金刚1933

1933 年，《金刚》横空出世，我坐在电视机前看这部黑白版电影，脑子里时不时出现 2005 年那部《金刚》，情节上，它们有太多相似之处，说是翻拍，一点也不为过。

两部《金刚》的主题是：不是飞机击落金刚，而是美女打败了野兽。故事情节也很相同，一群人去骷髅岛找金刚，遇到土著人，美女被虏，一群人寻找美女历险，金刚与霸王龙恶战。

黑白版的技术融合动画、模型和真人，有的故事能看出来演员在屏幕前表演，但故事太过吸引人，使我的心情不免随着剧情起伏。

05 年的翻拍，电影技术足够成熟，眼睛已经分辨不出真假，打斗场面也有很大的提升，不过也仅此而已，它无法超越黑白版故事的框架。注意，黑白版只有一百分钟，翻牌版有三个多小时，同样的故事，前者更多靠故事吸引力，后者更注重特效。

通过对比，还能看见黑白版《金刚》有野蛮与残暴的部分，比如它会杀人，长相更为丑陋，更接近野兽，翻拍版更为人性化，有一段特别明显：金刚抓住美女，坐在悬崖边那段，黑白版对美女的表现是粗鲁的探索，翻牌电影更为浪漫唯美，女主甚至还在悬崖偏偏起舞。

如果你没有看过开创性的黑白版《金刚》，我推荐你去看看，它是开创先河的一部电影，是更偏重故事性的一部美女与野兽。

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。

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)