King Kong (1933)

Basic Info:

King Kong is a 1933 fantasy monster adventure film co-directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, and written by Ruth Rose and James Ashmore Creelman after a story by Cooper and Edgar Wallace. The film tells of a gigantic island-dwelling gorilla-like creature called Kong who dies in an attempt to possess a beautiful young woman. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot, and opened in New York City on March 2, 1933 to good reviews. Kong is distinguished for its stop-motion animation by Willis O'Brien and its musical score by Max Steiner. The film has been released to video and DVD, and has been computer colorized.^[1] In 1991, the film was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film

Review:

According to New York Times page review "Through multiple exposures, processed "shots" and a variety of angles of camera wizardry the producers set forth an adequate story and furnish enough thrills for any devotee of such tales.". This move was based on few different episodes/scenes: Finding a model for a photo, journey to exotic place, adventures in the island, Kong's ranpage in the modern life and finnaly his death.Begining was very realistic, the only thing that was giving a signal for something special to happen was planning for a strange journey to a place with dangerous beast. During the trip there was full of maybe a bit romantic scenes and when they went to the place the real concept art has started. Everything was painted or built from decorations there. One of the main charackters Ann gets captured by native people and had to be sacrificed to that mythical creature. When she was left it seemed as she would be like crusified - a righteous western beauty punished by exotic evil local people.

Somehow when the creature gets revealed, it shows it's humanly side and spears the woman. When everybody goes deeper into the island it reveals it is full of dinosaurs and other dangerous creatures, of course King Kong is the most powerful, but he is still have lots of enemies. A first dinosaur that ship crew have met was actually harmless grasseater, but in the movie shown as an aggresive and hardly dieing predator. Monkey checking the broken jaws of it's victims was pretty convincing. eventually because of a lot of distractions other one of the main charackters sailor Jack Driscoll saves Ann, bud Kong was not givig up so simply and followed them back, but because of that was captured. According  filmsite.org The primitive suffered "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."

A fascinating change of enviroments could be seen when the ape was taken to a show. It was like merging those days reality with fantasy. The reactions and actions of the people seemed to be percise and reasonable. Finaly the tragical death of creature was unavoidable.

All in all the sets were amasing and very theatrical for it's time. There is no doubt that it is a reall clasical movie inspired loads of others in the same genre.