(4.5/5)

Seventy-seven years ago, King Kong premiered at Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. The year was 1933, and it was the same week that President Roosevelt declared a national bank holiday in order to stop bank runs in a desperate Depression. But King Kong captured people’s imaginations and was an immediate hit, and has been beloved by generations since. Today, a newly restored version of the film premiered at that same Chinese Theatre to an enthusiastic audience – most of whom had seen it before, but a few hadn’t, and most of us had never had the opportunity to see it on a big screen. And the Chinese is one of the biggest, and I can easily say that seventy-seven years on, the big guy still doesn’t disappoint.

I’ve seen Kong two or three times and really enjoyed it, but there’s something about seeing it on the big screen, with an audience. It’s how it was meant to be seen, and the experience gave it that little extra oomph that moved me from “really enjoying” to understanding the abject love that so many people have for this movie. I won’t deny, either, that I was a little verklempt at the realization that I was sitting in the same theatre where the film premiered so many years before my time, able to experience as closely as possible the same thing that people then experienced. I’m enough of a nostalgic film history freak to think that was amazing, and I was pretty much in awe of the privilege of the experience. It’s easy to look at the stop-motion and compositing effects with jaded 21st-century eyes, but I honestly doubt many people do so for long – after Kong’s initial tree-crashing entrance, the film zips along with such conviction and heart that you just about can’t help being swept along with it. You can’t help cheering Kong’s defeat of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, or marvel at his deftness in ridding Ann Darrow of her extraneous clothing.

Beyond Kong himself, though, I was really blown away this time by how well-written and set up it is. The parallels between the movie that Denham is making and Kong itself. The way that mystery and intrigue are used to create a sense of both overwhelming dread and overwhelming excitement and interest in finding out where that boat is heading, what’s beyond the fog, and what’s on the other side of the wall. It’s a collision of the desperately mundane (New York’s soup kitchens and fruit stalls teeming with hungry people) and the enthrallingly terrifying exotic, mediated by film itself, the medium that is most irrevocably caught between the world of fantasy and reality.

The restoration is beautiful, and hopefully this version will be on Blu-ray soon; it’s definitely worth grabbing, especially if you don’t already own it. It’s stunning. And take your kids to see it, in a theatre if you can – the amount of wonder and awe that King Kong can inspire nearly 80 years after its creation and despite all the advances in special effects technology during those years remains incredible.