Today for Cinema Sunday, I'm going to post about a movie I first saw as very young child.
I remember watching King Kong on a grey Sunday afternoon
many years ago.
The original King Kong from 1933. I’m not sure of the circumstances of how I came
to be watching this movie. I was quite young, still in the single digits, possibly 8 or 9. But I
have a surprisingly clear recollection of the day, the weather and of seeing
the flickering black and white images dance across a small TV screen.
I’m not sure that King Kong actually scared me. It
did certainly weird me out.
My recollection is that King Kong was more of a surreal experience
than a scary one. The giant creatures
that stalked the dark and mysterious environs of Skull Island moved with a strange
and awkward gait as if moving through someone’s fever dreams. King Kong himself seemed more of a thing of
nightmares. Even my small boy’s brain recognized the relative crudity of the effects
as Kong moved in a shuddering manner. But the idea of King Kong, that this
bizarre and ethereal image of a giant gorilla might have actually existed somewhere,
disturbed the inner workings of my childish mind.
Even as I understood this was just a movie, my mind processed
the black and white footage unspooling on my TV screen like some old newsreel
footage of a time long gone and a place best forgotten. King Kong was the first
movie to make me imagine wonders and terrors beyond the world we know.
King Kong was my first monster. And he was a creature I sympathized
with. He’s just living his life on Skull Island, doing his thing in his island home.
Then men came along and made him go out into a world he wasn't ready for and it wasn’t
ready for him.
I understood that. As a child, it seems I was forever been
taken to places I didn’t want to go and do things I didn’t want to do. I felt bad for King Kong.
Forced to stand in chains to be gawked at by the ticket buying
public, King Kong is a pitiable creature. I was rooting for him to break free
and show that crowd of ogling, shouting fools who’s the boss.
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| Fay Wray publicity photo |
I understood that. I had been the focus of attention of
people who just wanted to bully me and I just wanted nothing to do with them. I
just wanted something good in my life and to be left alone.
For King Kong, the journey up the side of the Empire State Building
is a one way trip.
The airplanes come and pelt him incessantly with
gunfire. He takes out one of the
airplanes! I’m rooting for him to stop this attack but odds are against
him.
With a sorrowful look to Ann who Kong has gently deposited on a ledge, the might gorilla creature succumbs to the gunfire, falling from his lofty perch atop the Empire State Building, plummeting to his death on the New York streets below, so far from the jungle foliage of his home.
With a sorrowful look to Ann who Kong has gently deposited on a ledge, the might gorilla creature succumbs to the gunfire, falling from his lofty perch atop the Empire State Building, plummeting to his death on the New York streets below, so far from the jungle foliage of his home.
I was sad that King Kong died. He didn’t ask for any of this. He just wanted
to be left alone.
One of the characters comments in the film’s final line
about how King Kong died, saying, "No, it wasn't the airplanes. It was
Beauty killed the Beast".
No. Beauty was Kong’s only saving grace in a world that was
not his. It was man’s capacity for arrogance and greed that killed the
beast.
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