Reviews of "King Kong", the visually, technically, and dramatically stunning 2005 remake of this now classic cinematic tale, are legion on the Amazon WWW sites. Many critics have "panned" the film; perhaps they hate the "monster movie" genre (to which "King Kong" certainly belongs) so much that such a prejudice blinds them to this particular film's fine qualities. I saw the movie with a friend whose knowledge of motion picture lore dwarfs my own, and who screened this film (from the DVD "Deluxe Extended Edition" on three discs) after having shown me (along with some other friends) the original R.K.O. "King Kong" of 1933, with the extra features on the DVD, as well as the fine 1976 remake and only then this even more compelling 2005 version of the tale (with its DVD extras), as well. I know rather well a family member of the R.K.O. proprietors' descendents, who lives quite comfortably off the fortune which the royalties of the 1933 film and other R.K.O. movies still generate, so the "inside information" which he conveyed to me regarding the R.K.O. studio's inner workings had increased considerably my curiosity about "King Kong". The sheer lore of "King Kong" on screen in its three full length motion picture versions fascinates but also certainly intimidates a writer to review any or all of these movies; I only am making a short and feeble attempt at the nagging urges and challenge of the good friend who showed me the three films. I'll limit my comments to some of my personal impressions of the three versions.
The 1933 motion picture stands up well to the comparisons. The R.K.O. production was of path-breaking importance to the history of cinema in many ways; the bold technical advances made in its filming, which impacted the motion picture industry so strongly, are utterly fascinating, and I would suspect that the 2005 movie, in its turn, already has furthered the art of film-making to at least some extent, even if not so crucially as the 1933 movie had done so. What interests me most, though, after having viewed the 1933, the 1976, and the 2005 films, is the characterisation of the actors in the principal roles (which differ somewhat in the naming, and even career types, of the personages), each "take" on the characters of this epic story having its own kind of validity.
The eponymous mega-ape itself, of course, entails a sophisticated resort to cinematic artifice to bring this character to screen. The 1933 film did this with a degree of sophistication that still commands respect, even compared to the 1976 mechanical ape. What sets off the 2005 achievement is how life-like the monster's facial expressions are and how the beast's muscular movements, even those of its hind-quarters, co-ordinate to convey how utterly simian King Kong is made to behave. The animation of the other prehistoric creatures of Skull Island does not match the detail of King Kong in any of the three films, but even the 1933 movie's screen beasts, all of them, surpass what one sees in such creatures in most films of the genre from as late as the 1950s or even the early 1960s. As for Kong's dizzying ascent of New York City's skyscrapers in the final confrontation of the mega-ape with ground and, especially, air forces in the film's climax on its then tallest of them, as giddy as all of these films make one feel atop the Empire State Building, it is this scene in the 2005 version that left me with the most thoroughly churned stomach and frightened feelings of vertigo.
My favourite character among the men of each movie's cast is the male romantic lead, Jack (or John) Prescott, who in 1933 is a virile but winsomely bashful senior member (Bruce Cabot) of the crew of the ship and and of its Skull Island expeditionary force, in 1976 a shaggy-headed, ruggedly but leanly handsome sort of "green" ecology activist and primate anthropologist (Jeff Bridges), and in 2005 a slim but lithe, reticently mannered, but romantically ardent writer of theatrical and screen plays (Adrien Brody). Bruce Cabot's impersonation is rather of the stolid and thoroughly sailor-like kind, as the script of the 1933 film requires, but he is believable and he does grow as a character when his love for Ann, his (and King Kong's) sweetheart, develops. Jeff Bridges is irresistibly physical and hiply handsome, quite up to any challenge that the human savages, the savage jungle, or the even more savage creatures therein, and New York City in chaos, all pose; his love for the female romantic lead is the most strongly and hormonally sexual in nature of any of the three films' male lead. For me, however, Adrien Brody's exquisite Jack is the most nicely detailed in portrayal, gently rakish, sensitive, and quite visibly head-over-heels in love with Ann right from the moment when he first encounters her. Brody succeeds in rising to the challenge of Jack's ordeals in the jungle and then in mayhem-beset New York City in a way that overcomes, convincingly, what one would expect of the slender, fit, but muscularly only modestly developped wordsmith as Brody embodies him.
