The Film: King Kong (RKO, 1933). Directed by Merian C. Cooper, Ernest Schoedsack. Screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman, Ruth Rose (based on the story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace). Starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot. Running time: 105 minutes.
When I first saw it: Circa 1972. I was about four.
A Few Words About It: There isn't much I can add about this film that hasn't already been written. Entire books have been published on King Kong and its influence. It's an amazing film that holds up incredibly well today, three-quarters of a century after it was made. It has inspired numerous remakes, sequels, rip-offs and pale counterfeits. What can I say that you don't already know about the movie? One of the screenwriters, James Ashmore Creelman, committed suicide by leaping off a tall building in 1941. Co-creator Edgar Wallace wrote more than 150 novels, numerous plays and too many articles to count. It's difficult to say which figure involved in this making of this film had the greatest influence on its timeless, enduring style. Several King Kong experts have given credit to stop-motion-animation guru Willis O'Brien. Like Creelman, O'Brien's life contained some tragedy. He married Hazel Collette in 1925, divorced her in 1930, and the year Kong was released, Hazel murdered their two sons and then attempted to shoot herself. Her suicide attempt failed, but she later died of tuberculosis. O'Brien's Kong was more human than human: Filmgoers could see the happiness, pathos, anger and frustration in his face. He was far more sympathetic than any of the human characters in the film. Even in our Age of CGI, the special effects are still amazingly fresh in the film. You can almost feel the steam in the jungle sequences. And the airplanes strafing Kong atop the Empire State Building are astonishing. O'Brien's techniques improved even more later in the year with Son of Kong (1933) and 1949's giant ape film, Mighty Joe Young. The end of King Kong -- I won't give it away here if you're one of the three or four people in the world who hasn't actually seen it -- is still haunting after all these years. King Kong remains influential to this day, ranking number 41 on the latest list of the American Film Institute's Top 100.
Why I dug it: There's something magical about the first film you've ever watched from start to finish. I I laughed, hid under my cushion and ultimately wept in Kong. The memories are still vivid.
Parting Shot: The film looms large, not only in the popular imagination, but in my memory. I had to pick a Mount Everest of a film for my first entry. But you've got to start somewhere. Grade: A+.
No comments:
Post a Comment