"Aaaaahhhhhh!"

The “Queen of Scream” is a fitting moniker for Fay Wray, founded through previous roles in B-grade horror films such as “Dr. X” (1932) and solidified in her portrayal of Ann Darrow in “King Kong” (1933). In re-reading my notes to address this blog I am amused to find I’ve written “All it is, is screaming. Forever.” The film, particularly the last half, is saturated by the sound of feminine screams of terror. Initially, as with a child’s cry, this sound evokes a visceral and instinctive empathetic response, however, it quickly becomes tiresome.

I laughed at the time, thinking of the transcript shared between Kong’s roars and Ann’s screams. This central relationship, unarticulated yet intensely emotional, finds impetus in base human emotions. Kong, the terrifying monster, loves Ann. He loves her with the same dangerous, careless love of a child clutching in its hands a Barbie doll. These images are not hard to reconcile in one’s mind. Kong's desire manifests in possessiveness; Ann's picturesque terror, in submission. I intend this image to remain firmly in your mind, in considering the allure of terror to an audience and in the extrapolation of this dynamic to explore the heavily masculinised geography of this film.


The narrative contains three distinct spaces, each fraught with different dangers for women, particularly beautiful women. The ship presents the least threat, simply the promise of its destination. The foreign island is overtly threatening – consider the ominous “Skull Mountain” – in which women are bartered and sacrificed to the mighty Kong. The danger of the unknown plays little role in the audience's experience; well-aware of what lurks on Skull Mountain they are waiting for the gratification deriving from the appearance of the monster they paid for when purchasing their ticket.

In my reading of the spaces of this film, it is the city which poses the greatest threat – it spawns Carl Denham (Robert Armstrong). Denham is a man of the city, manipulative, self-interested and predator to the vulnerable. The introduction to Ann’s character highlights this, her naivety made clear by the demure concealing of her face in shadow, before a typical Hollywood-glamour reveal into the light. Denham ‘saves’ her from the fruit vendor and she falls gratefully into his arms, a precursor to her later position in the clutches of another, literal, monster.

It is important to digress here to the heavy-handed thematic use of the Beauty and the Beast tale. The ‘Old Arabian Proverb’ frames the male-female relationships in terms of this well-known dynamic. A Westernised Beauty and the Beast tale witnesses the reformation of the Beast and the winning of Beauty’s love, analogous to the suggested future harmony of Jack (Bruce Cabot) and Ann at the close of the film.

The clearly demarcated Beast, Kong, suffers the predicted downfall subsequent and inevitable to love for Beauty, unable to reform as the racialised ‘Other’ in the cityscape, his defeat comes at the hands of modern society, manifest in the technology of airplanes.


To return to Denham, who has no love for Beauty and suffers no pain at her hand, I argue is the most beastly of all; with a callous disregard for Ann’s welfare and self-interest as paramount over the dignity of another living creature. The excitement of the unknown, coupled with a financial incentive, drives Denham to propel the plot forward to mayhem, destruction and death.

“King Kong” represents monumental progress for modern cinema in terms of special effects, such as layering of sound effects and score, use of miniatures and back-projection, to create a fairly believable landscape populated with horrific creatures. This achievement alone does not explain why there have been so many subsequent Kong-related films, a small selection includes -

Son of Kong (1933)

Konga (1961)

King Kong Vs. Godzilla (1962)

King Kong Escapes (1967)

King of Kong Island (1968)

King Kong (1976)

Queen Kong (1976)

King Kong Lives (1986)

The Mighty Kong (1998)

King Kong (2005)


This anatomically-incompatible love, a relationship based upon monstrous, male possessiveness and feminine submission, is repeated over and over again for the viewing pleasure of “the public, bless them.” I ask of you, what is it in human beings that so desires to see an oversized gorilla, inherently a manifestation of the savage in man, carrying about a scantily-clad, terrified woman?

Vertov's Cinematic Hybrid.

Dziga Vertov and his wife founded the Kinoks (cine-eyes) in 1920’s Soviet Russia, emphasising the importance of 'life caught unaware' and working towards a film industry of nought but documentary*. 

“Man with a Movie Camera” (1929) is seminal to this movement, exploring ‘the language of film’ involving “Experimentation in the cinematic transmission of visual phenomena” without intertitles, script, actors or sets as posited (ironically through the use of intertitles) at the commencement of the film. National, non-narrative documentary was viewed as the solution to the corrupting influence of drama imported internationally. 

In terms of this unit’s progression, this film is an interesting exploration of the collective – individual dichotomy. W. Ruttman’s “Berlin: Symphony of a Great City” (1927) presents an intense focus on the collective, the teeming mass of the city. “Man with a Movie Camera”, a mere two years following, does not contain this near-total exclusion of the individual, nor the pejorative idea of collectivism as propagated by Rand and Vidor in various expressions of “The Fountainhead”, instead presenting a transition and/or hybridised idea. 

The recurring female figure, at first supine then dressing, is one body that represents this interest in the private sphere and individual. The camera moves through the window into the bedroom, to her hands and face as she reclines, then again her hands as she clasps her under-garments. Such a degree of intimacy was unexpected in a film so similar to Ruttman’s Berlin, structurally and stylistically, in the suggestion of a city symphony (except a ‘city’ spread across Moscow, Odessa, Kiev and elsewhere, as such acting more of a panorama of Soviet cities). 

Vertov’s interest in ‘life caught unaware’ is here at odds, in the necessarily staged nature of such behaviours. Similarly, the endearing animated sequence involving a camera and tripod taking on a life of their own, such a style of animation dictating lengthy preparation, furthers this ideological ambivalence between ‘experiment’ and ‘documentary’. 

This animation is one example of the vast range of cinematic techniques employed, including fast/slow motion, Dutch angles, backward footage and split screens. These techniques take “Man with a Movie Camera” beyond the city symphony, for although it roughly follows the structural shape of the progression through a day to the extent of chapter titling (i.e. “Work Day Begins”, “Open for Business”) it adds layers beyond what the human eye can perceive. This self-awareness of medium is indicated through the blatant welcome of animated theatre chairs, opening in preparation, and ostensibly desire, of audience.

The recurring image of the eye superimposed upon the camera’s lens unambiguously directs attention to the visual element; the camera as a vessel through which to record and film as the medium through which to manipulate, yet this is not to the exclusion of the auditory sense. Vertov extended his conception of the Camera-Eye to the Radio-Ear in the mid-1920’s, “Man with the Movie Camera” explores the transition from the Cinema-Eye to the Radio-Eye, incorporating ideas about sound cinema into the technologically advancing film industry. The recurrence of the radio speaker, with Vertov’s own left ear superimposed on the cone of the loudspeaker, is indicative of this notion.

“Man with a Movie Camera” purports to be documentary and experiment, communal and individual, visual and auditory – this fascinating panoramic view of Soviet life and industry is a guise for a self-reflexive exploration of film; film as developing, evolving and in transition.  


*Pardon the pompous phrase.