sound. With the success of this first film, Kim was able to direct his second feature, the historical costume drama Yangsan Province (also 1955), again using primitive equipment obtained from the U.S.I.S. Although Kim claimed to have based the film on a traditional song he learned from his mother, no exact source for the story has been found. It is suspected that the director made up the story himself, modeling it on traditional stories such as Chunhyangjeon, Lee Kyu-hwan's remake of which had recently become a major success, stimulating a rebirth in Korean cinema. After Lee's Chunhyangjeon, Yangsan Province was the second most successful Korean film of 1955. Though a popular success, critics of the time were not kind to Yangsan Province. Yoo Do-yeon called the film a "work of bad taste," and Heo Baek-nyeon said that it "debases the dignity of Korean cinema." As his only surviving film of the 1950s, Yangsan Province sheds considerable light on Kim Ki-young's early career. In an era in which Korean film critics considered realism to be important, the now-lost ending to Yangsan Province, in which two dead lovers ascend to heaven on a beam of light, was harshly criticized. In light of Kim's later career, critics today believe that this cut scene displays some of the most recognizable characteristics of Kim's mature style such as an interest in the fantastic, and a jarring blending of genres. Other motifs that were to be explored in depth in Kim's later work can also be found in Yangsan Province, such as animal imagery, particularly the use of hens as a representation of fertility and sexuality. In 1956 Kim started Kim Ki-young Productions, and began making melodramas, the most popular film genre in South Korea at the time. His first independent production was Touch-Me-Not (1956). In 1957, Kim was living near the red-light district of Yongsan, and the atmosphere of this neighborhood influenced his films, A Woman's War and Twilight Train (both 1957). With First Snow (1958), Kim moved from melodrama to a more socially conscious realism. Defiance of a Teenager (1959) and Sad Pastorale (1960) followed in this style. Defiance of a Teenager was one of Kim's most successful and respected early works, and he attended the San Francisco International Film Festival in 1960 for a showing of this film. The Housemaid 1960 was a critical year for South Korea, marking the end of the