King Kong 1933 Hd
Denisha Padley
King Kong is a 1933 American pre-Code adventure romance monster film[4] directed and produced by Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, with special effects by Willis H. O'Brien and music by Max Steiner. Produced and distributed by RKO Radio Pictures, it is the first film in the King Kong franchise. The film stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong and Bruce Cabot. The film follows a giant ape dubbed Kong who is offered a beautiful young woman as a sacrifice.
King Kong opened in New York City on March 2, 1933, to rave reviews, with praise for its stop-motion animation and score. In 1991, it was deemed "culturally, historically and aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for preservation in the National Film Registry.[5][6] It is ranked by Rotten Tomatoes as the greatest horror film of all time[7] and the fifty-sixth greatest film of all time.[8] A sequel, Son of Kong, was made the same year as the original film, and several more films have been made, including two remakes in 1976 and 2005.
In New York Harbor, filmmaker Carl Denham, known for wildlife films in remote exotic locations, is chartering Captain Englehorn's ship, the Venture, for his new project. However, he is unable to secure an actress for a female role he has been reluctant to disclose. In the streets of New York City, he finds Ann Darrow and promises her "the thrill of a lifetime". The Venture sets off, during which Denham reveals that their destination is in fact an uncharted island with a mountain the shape of a skull. He alludes to a mysterious entity named Kong, rumored to dwell on the island. The crew arrive and anchor offshore. They encounter a native village, separated from the rest of the island by an enormous stone wall with a large wooden gate. They witness a group of natives preparing to sacrifice a young woman termed the "bride of Kong". The intruders are spotted and the native chief stops the ceremony. When he sees the blonde-haired Ann, he offers to trade six of his tribal women for the "golden woman". They refuse him and return to the ship.
That night, after the ship's first mate, Jack Driscoll, admits his love for Ann, the natives kidnap Ann from the ship and take her through the gate and onto an altar, where she is offered to Kong, who is revealed to be a giant gorilla-like beast. Kong carries a terrified Ann away as Denham, Jack and some volunteers give chase. The men encounter living dinosaurs; a charging Stegosaurus, which they manage to kill, but run into an aggressive Brontosaurus and eventually Kong himself, leaving Jack and Denham as the only survivors. After Kong slays a Tyrannosaurus rex to save Ann, Jack continues to follow them while Denham returns to the village. Upon arriving in Kong's mountain lair, Ann is menaced by a serpent-like Elasmosaurus, which Kong also kills. When a Pteranodon tries to fly away with Ann, and is killed by Kong, Jack saves her and they climb down a vine dangling from a cliff ledge. When Kong starts pulling them back up, the two drop into the water below; they flee through the jungle back to the village, where Denham, Englehorn, and the surviving crewmen await. Kong, following, breaks open the gate and relentlessly rampages through the village. Onshore, Denham, determined to bring Kong back alive, renders him unconscious with a gas bomb.
Shackled in chains, Kong is taken to New York City and presented to a Broadway theatre audience as "Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!" Ann and Jack join him on stage, surrounded by press photographers. Kong, believing that the ensuing flash photography is an attack on Ann, breaks loose as the audience flees in terror. Ann is whisked away to a hotel room on a high floor, but Kong, scaling the building, reclaims her. He makes his way through the city with Ann in his grasp, wrecking a crowded elevated train and begins climbing the Empire State Building. Jack suggests to police for airplanes to shoot Kong off the building, without hitting Ann. Four biplanes take off; seeing the planes arrive, Jack becomes agitated for Ann's safety and rushes inside with Denham. At the top, Kong is shot at by the planes, as he begins swatting at them. Kong destroys one, but is wounded by the gunfire. After he gazes at Ann, he is shot more, loses his strength and plummets to the streets below; Jack reunites with Ann. Denham heads back down and is allowed through a crowd surrounding Kong's corpse in the street. When a policeman remarks that the planes got him, Denham states, "Oh, no, it wasn't the airplanes. It was Beauty killed the Beast."
