77: King Kong

USA  100m  Dir: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack  Key Cast: Fay Wray

I love the fact that when Fay Wray was cast as Ann Darrow she was told she would be acting alongside "the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood". She assumed this referred to Clark Gable but was then shown an image of a giant gorilla on top of the Empire State Building. 

Filmmaker Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) charters a voyage to make a new film and hires unknown actress Ann Darrow (Fay Wray) to star. The location is mysterious and turns out to be Skull Island, a hitherto unknown island where the local tribe worship a mysterious creature. Obviously, that creature is a giant gorilla. 

The story itself is inspired. Whilst the idea of a giant gorilla seems absurd, the fact he lives on an unexplored island adds a grain of credibility to the concept. It doesn't seem totally inconceivable that mysterious islands could house enormous creatures. The concept that this is some eccentric filmmaker casually putting the lives of many men at risk makes the plot more interesting too. 

Now the animation is obviously somewhat dated now given this film was released in 1933 but you know what, it's not awful. The stop-motion works really well and has a charm to it. Kong doesn't work quite as well as the dinosaurs do because it feels like he should have more expression. There's lots of clever editing to put actors in front of stop-motion scenes and for the most part it works well. This is 1930s film-making at it's most ingenious. 

The film feels ahead of it's time in many ways. Kong is not portrayed as simply an evil creature and actually all his actions are driven by his attraction to Anne. It's a great idea that Kong isn't really a ruthless killer and his end is tragic. I expected the film to be fairly dumbed-down in terms of violence too but no, loads of Denham's men meet tragic ends be that chomped on or stomped on my Kong are knocked into a huge ravine. 

It's easy to see why King Kong remains such a famous cinematic character. It's corny at times but this film told it's story perfectly.