金刚1933

那个时代算是可以了，故也算是流畅，但我们如果以我们如今的角度去看这部电影的话。还是觉得很粗糙。

我说的不仅仅是特效方面，而是30年代好莱坞那种白人至上，土著被设定成愚昧无知，对巨兽无比恐惧，而“英勇”的白人却组成了小队，去对抗“凶残”的巨猩。这也或多或少地，凸显了西方当时主流社会的意识形态。

最后，那一句杀死巨猩的不是子弹，而是爱情。我觉得更是对白人的一种讽刺。诚然，如今的西方社会对种族歧视也有不同的意见，甚至有点矫枉过正，就拿近年的电影来说可见一斑。

无论是月光男孩和黑豹，还是绿皮书，都在宣扬政治正确，可能是西方社会这么多年来的不断自我矫正。

但有时候物极必反，现在也出现了一个很有意思的现象“逆向歧视”。如果，你不为黑豹为月光男孩叫好，你就是三观不正。如果你说绿皮书不好看，你就是种族歧视。当舆论变成只有一个方向，这太恐怖了。

歧视，就是不应该的。不管是种族歧视，还是任何歧视。因为，世界上怎么会有最完美的东西？有时候歧视者也同样是被歧视者，被害者也许是曾经的施暴者。爱他人，就是爱自己。我不想去说教，因为这是每个人都能理解的。

令人惊艳的的特效怪兽电影，后来的翻拍虽然技术有所进步，剧本也打磨得更细腻，但也仅仅是在这一版的基础上做得更好而已，这部1933年的《金刚》具有划时代的意义。 有人说，这版金刚滥杀无辜，喜欢不起来，但其实只要你仔细想一想就会意识到导演和编剧这样处理其实是更加真实地反应了金刚的本性，因为它毕竟是一只巨大的野兽，没有人类那样懂得怜悯其它生命的感情，但它对于自己喜欢的人或者物品是会懂得不去伤害甚至去保护她的行为，让人倍感意外。这也就是为什么不少观众在最后看到金刚在滥杀无辜之后为保护女主而死依然会觉得伤心和失落的原因。 尤其是女性观众往往会产生这样的想法: “什么时候能有一个男人能为我爬上帝国大厦打飞机呢？”然后对身边的男友狠狠地白了一眼。

A killer monster talkie that ushers in an era of creatively cranking out disproportionate behemoths to treat cinema audience with thrills and chills, the original KING KONG is the irrefutable forefather, most extraordinarily for its cutting-edge stop-motion animation technique, under the dexterous hands of Willis O’ Brien, which intricately melds with rear projection, matte painting and animatronics to knock its spectators dead, who are bestowed with an unprecedented vicarious experience of beholding a gargantuan gorilla-like monster, rampaging over, first an island jungle, a tribal village, then NYC, topping off by surmounting the pinnacle of the Empire State Building (the world’s tallest building at that time), before its fateful destiny precipitated by the weaponry of modern civilization.

Depression-era USA, from New York Harbor to the uncharted Skill Island, filmmaker Carl Denham (Armstrong), embarks his treacherous journey after recruiting a strapped but comely young girl Ann Darrow (Wray) as his new picture’s leading lady in the eleventh hour, only revealing his destination later on, the mystique of an apocryphal creature has been honed up to the hilt, with Ann feigning her trademark scream when sees something unspeakably horrendous, which will soon come out without any scintilla of feigning after she is served as a human offering by the local tribe on the island as “the bride of Kong”, and being tossed around like a toy (and incredibly unscathed) by the ape-monster that seems to take a particular shine to her.

It goes without saying that the special effects inexorably look rather dated to today’s eyes (86 years on), Kong’s image is more mechanic and cartoon-like than realistic, and a further emotional interrelation between the beauty and the beast becomes stone-cold impossible, but for a cinephile, our admiration and reverence towards the teamwork behind the arduous job of contriving such an enterprise is profound. In retrospect, KING KONG also benefits from its pre-Code temporality, that the film doesn’t shy away from Kong’s feral, human-chomping-and-stomping ferocity.

Kong’s violence might be excessive, but compared to the human team’s wanton reaction of disposing a stegosaurus (unwittingly betrays those adventurers’ own savage instinct), not to mention their reckless action that obliquely brings ruination to the tribe, which has been maintaining a non-aggressive cohabitation with Kong and the Jurassic living fossils, Kong’s fascination of Ann is perversely much more human and affecting (any sexual innuendo is punctiliously fudged), in the sense that his protective inclination towards that dainty, screeching creature is something unadulteratedly congenital and inexplicable (he battles with three different pre-historic monsters to save Ann out of harm’s way), which leaves his denouement a resounding pang in a viewer’s heart. Meantime, what now looks jarring is the ethnocentric idea that a white girl is being lionized by a foreign tribe as something exotically superior than their own skin, and the white men’s rough trespassing on their turfs only makes the aftertaste smack of racial insensitivity.

The long and the short of it, like its preternatural protagonist, Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack’s KING KONG itself is almost, too big to fall, remains as a landmark Hollywood commodity that pioneers in configuring a fantasy world of horror, excitement and otherworldliness, that has been still hogging the market and incessantly piquing our innate interest.

referential entries: Peter Jackson’s KING KONG (2005, 7.0/10); Karel Zeman’s THE DEADLY INVENTION (1958, 6.5/10)