Reviews / 29 November 2005

King Kong

King Kong
USA  /  1933

Roughly the first third of King Kong is devoted to exposition: a hubristic filmmaker, his hasty casting of a naïve, beautiful woman to star in his film, his exploitation of a Pacific island tribe, and the sinister presence of something on the natives’ island. This third is told forcibly and with haste, in melodramatic dialogue and weak staging comparative to the spectacle that is to come. It elicits little critical scrutiny because it’s essentially useless; King Kong begins once the eponymous gorilla towers over the woman that will enable his demise.

The remainder of the film is a magnificent assembly of visual highlights, culminating, some seventy minutes later, with the beast atop the Empire State Building and his beauty in tow, encouraging a team of fighter aircraft to take aim. This image demonstrates the futility of the beast’s plight, and also the film’s pinnacle contrivance, a climax without regard to reason or logistics. Note that Kong scales the skyscraper with his one free hand, but foremost, the matter of the beast’s sedation and transportation to New York is omitted entirely.

King Kong is rightfully considered an early milestone in film, but it is a masterpiece of artifice. Film is an agent of imagination, and King Kong demonstrates this with remarkable technical proficiency and innovation, but also with little maturity and wit. Evaluating the film as a romance — as it clearly intends to be seen — is contingent upon understanding Kong’s attraction to a human woman. The woman’s beauty is obvious to you, but Kong’s perception of this beauty is immediate and under-developed. Despite his awesome stature, Kong is doomed because he inherits the flaws of man. If his intention is to keep his beauty, then he is as hubristic as the filmmaker that arranges his imprisonment.

The film’s greatest potential is as a parable for American imperialism. This aspect is merely apparent in the film’s periphery—the narrative favors the more presumably understood love story, but this formula is hindered by its lack of feasibility. After having saved his diminutive love interest from a throng of crewmen (who are attempting to rescue her) and a Tyrannosaur, he handles his incapacitated love close to his face, removes parts of her clothing, and smells her body. (This scene was censored in early distributions of the film.) It is the only scene in which this inordinance is confirmed. Kong may do nothing but observe his love, and his realization of this inability is as tragic as his epic death.

We are to think Kong’s perception of beauty is acute. In search of his misplaced love, during his final rampage, the behemoth reaches into an apartment window, procures its female tenant, whom he tosses below because she does not meet his specific evaluation of beauty. Once he does find his desired woman, there is nothing he can do with her. And once this flaw is confirmed in an otherwise impervious beast, his downfall is instigated.

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  1. Rumsey
    5 December 2005
    7:17 AM
    Website

    Warner’s DVD edition includes some exhaustive supplements on the film’s making and history. Of note is Peter Jackson’s (re)construction of the legendary spider pit sequence, which is purported to have occured immediately after Kong shakes a group of crewmen off a log bridge into a crevasse below. The sequence was included in initial prints of the film, and excised once it was found too obscene by early audiences.

    Jackon’s completion of this seen is made with clinical integrity. Wireframe models are made with old-fashioned techniques and materials, including a replica of a triceratops made according to x-rays of the original model (a prize in Jackson’s collection). The result is incredible, an enthused homage to the original film and its craft, but it reinforces two flaws: one, that the film decidedly misconstrues dinosaur behavior (brontosaurs and triceratops are herbivores, but herein each excitedly devours one of the crewmen), and two, that the sequence – approximately three minutes of imaginative suffering and death – halts the momentum entirely, and was rightfully removed from the film in the first place.

  2. Marc Watkins
    7 December 2005
    8:39 PM
    A real interesting read, I agree with just about everything you say, but I interpreted Kong as an allegory to slavery and the intense fear white people had of untamed black passion. The actual hubris of the filmmaker Denham parallels the history of slavery. White men come to a place and find something that they perceive as brutal and uncivilized, and attempt to control it. There are several tells; when Kong is knocked out by gas and Denham tells the rest of the men that they will take this creature back to the world of civilization, that “he’s always been King of his world. We’ll teach him fear.‚Ä? How do you teach something the size of Kong fear? Denham later says that they’ve “knocken some of the fight out of him‚Ä? during Kong’s Broadway appearance. Kong’s romance is in essence Shakespearean in origin. Shakespeare’s Tempest fits so well with character of Kong. The monstrous Caliban’s love for Miranda mirrors Kong’s uncivilized fetish for a white women. This is just another way of viewing the film, but the actual fact that African’s were taken from the homes and put on display is well documented. Sarah Baartman, “The Hottentot Vensus‚Ä? was taken from her home in South Africa in the early 1800’s and put on display in London because members of her tribe had larger than average hips. This feature actually caused a debate to begin in Europe about the members of the Khokhoi tribe and if they should even be considered as human beings. Her story fits perfectly in Denham’s plan to show the world something extraordinary, with no real thought of morality or consequences of their actions. The finality of the ending is amazing in how many ways you can interpret it. The movies line is beauty was what killed the beast, but the image itself has a deeper meaning. The planes shooting Kong are the civilized world finally mastering the passion, the untamed savageness of Caliban. Another interpretation is that Kong’s death on top of the world is shown as the white man stopping black upward mobility. Whatever interpretation you consider, it’s hard to just see that romance is involved in King Kong.

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Credits

Directed by
Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack

Review by
Rumsey Taylor

Source
Warner Bros. DVD

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