King Kong producer Ernest B. Schoedsack had earlier monkey experience directing Chang: A Drama of the Wilderness (1927), also with Merian C. Cooper, and Rango (1931), both of which prominently featured monkeys in authentic jungle settings. Capitalizing on this trend, Congo Pictures released the hoax documentary Ingagi (1930), advertising the film as "an authentic incontestable celluloid document showing the sacrifice of a living woman to mammoth gorillas." Ingagi is now often recognized as a racial exploitation film as it implicitly depicted black women having sex with gorillas, and baby offspring that looked more ape than human.[11] The film was an immediate hit, and by some estimates, it was one of the highest-grossing films of the 1930s at over $4 million. Although Cooper never listed Ingagi among his influences for King Kong, it has long been held that RKO greenlighted Kong because of the bottom-line example of Ingagi and the formula that "gorillas plus sexy women in peril equals enormous profits."[12]
King Kong is well known for its groundbreaking use of special effects, such as stop-motion animation, matte painting, rear projection and miniatures, all of which were conceived decades before the digital age.[13]
The numerous prehistoric creatures inhabiting the Island were brought to life through the use of stop-motion animation by Willis H. O'Brien and his assistant animator, Buzz Gibson.[14] The stop-motion animation scenes were painstaking and difficult to achieve and complete after the special effects crew realized that they could not stop because it would make the movements of the creatures seem inconsistent and the lighting would not have the same intensity over the many days it took to fully animate a finished sequence. A device called the surface gauge was used in order to keep track of the stop-motion animation performance. The iconic fight between Kong and the Tyrannosaurus took seven weeks to be completed. O'Brien's protg, Ray Harryhausen, later worked with him on several films.
The backdrop of the island seen when the Venture crew first arrives was painted on glass by matte painters Henry Hillinck, Mario Larrinaga, and Byron L. Crabbe. The scene was then composited with separate bird elements and rear-projected behind the ship and the actors. The background of the scenes in the jungle (a miniature set) was also painted on several layers of glass to convey the illusion of deep and dense jungle foliage.[15]
On the other hand, the Williams process, invented by cinematographer Frank D. Williams, did not require a system of colored lights and could be used for wider shots. It was used in the scene where Kong is shaking the sailors off the log, as well as the scene where Kong pushes the gates open. The Williams process did not use bipacking, but rather an optical printer, the first such device that synchronized a projector with a camera, so that several strips of film could be combined into a single composited image. Through the use of the optical printer, the special effects crew could film the foreground, the stop-motion animation, the live-action footage, and the background, and combine all of those elements into one single shot, eliminating the need to create the effects in the camera.[18]
Another technique that was used in combining live actors and stop-motion animation was rear-screen projection. The actor would have a translucent screen behind him where a projector would project footage onto the back of the translucent screen.[19] The translucent screen was developed by Sidney Saunders and Fred Jackman, who received a Special Achievement Oscar. It was used in the scene where Kong and the Tyrannosaurus fight while Ann watches from the branches of a nearby tree. The stop-motion animation was filmed first. Fay Wray then spent a twenty-two-hour period sitting in a fake tree acting out her observation of the battle, which was projected onto the translucent screen while the camera filmed her witnessing the projected stop-motion battle. She was sore for days after the shoot. The same process was also used for the scene where sailors from the Venture kill a Stegosaurus.[citation needed]
O'Brien and his special effects crew also devised a way to use rear projection in miniature sets. A tiny screen was built into the miniature onto which live-action footage would then be projected.[19] A fan was used to prevent the footage that was projected from melting or catching fire. This miniature rear projection was used in the scene where Kong is trying to grab Driscoll, who is hiding in a cave. The scene where Kong puts Ann at the top of a tree switched from a puppet in Kong's hand to projected footage of Ann sitting.[citation needed]
The scene where Kong fights the Tanystropheus in his lair was likely the most significant special effects achievement of the film, due to the way in which all of the elements in the sequence work together at the same time. The scene was accomplished through the use of a miniature set, stop-motion animation for Kong, background matte paintings, real water, foreground rocks with bubbling mud, smoke, and two miniature rear screen projections of Driscoll and Ann.[citation needed]
Over the years, some media reports have alleged that in certain scenes Kong was played by an actor wearing a gorilla suit.[20][21] However, film historians have generally agreed that all scenes involving Kong were achieved with animated models,[22][23] except for the "closeups" of Kong's face and upper body which are dispersed throughout the film. These shots were accomplished by filming a "full size" mechanical model of Kong's head and shoulders. Operators could manipulate the eyes and mouth to simulate a living monster. These shots can be identified immediately in two ways: the action is very smooth (not stop-motion jittery) and the footage is extremely sharp and clear because of the size of the subject being photographed.
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