King Kong 1933

Cast:
Fay Wray – Ann Darrow
Robert Armstrong – Carl Denham
Bruce Cabot – John ‘Jack’ Driscoll
Frank Reicher – Capt. Englehorn
Sam Hardy – Charles Weston
Noble Johnson – Skull Island nation leader
Steve Clemente – Witch King (as Steve Clemento)

The greatest and most famous classic adventure-fantasy (and part-horror) film of all time is King Kong (1933). Co-producers and directors Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack (both real-life adventurers and film documentarians) conceived of the low-budget story of a beautiful, plucky blonde woman (Fay Wray) and a frightening, gigantic, 50 foot ape-monster as a metaphoric re-telling of the archetypal Beauty and the Beast fable. [Fay Wray mistakenly believed that her RKO film co-star, 'the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood,' would be Cary Grant rather than the beast. Later in her life, she titled her autobiography "On the Other Hand" in memory of her squirming in Kong's grip.]

The major themes of the film include the struggle for survival on the primitive, fog-enshrouded, tropical Skull Island between the ardent and energetic filmmakers (led by Robert Armstrong), the hero (Bruce Cabot in a part originally offered to Joel McCrea), the voodoo natives, and the forces of nature (the unique Beast creature); unrequited love and the frustration and repression of violent sexual desires. However, the primitive, giant ape must also struggle against the forces of urban civilization and technology when it is exploited for profit and returned for display in New York City during a time of economic oppression.

From the start of the picture, its clever screenplay by James Ashmore Creelman and Ruth Rose (based on a story by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace) suggested the coming terror. The film was shot during the spring and summer of 1932 in the confines of the studio. Due to their limited budget for sets, Cooper and Schoedsack used the jungle locale from the latter’s previous film The Most Dangerous Game (1932) – an adventure film that also starred Fay Wray. When released, it broke all previous box-office records. Its massive, money-making success helped to save RKO Studios from bankruptcy.

To be sure, the film is very much a product of a simpler time. However, if the acting in Kong is compared to its early 1930’s contemporaries in the horror/fantasy genre, it holds up quite well. Cooper and Schoedsack understood the necessity of establishing the characters before Kong’s entrance, but kept dialog to a minimum. The story is told visually, with camera-work furthering plot points that may have seemed didactic otherwise. The film is carried by not only its visual imagery, but by one of the first feature length music scores. This was an innovation that put King Kong ahead its sound contemporaries, which relied quite heavily on the spoken word and direction alone. There is a ten minute sequence in the center of the film- after the death of the tyrannosaurus until the escape of Ann and Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot) from Kong’s lair- that is told entirely with visuals, music, and sound effects. It is in large part due to the score that much of Kong’s emotional impact is conveyed, p articularly in its finale atop the Empire State Building. Steiner was able to suggest Kong’s emotional state, assisting O’Brien in providing empathy to a creature who in reality was only an 18 inch high puppet.

It is a mistake to compare Kong technically or artistically with films from later decades. Consider the cultural context in which King Kong was produced. America was in the darkest days of the Depression. World War II was seven years away, and nobody outside of a few physicists knew what ‘atomic bomb’ meant. Kong truly was the ‘Eighth Wonder of the World’ just as the Empire State Building was at the time considered the greatest technological marvel. As Cooper envisioned it, Kong was an adventure escapist film, offering Depression-Era audiences something that at the time would be considered the ‘ultimate in adventure.’ Whether or not Peter Jackson’s proposed remake of Kong can maintain these qualities of showmanship and adventure is a matter of wait and see: to today’s audiences Kong no longer represents something ‘all powerful’ or able to ‘lick the world’ as Carl Denham described him back in 1933. Even setting the remake in 1933 will have its difficulties, since the film will then be a period piece rather than a contemporary story, as both the original film and the 1976 remake were, and audience involvement may be more limited.

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