King Kong (1933)
There's a moment watching King Kong when you have to stop and remind yourself: they made this in 1933. No computers. No CGI. No motion capture. Just ingenuity, patience, and craftsmanship that, frankly, puts plenty of modern blockbusters to shame in terms of sheer ambition. I came away genuinely baffled as to how they pulled it off.
And that bafflement is, I think, the most honest response you can have to this film. The stop-motion work on Kong himself, and on the various creatures that populate Skull Island, must have been absolutely groundbreaking when audiences first saw it. You can only imagine the jaw-dropping effect it had in a packed cinema in the early thirties. Even now, knowing full well how it was done, there's something almost hypnotic about watching it. The craft involved is staggering.
The rest of the film holds up better than you might expect, too. The dialogue has that rapid-fire, no-nonsense quality you get with a lot of films from that era. Characters say what they mean, scenes move briskly, and there's a wit running through the script that stops it feeling dusty. The acting is decent across the board. Nothing that'll blow your socks off, but perfectly serviceable and occasionally genuinely charming.
That said, I have to be honest: watching it in 2025, the age is showing. This isn't a criticism so much as a simple truth. Nearly a century of filmmaking has happened since King Kong was released, and the weight of that is felt. Some of the pacing drags by modern standards. Certain sequences that would have felt breathless and terrifying to a 1933 audience now feel a touch slow. The composite shots, revolutionary as they were, can look a little rough around the edges when you're used to what modern effects work looks like.
None of that should put you off watching it, though. Viewing King Kong purely on its own terms, as a piece of filmmaking from its era, it's outstanding. An absolute five-star achievement for 1933. The problem, if you can call it that, is that films don't exist in a vacuum. When I sit down to watch something, I'm watching it now, with all the context that brings. And on that basis, three stars feels like the right honest landing spot. A genuinely impressive piece of cinema history that I'm glad I've seen, with reservations about how comfortably it sits in the present day.
There's something quietly moving about it, actually. Watching King Kong feels like peering through a window into a completely different world. The filmmaking instincts, the storytelling rhythms, even the way scenes are lit and composed. It's a reminder of how long people have been dreaming up enormous, spectacular stories and finding ways to put them on screen against all odds. Whatever your feelings about the film itself, that's worth something.
Three stars.
Rating: ★★★ (3/5)
Originally logged on Letterboxd.
