View of Film

KING KONG

Starring Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot, Frank Reicher, and Noble Johnson
Directed by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack & written by Cooper, Edgar Wallace, James Ashmore Creelman, and Ruth Rose
1933
106 min NR

Hooray for stop-motion.

In its screaming, primal, “step-right-up!” kind of way, “King Kong” really is one of the best movies ever made. I mean, an ape the size of a house, fighting biplanes atop the Empire State Building—that is a great image. “Kong” certainly plays differently today than when it was first released more than seven decades ago, as a strange social document, as a movie within a movie, and, most famously, as a surreal, nightmarish experience. Stop-motion effects, with their twitching clay fur and otherworldly movements, may no longer be considered “convincing.” Maybe they never were, but they have a beautiful artifice that’s better than convincing.

I’ve been getting into Guy Maddin more and more lately—the contemporary Canadian filmmaker who shoots with sets, acting, and effects from cinema’s early days—and I’ve recently seen Fritz Lang’s gallivanting good time “Die Nibelungen,” with no effects greater than double exposures and good photography. “Kong” is a celebration, not only of stop-motion, but of miniatures, puppets, matte paintings, and rear projection. It’s hard to describe its ghostly, flickering allure. To mention giant apes and dinosaurs doesn’t do “Kong” justice, because stop-motion monsters are a species all their own, with a magic all their own. We don’t like “Kong” because it reminds us of reality any more than we like Jackson Pollack or a medieval icon.

“King Kong” is the biggest, baddest, “every-trick-in-the-book” example of this fearless, unconvincing stuff, pitting the eponymous, house-sized ape against dinosaurs, islanders, sailors, and, eventually, New York itself. Fresh from all that was mastered in the fleeting silent era, the ape’s wordless “performance” deserves mention next to any silent actor. Yes, he rages, screams, beats his chest, and pounds monsters like a boxer. But he is also sad, curious, forlorn, desperate, and confused, all without the help of a single word, and often without facial expressions, either. It’s all in the shoulders, arms, and movements of his head (and Max Steiner’s score).

Watch how he picks up Fay Wray like a human would pick up a ferret. He tickles her, sniffs his fingers, tickles her again, and peels off bits of her clothes like petals from a flower. Willis O’Brien is the animator genius behind, and the mentor of the late, great Ray Harryhausen (“Clash of the Titans”). The Kong head used for close-ups, often of people being eaten, is not nearly as interesting as the full-bodied monkey.

But Kong does rage, scream, beat, and pound, and it’s seldom mentioned just how brutal “King Kong” is. That he climbs atop a T-rex and breaks it jaw, bringing forth a stream of strawberry jelly, is rough enough. But what burns itself in your brain is how, moments later, he toys with the downed monster’s jaw, opening it, shutting it, like a little boy, making sure it’s defeated. Scenes censored for years but restored for the sparkling new double-DVD include lingering, almost fetishistic shots of sailors tumbling to the bottom of a ravine, one-by-one. Kong never eats anyone—instead he victims them in his mouth, bites, then discards the limp corpses. Fleeing bystanders are hit with rumble. He doesn’t just step on islanders, he crushes on their heads in the mud. Most brutal of all is when he tears around New York in search of his beloved blonde. He mistakes a sleeping woman for his love, pulls her out the window, then indifferently lets her tumble to a crowded street when he realizes his error. Kong treats us the way we treat insects.

Of course a lot of “King Kong” plays as camp now. Even on the DVD commentary Ray Harryhausen cracks jokes about the fate of islanders, flying bodies, and things of that sort. But the movie is more than just effects—once the beast appears, director Merian C. Cooper stomps the gas and never lets it up, giving the movie the heedless, headlong motion of an hallucination (something of which Peter Jackson should have taken note in his 2005 remake). There are some truly magnificent “handheld” shots, from the POV of the attacking biplanes, while a forlorn Kong is atop the Empire State Building. “King Kong,” like many early movies, is also interested in the nature of film itself. It continually gives us frames within frames, almost a movie-within-a-movie, prompted by a power-hungry fictional filmmaker without a scruple in his body. Recently, The Amused commented on the movie-within-a-movie qualities of effects pictures like “Harry Potter,” in which characters are, in a way, watching the same special effects that we are, then prompting us to respond with their own “oohs” and “aahs.” “King Kong” does something similar, seven decades early, but instead of directing the audience, asks us to be wary of filmmaking.

Robert Armstrong plays Denham, the half-mad producer who risks the lives and limbs, not only of himself, but of a crew of sailors and his leading lady (Fay Wray). One scene finds him behind the camera, talking her through the motions she should use when she sees something shocking. The scene is so inessential to the plot that executive producer David O. Selznick wanted it cut, yet it provides a mild level of irony or self-awareness. Sexless, more power-mad than greedy, and indifferent to human life—when Denham describes the ease with which Kong shook sailors to their doom off a log bridge, he is in awe of the beast’s power and needs to be reminded that 12 lives were lost. That he receives no comeuppance by the end of the film is proof enough that he is, at least in part, inspired by “Kong” mastermind Merian Cooper. (Cooper, incidentally, invented the “Old Arabian proverb” that opens the film.)

And, of course, “Kong” reflects an ambivalent attitude about race. I can think of two basic interpretations. Neither of them is very politically correct, but one is at least more charitable than the other. On the one hand, the use of Kong as the representation of the ultimate big black man out to rape white virgins is cringe-inducing. But, on the other hand, we’ve taken his side by film’s end. The acting on behalf of the human actors is wooden compared to the monkey’s (it’s not a world of difference between how Heywood Floyd and Dave Bowman are automatons and HAL 9000 is infinitely more human). We are saddened by the separation of this “interracial” couple. And the movie makes it abundantly clear that Kong has no one to blame for his plight except for an industrial world that reduces everything to something that can be bought, sold, or needs to be shot (the blank, thoughtless violence with which Denham dispatches an inert stegosaurus is unmistakable).

It can’t be an accident that, when Kong is finally put on display for snooty New York WASPs, he is in an unmistakable Christ pose. Representing Africa’s descendents in America with a giant ape isn’t the kind of thing you could get away with today. But Cooper—speaking through Denham—gives added depth to Kong’s tantrum through the industrial world, a world he neither understands nor desires: “he was a king in his own land, but now he has been brought to you, in chains, for your amusement!” Maybe the 1933 audience felt that Kong’s death is a happy ending, but modern audiences see him as a poor schlubb, suffering from unrequited love, trapped in a world he can’t fathom. He’s not that different from the hero of Richard Wright’s “Native Son,” even if the comparison is patronizing.

As for the story—well, it’s clipped, efficient, gets to the point, making way for some of the most indelible icons in all the movies—a massive operatic pastiche. It doesn’t make an enormous amount of sense. No one explains what sort of Faustian bargain requires the islanders to sacrifice women to Kong periodically. That some long-lost, forgotten society built a giant wall to protect the islanders from all the monsters kind-of make senses; but why said forgotten society would include a door large enough for Kong to use instead of just a few person-sized doors is never, nor could it ever, be explained. The human acting is often stiff, and the first 45 minutes drag when compared to the frantic, unearthly atmosphere of the middle and the climax. But come on—he’s on top of the freaking Empire State Building beating off biplanes with his fists. That’s why God made the movies.

Finished Thursday, December 22nd, 2005