Image by Mystic Art Design from Pixabay Today, I shall continue reflecting on my journey with select films from the book “1,001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” by Steven Jay Schneider. I have chosen one of the oldest movies that I have ever seen which I expected to hate but ended up really loving.
While going on this “film odyssey,” I have been (and continue to be) hesitant when watching films made before 1970. Simply put, my tastes tend to favor the last forty years of cinema. So, I am always very grateful when I end up watching an older film and enjoy it. Even more so, I end up loving an old film when it also holds up today as a solid piece of entertainment. That is the core of why I love the 1933 groundbreaking monster movie King Kong. Let me explain why. [NOTE: This blog will contain spoilers for the 1933 film “King Kong.” You have been warned.] The History The film’s director, Merian C. Cooper, was fascinated with primates from a young age and pitched the idea of a gorilla battling a Komodo dragon to Paramount Pictures in the early 1930s. However, the studio was wary about sending a film crew on expensive trips to Africa for location shooting. After being turned down, Cooper was recruited by David O. Selznick to produce his own films at RKO Pictures. It was during the development of another film, which Cooper hired Ernest B. Schoedsack, that the ball really started to get rolling on King Kong. Using the jungle sets for what would become the 1932 drama The Most Dangerous Game and the stop-motion creations from Willis O’Brien for the unfinished fantasy film Creation, Cooper felt that he finally had enough of the groundwork laid to begin working on the script for his gorilla movie. He hired British author Edgar Wallace, who wrote the first draft but passed away before completing many of the rewrites. The second writer hired, James Ashmore Creelman, collaborated with Cooper. It was their second draft that bore many of the signature aspects of the film’s plot, from the three main characters (Carl Denham, Ann Darrow, and Jack Driscoll) to Kong’s escape occurring on the stage of a Broadway theater. Cooper and Creelman also recrafted Kong’s image to make him more tough and intimidating than he came off in Wallace’s original draft. After several more writers contributed to the script here and there, the final draft came from Schoedsack’s wife Ruth Rose. Although this was her first screenplay, her making the dialogue more natural, efficient scene cutting, and tightening of the action sequences greatly pleased Cooper. With a refined script, sets and props, his dream film (at the time simply titled Kong) was underway. As co-directors, Cooper and Schoedsack had very different styles and thus agreed to divide up the work: Cooper supervised the miniature production and special effects scenes, while Schoedsack directed the dialogue scenes. Much of the legacy of King Kong rides on its groundbreaking use of stop-motion animation and trick photography to convince the audience of the plausibility of the many creatures inhabiting Skull Island (from the dinosaurs to the titular ape himself). I could say so much more about the special effects, but I highly recommend reading up on it yourself. Simply put, it is fascinating how a film from the 1930s pulled off a level of believability that some films today do not. Upon release, King Kong set an attendance record for an indoor event by selling out ten shows a day for four days straight when first premiering in New York City. Over the course of its theatrical run (including several re-releases), the film grossed over five million dollars (nearly one-hundred and ten million dollars today) on a budget of less than $700,000 (just under fourteen million dollars). Contemporary reviews were largely positive, with critics and audiences alike praising the story, special effects, and thrilling sense of adventure. At the time of release, however, King Kong did receive criticism for being perceived as a cautionary tale about interracial romance (largely due to the racist history of visual depictions of African Americans in an ape-like fashion). However, directors Cooper and Schoedsack rejected such accusations and claimed that the film had no such hidden meaning. In later interviews, Cooper somewhat flip-flopped by sharing the inspiration for Kong’s death scene atop the Empire State Building as symbolizing the fact that primitive society was doomed by modern, industrial civilization. Needless to say, King Kong remains a film classic. But does it hold up today? The Pros As someone who grew up watching the 2005 Peter Jackson remake of this monster classic, I was quite skeptical going into watching the 1933 original. Mainly due (as I mentioned at the outset of this blog) to my tastes in film favoring more recent works. But, when I pressed play I did my best to put my 21st-century goggles aside and try to put myself in the mindset of someone living at a time