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King Kong

Director: Merian C. Cooper
Year: 1933
Run-time: 1 hr 44 min
Source: Amazon Video

Ebert's review

Notable For:  King Kong was a blockbuster monster movie with a clear legacy to the modern day.  Perhaps it did more than any other movie to permanently tie together the spectacular big-budget film with the latest special effects.  There's a reasonable case to be made that it, more than any other film of the sound era, epitomizes where American movies were going.

Verdict:  The effects, the fight scenes on the island between Kong and the dinosaurs - they're all really cool, and they made this movie worth watching.  But the film is problematic down to its supposed thematic core.  The racism is the first thing that audiences started to notice, most obviously with the portrayal of the islanders, but more implicitly with Kong himself.  Then there's the weird sexism of its supposed theme, the idea that Kong (and in a parallel sense the leading man Jack) is "brought down" by Fay Wray, who as a leading woman in a horror movie is even more without agency than is normal for the 30's.  Anyways, it's going to be hard for anyone in today's world to see past these things - and even if you can, there's just a few scenes of (admittedly very cool) stop animation to hold it all together.  We're not starved for wonderful films from this era that don't rely on extremely dated effects and atrocious stereotypes, so why is King Kong so much easier to find and watch than many of them?
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