Sunday, October 13, 2024

NFR Project: 'King Kong' (1933)

 

NFR Project: ‘King Kong’

Dir: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

Scr: James Creelman, Ruth Rose

Pho: Eddie Linden, Vernon Walker, J.O. Taylor

Ed: Ted Cheesman

Premiere: March 2, 1933

100 min.

“Listen, I’m going to make the greatest picture in the world! Something that nobody’s ever seen or heard of!” – Carl Denham, Kong’s captor

It makes the impossible plausible. It makes a towering monster out of an 18-inch figure. It still confounds first-time viewers with its bold storytelling and astonishing special effects. One of Hollywood’s best movies still stands the test of time.

The film’s premise can be attributed to a dream of Merian C. Cooper’s. Cooper, an adventurer and movie maker, had with his partner, cinematographer Ernest B. Schoedsack, made several outstanding silent-era documentaries. (One of them, Grass (1925), is also on the National Film Registry list.) Cooper dreamed of a giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, fighting with airplanes. From this titanic climax, the story wrote itself backwards to its beginning.

Daredevil documentary film producer Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong) has a secret map, and a secret mission in mind. He’s going to make a new documentary on an unknown island, a film that will surpass anything ever seen. He hires a ship and crew, and prepares to head out to this undisclosed location.

One last-minute problem vexes him – he wants a beautiful girl to come along, to appear in the film. He can’t get any self-respective actress to sign on. Desperate, he searches the city streets, and finds a young, impoverished woman, Ann Darrow (Fay Wray). He convinces her that he is on the up and up, and she joins the expedition.

On they travel, exposing the developing relationship of Ann and Jack Driscoll (Bruce Cabot), the ship’s first mate. (We are unfortunately given a stereotyped Chinese cook.) Denham reiterates his movie as being about “Beauty and the Beast.” Finally, moving slowly through the fog, they hear the sound of breakers – only it’s not breakers, it’s the sound of drums.

They go ashore, finding a native village at the foot of an enormous wall that separates their peninsula from the rest of the island. There, the natives worship Kong. (Once again, racial stereotyping abounds, as these are bone-in-your-nose, gibberish-spouting Africans, led by the great character actor Noble Johnson, who does his best with the nonsense he has to recite.)

Of course, they want the white woman. No deal; the group returns to the ship. The natives, under cover of darkness, kidnap Ann. They open the enormous entrance set in the wall, tie her to two posts, and retreat to the top of the wall. A gong is rung, and out of the jungle comes . . . Kong.

It took a team of technicians and artists to create the effects that worked so wonderfully. Cooper and Schoedsack recruited the great stop-motion pioneer animator Willis H. O’Brien (already a known quantity due to his 1925 The Lost World, a dinosaur tale inspired by Arthur Conan Doyle’s 1912 novel) and his team, including Buzz Gibson and Marcel Delgado, to craft and operate miniatures in a convincing manner. By carefully positioning the elements to be animated, and moving them slowly, frame by frame, they could enliven their models on film and even endow them with personality.

But stop-motion was just the beginning of the production. Miniatures, matte painting, rear projection and more were combined with the aid of an optical printer. The resulting coordination of all the special and live footage so that it not only didn’t appear ludicrous, but absolutely swept the audience up with the illusion, was complete.

Any any rate, Kong makes his enormous appearance. He takes Ann and strides off into the jungle. The movie/ship’s crew go after her, equipped with rifles and special gas bombs. They run across various prehistoric creatures, and are massacred. Only Denham and Driscoll survive. Driscoll steals Ann back from Kong, and the two make it to the ship. Kong, enraged, smashes the wall and attacks everyone, killing many. Only Denham’s gas bombs get to him and put him to sleep.

We swing quickly to a marquee – “KING KONG Eighth Wonder of the World” – and the bustling Broadway crowd entering the theater. Backstage, Ann and Driscoll discuss their pending marriage. Kong is revealed, bound on a platform in steel chains. News photographers crowd forward, shooting off flashbulbs. Kong becomes enraged, breaks his chains, and goes berserk, searching for Ann.

The film’s climax shows him creating havoc across the city, grabbing Ann, and climbing the Empire State Building. There he staves off attacking Army planes for a time, but an excess of bullets leaves him bloody and weak. He plunges off the tower to his death. “So the planes got him,” a policeman says to Denham. “No, it was Beauty killed the Best,” he replies.

Kong can be interpreted in many ways – Kong as an outsized caricature of a Black man, Kong as Nature overpowering the modern world, Kong as a king made into a slave who regains his kingly crown only in the moments before his death. He is a noble creature, whatever other layers of meaning you choose to impose on him. You kind of love the big ape, and you are still rooting for him after all these years, though you know what his fate will be.

The NFR is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Power and the Glory.

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