when sound films had been around for less than a decade. And when monster movie classics like Jaws, Aliens, and Jurassic Park were dozens of years away from hitting theaters. And doing this made King Kong a far more enjoyable watch. That being said, I think this film holds up even with viewing it through a modern lens. Let me explain why. There are still movies made today that are designed to be pure entertainment. (lookin’ at you, MCU!) And while King Kong cannot be necessarily described as a blockbuster, I think it and films like it from that time share many characteristics. From the use of special effects for creating interesting scenes to relying less on character development and more on thrills and adventure, what makes King Kong stand up to many films in the same genre from more recent times is its embrace of simply having fun. I will speak more about the first thirty minutes of the film in the next section, but what I think the film’s onset does so well is rely on intrigue to merely tease the spectacle to come later. With conversations between Denham, Darrow, and Driscoll, the audience gets just enough information about Skull Island without really having a clear idea what the crew of the Venture will encounter (well, except for Kong, of course). And once they actually land on the island, it only gets more fun from there. From the natives’ capturing Ann and sacrificing her to Kong (in what I must say is one of the best “reveal” scenes in a movie) to the various battles between Kong and the various dinosaurs inhabiting the island, the film never really slows down. It keeps you engaged throughout the remainder of its runtime, all the way to New York City for the climactic showdown between Kong and the apex of civilization atop the Empire State Building. What makes the action all the more impressive is knowing that all Cooper, Schoedsack, and the crew had to work with back then were pieces of plastic, metal and rubber for puppetry and camera tricks such as rear-screen projection. That’s what they could use to convince the audience to suspend their disbelief and buy into watching a gorilla as tall as a building fighting a Tyrannosaurus rex while a screaming woman watches from a tree branch. Keeping that in mind, King Kong never failed to amaze me in how it “tricked” me to buy into what I was seeing on screen. One of my biggest concerns was the extent to which the “romance” between Ann and Kong would either be forced or thin. Surprisingly, it played off rather well. Watching their scenes together never made me guffaw or laugh at the absurdity of it. Rather, I started buying into the argument that Cooper made after the film’s release about the meaning of the story being in the “beauty and the beast” mantra. I found it effective at humanizing Kong in a way that I never thought a movie puppet from the 1930s could be. So, with all these good things about this film there must be some bad things, right? The Cons Earlier, I hinted at discussing the opening thirty minutes in more detail. What I will say is that these are easily the most boring and the least believable minutes of the entire movie. And while it does not ruin the rest of the film for me, I certainly advise anyone going into it to push through this part until they arrive at Skull Island. (Fun Fact: the dialogue on the boat deck between Ann and Jack in this film was referenced in the 2005 remake between a filmed scene between Ann and Bruce Baxter). My only other major gripe with the movie is the racial undertones of the indigenous people who worship Kong. While I do not buy into the interpretation of Kong’s admiration for Ann (and his subsequent demise) as a cautionary tale about miscegenation, I do think the natives do not hold up through a modern lens. But, such is the case with many portrayals of ethnic and racial minorities in Hollywood for decades before and after King Kong. Certainly not a good thing, but an unfortunate reality of filmmaking that I believe has improved thanks to the success of many black, Latino, Asian, and Native American filmmakers in recent decades. So, what are my final impressions on King Kong? As a film that is nearing ninety years old by now, it still retains much of its entertainment value and can still be enjoyed in spite of its dated flaws. I definitely encourage everyone who enjoys monster movies, adventure flicks, and classics of cinema to check this movie out. You shall not be disappointed. What are some old-school monster movies you really like? Do you think King Kong holds up despite its flaws? What opinions of mine do you find absolutely ridiculous? Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, this has been… Yours Truly, Amateur Analyst
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Austin McManusI have no academic or professional background in film production or criticism; I simply love watching and talking about movies. Archives
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