New York - A gigantic gorilla perched atop the Empire State Building in New York City tenderly says farewell to the small, blonde woman he holds in his hand.
A scene from Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong.
It's a scene that made motion picture history, and it comes at the conclusion of the action-fantasy film King Kong, considered the grandfather of all monster movies. Sunday is the 75th anniversary of the touchingly romantic film's debut on March 2, 1933, when it was first screened at New York's Radio City Music Hall.
Today, many experts in cinema say not even a fraction of new releases in the horror-movie genre are as good.
In the movie, US directors Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack tell the story of a successful filmmaker who takes a crew to an exotic island to shoot an adventure film.
Natives of the island abduct the beautiful star of the film, played by Fay Wray, and offer her as a bride to the island's god, a violent gorilla. The beast falls head over heels in love with the platinum blonde starlet, and from that point on simply wants to protect her from the dangers including dinosaurs and other terrors lurking in the island's jungle.
After a series of sensational struggles with the creatures, the crew frees the star and captures the gorilla, intent on taking him to New York and presenting him as the eighth wonder of the world. But the gorilla escapes in Manhattan and must be hunted down, setting up the showdown on the skyscraper.
The movie's special effects remain a fascinating aspect of the original film.
One of the pioneers of special effect techniques in film, Willis O'Brien, managed to depict dinosaurs, giant snakes and reptiles so creatively and with so much fantasy that they can hardly be matched by today's computer-generated images.
To achieve it, O'Brien turned the projection methods around.
Instead of having actors do their scenes in front of prerecorded exteriors and animation, he shrank real scenes down to fit on miniscreens within his animated set. This allowed the movements of the figures to better correspond with the position and movements of the actors.
Reflecting on the film, the Frankfurter Rundschau called it 'a pioneering achievement at the dawn of the talkies.'
But the allure of Kong lies not only in its technical brilliance but also in the poetry of the story, which rejected ordinary black- and-white templates.
The gorilla is almost human-like in his love for the woman. The audience sympathizes with him right up to the legendary closing scene, in which the beast plucks an attacking biplane from the sky like a toy, but in the end is struck by a hail of gunfire and falls into the depths.
Critics have pointed out undertones in the film including as racism, colonialism and sexism.
While the film went on to become one of the first blockbusters ever, its creators had to make due with a paltry 600,000-dollar budget.
They used dinosaurs that O'Brien had created for an earlier film project, and for the jungle scenes they borrowed sets from a 1932 horror film. The huge wall that separated the island had served as a temple in the 1927 Cecil B DeMille movie King of Kings. The wooden door in the wall was later burned in Gone With the Wind.
After it premiered, King Kong went on a triumphant charge around the world.
In its 75-year existence, it's been remade over and over again, exploited and merchandised - from computer games to stuffed animals. In 1993, a restored and complete version of the original King Kong was issued for the Berlin film festival. A 1976 remake was disappointing despite Jessica Lange's breakthrough performance as the blonde starlet.
In 2005, Peter Jackson, the New Zealander who directed The Lord of the Rings, took a chance on a remake with actress Naomi Watts in the lead female role and a record budget of more than 200 million dollars. It was honoured with three technical Oscar Awards.
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