Of the other male characters, the most endearing is Jimmy (Jamie Bell), the only partly reformed adolescent delinquent who is given another chance in setting his life on a positive course as the most junior member of the ship's crew and who proves his pluck ashore in the jungles of Skull Island; his part has no equivalent in the 1976 film, and so little in the 1933 movie that the character of Jimmy barely registers on the viewer's attention in that original version. One of the low-key but most strikingly spooky moments in the film occurs when Jimmy explains to Jack (with an objectivity that is all the more dreadful for its calm) just how a victim's body really reacts when stabbed, whether fatally or otherwise. A chill runs not only visibly through Jack but also through the viewer; this kid knows all about mayhem and murder from his own blade-wielding experience! Providing for me the single greatest urge to buy the DVD in this packaging, as a big fan of all things terpsichorean, is Jamie Bell's work in Jimmy's shipboard dance with Ann, youthfully vigourous and spryly fleet-footed, as glimpsed only briefly in the film as released, but which had been given in full as the scene was filmed so memorably during production, and included among the Extended 3-discs set's extra features (but not even in the Extended Version itself of the film). (Jamie Bell's considerable dancing talents had been in high profile in his first film, "Billy Elliot", in which Bell played the title role.) This dance number reminds me of the kind of salty antics of the traditional seafaring dancing (without female partner, of course, hence often danced solo), which even then was becoming rare among sailors, that I was lucky enough to observe aboard ship (only far better done in the movie!) when I was in the Navy during the Kennedy years (early 1960s).
The other male characters are of somewhat less interest to me (though surely not so to other viewers), although, among them, Robert Armstrong's irrepressibly mountebank Carl Denham of 1933 is the unsurpassed characterisation of his role. Compared to that actor, even Jack Black's amusingly Elton John like impersonation of Carl Denham in 2005, and certainly Charles Grodin as the crassly venture business entrepreneur Fred Wilson, the more-or-less equivalent character in the 1976 version, both pale by comparison to Armstrong's 1933 exuberant show-biz and adventure crazed portrayal of Denham.
Fay Wray as Ann Darrow in 1933 remains the most pschychologically convincing realisation of the role, waiflike but very pretty and perhaps the most consistently wary of Kong's fierceness. Jessica Lange (the equivalent, named Dwan, of Ann in the other versions) in 1976 is the most divergent in personality, so daffily and modishly "airheaded" during the voyage to Skull Island, but adapting to things adroitly once she finds herself in the jungle. Lange's Ann certainly is the most erotically attuned to Kong; her scene settling in to lounge in King Kong's "Easy Boy" armchair-like palm is the most visually striking moment for that gal in any of the three versions! It is Naomi Watts, playing Ann Darrow in 2005, who is the most alert to the sympathetically titanic-but-tender aspects of Kong's nature. All three actresses are of the same basic physical type, slenderly pretty but not big-bustedly bodacious as so many screen beauties have been. Kong gets to divest Fay Wray (with more sizzling effectiveness) and Jessica Lange of some of their clothes, but Kong displays less sexual curiousity about the Ann Darrow of Naomi Watts, the body of which actress, however, many human guys gladly would investigate very eagerly.
All three versions of "King Kong" are worthy of this tale's primal (and primate) appeal, even if it is the 1933 and 2005 movies' spectacular effects, respectively for early sound film and for later cinematography, which most immediately draw the attention of mass audiences to them. I found the storm scene in the 2005 film very gripping, and realistic, too (and this comment comes from a former sailor who, indeed, was in such storms at sea) when the rusty old scow of a ship copes successfully with the heaving ocean waters as the captain and crew struggle to keep the ship afloat while navigating it free of Skull Island's jagged contours.
All three films, the 1976 version included, well merit time spent watching them, as do the fascinating extra features that add so much to the value of the DVD issues of the 1933 and 2005 movies. |
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"King Kong... Yankee Doodle Kong"