Film Review: King Kong (1933)

The most groundbreaking films in history of cinema belonged to science fiction and related genres. This isn’t surprising, since new and innovative technology was often required to put on the screen worlds that someone wasn’t likely to see in real life. Many films featuring such new wonders of cinema quickly sank into oblivion after novelty had worn off, but there are some notable exception. One of them is King Kong, 1933 adventure horror epic directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, which was big hit and today enjoys reputation of the most influential and iconic films of 1930s.

The plot begins in New York Harbor where Carl Denham (played by Ben Armstrong), film maker famous for documentaries and similar films set in distant and exotic lands, has chartered a ship that would bring him to mysterious location for his next project. Denham is reluctant to sail, because he lacks actress his financial backers deem necessary for the film. Chance encounter with starving Ann Darrow (played by Fay Wray) solves that problem and expedition sails immediately. Weeks later they arrive at Skull Island, remote, poorly charted location west of Sumatra. Denham lands with part of the crew and Darrow and soon finds native tribe that lives on the other side of huge wall apparently built by mysterious civilisation long time ago. Tribesmen abduct Annd Darrow in order to be sacrificed to “Kong”, gigantic ape that lives. Denham and Jack Driscoll (played by Bruce Cabot), ship’s first mate who has fallen in love with Darrow, lead the rescue party that goes beyond the wall and has to deal not only with Kong, but also with many specimens of gigantic and extremely dangerous prehistoric fauna. Driscoll, despite much of his party being killed, manages to set Darrow free from Kong and the gigantic ape is later, with the help of tranquillising gas, captured by Denham. Kong is brought to New York City where Denham shows him as “eigth wonder of the world”, but he makes a mistake of doing so in Darrow’s presence, motivating gigantic ape to free himself from restraints and start rampage through the streets.

King Kong was made only few years after introduction of sound to cinema. Its comparison with the earliest sound films shows how quickly Hollywood managed to master new technology. King Kong flawlessly fuses visuals with the new and better sound and looks like a Hollywood film that could be made many decades later. This impression is partly created by score by Max Steiner, prolific composer of film music for Classic Hollywood. His full-length work is one of the first to perfectly fit the film and even add opera-like leitmotifs that would become standard of film music.

But it’s not the sound that made King Kong legendary. Produced by RKO, studio that was one of the great giants of Classic Hollywood that haven’t survived to this day, this film features collection of innovative special effects that include use of miniatures, stop-motion animation, matte paintings and rear projection. Although some of those techniques were used in earlier fils, Cooper and Shoedsack managed to fuse them in a comprehensive and effective way creating breath-taking images audience had never seen before. Although some of those techniques look little bit dated now, like stop-motion animation by Willis H. O’Brien, it represented something of quantum leap for standards visual illusion of cinema, that won’t be repeated for a very long time, at least not until Star Wars or even introduction of CGI technology.

While technical achievements of King Kong were almost universally praised after premiere, its content was subject of criticism. The most obvious complaints, at least from today’s viewpoint, addressed the treatment of tribal people in the film who, being black, were assumed to be portrayed according to racist stereotypes of the era. Even the basic concept of the film – giant ape being obsessed with beautiful white woman – was considered to be, consciously or subconsciously, reflection of some of the vilest sentiments within 1930s American society. Those accusations were actually taken very seriously by Cooper and Schoedsack, who were vehemently and explicitly denied any racist motivation for their work. Their claims were helped by Nazi Germany initially banning King Kong, although proper motivation for that decision probably had more to do with German film studios being embarrassed by inability to match this film’s work than with politics.

More serious complaints against King Kong addressed some issues with allegedly poor acting and characterisation. Film’s biggest star Fay Wray doesn’t do much in the film apart from looking pretty and screaming a lot, earning the title of the first and arguably the best known “scream queen” in the history of cinema. Obligatory romantic subplot between Ann Darrow and Driscoll seems a little bit awkward and artificially inserted in the film. Yet, script written by James Creelman and Shoedsack’s wife Ruth Rose, based on the story by Cooper and prolific British crime writer Edgar Wallace (who died before the actual production), deflects that criticisms in an ingenious way. Character of Carl Denham is actually based on Cooper, an adventurous spirit who, like his fictional alter ego, made his name by shooting documentaries about exotic animals in distant parts of the world. Through his words authors of the film explain the need for presence of character of Ann Darrow in their fictional film and, subsequently, in King Kong itself. In this way their film obtains “meta” quality that is quite rare in history of cinema, making it even more remarkable. What looks like slow and uneventful scenes at beginning actually work in films’s favour; like all good action/horror films, King Kong introduces us to characters and make us care about their ultimate fate. And monster not being revealed until late in the film is lesson learned by all good masters of the genre, like Steven Spielberg who used same approach in his megahit Jaws.

Success of King Kong had the same consequences as it would have today. Two years later a direct sequel Son of Kong was directed by Shoedsack and again starring Ben Armstrong (who later claimed that he prefered such version). Further sequels weren’t made, but King Kong had important effect in other parts of the world, most notably Japan where film makers like Ishiro Honda would take inspiration for films like Godzilla and whole new genre of “kaiju films”. Those two franchise would ultimately merge in 1960s with various crossovers and some of them, like Godzilla vs Kong, were quite recent. King Kong itself received two major remakes – 1976 version by John Guillermin, which is considered vastly inferior and 2005 version by Peter Jackson, which is more faithful retelling of the story.

RATING: 9/10 (++++)

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