For example, he frames the story—which deals with an ancient tradition in which elders were abandoned to die—within a modern lecture on birth control. Some of the characteristic traits of Kim's mature style, first seen in these three films, are gothic excess, surrealism, horror, perversions and sexuality. Although in stark contrast to the realism, harmony, balance and sentimentality typical of Korean cinema of the time, Kim's films, in an eccentric and metaphorical way, deal with the realities of postwar, industrializing South Korean society and psychology. After having firmly established his auteur status with these films, Kim's unique vision began to wane in his films of the later 1960s. During the 1970s, South Korea's film industry was at a low point due to government censorship and underfunding. Because of the poor state of the local film industry, cinema attendance in South Korea had dropped drastically since its high-point in the 1960s. Kim Ki-young, however, working independently in B-movie-like genre films, began to produce some of his most innovative and personal works at this time. Kim fully regained his auteurist spirit with Woman of Fire (1971), the second of his Housemaid trilogy. The use of color, particularly reds and blues to express the anxiety and desires of the film's characters, distinguished this film from the original Housemaid'''s dark, shadowy black-and-white photography. For this film, Kim was named Best Director at the Blue Dragon Film Awards and actress Youn Yuh-jung was given Special Mention for Best Actress at the Festival de Cine de Sitges. Not only popular with the