King Kong: A Myth for Moderns

Nearly forty years after its release in 1933, the motion-picture studios are remaking the film classic, King Kong. It may seem odd that a film based upon such fantasy should succeed so well where many others of a similar genre have faded with little recognition. But King Kong captures and fascinates us. It is an incomparable masterpiece of the fantastic and a worthy successor to the eighteenth century fairy tale and the Gothic novel.

Somehow, despite the unreality of its contents the film sweeps us along, drawing us into a borderland of mental functioning in which we temporarily suspend the critical aspects of our consciousness and allow a more childlike element to prevail. We are swept up by the film's events as though in a dream. And, as if in a dream, we become both participants and observers. It is this pervasive oneiric quality that is greatly responsible for the spell that the film casts over adults and children alike. While some temporary suspension of the mind's critical faculties is necessary for involvement in and appreciation of any work of art, the facility with which King Kong elicits this reaction on the parts of its viewers is striking. We quickly forgive the screen-writers for the many paleontological impossibilities they provide us. It does not matter to us that a vegetarian brontosaurus would not consume human flesh or that gigantic reptiles and iron-age men are presented anachronistically dwelling side by side. Such logical contradictions are quickly elided as the struggle on the screen absorbs us.

The ease with which the films draws the viewer into its surreal world of fantasy is partly due to its extraordinary technical wizardry. It was the first film to successfully use miniature models animated by stop-motion photography as well as rear-process and superimposed images to achieve its remarkable visual effects. The film's dream climate was further accentuated by the use of Arnold Böcklin's macabre painting, The Isle of the Dead, to represent Skull