#march1933

“If it isn’t true that Dino De Laurentiis, John Guillermin, and Lorenzo Semple Jr. (the producer, director, and screenwriter of the 1976 King Kong, respectively) actively never liked the 1933 film, it’s pretty clear that they thought it was broken and needed to be fixed. And the “solutions” they have provided for the “problems” of King Kong ’33 are almost all the most grievous no-scare-quotes problems with the film: the depiction of Ann Darrow, now Dwan, and gender and race politics by extension; the repurposing of the voyage to oil exploration and repositioning of the Carl Denham character to professional mustache twirling; and that guy in that ape suit.

“I was going to write about all three, but the first issue is so monstrous that it ate the other two. What has been done to the heroine in this film makes me prone to hyperbole and paroxysms of rage. The bottom line problem, that which I think all other problems regarding Lange and her Dwan flow from, is a directorial decision that the idea of this giant ape running off with this woman, her kicking and screaming in fear, is hot. They think it’s sooooo sexy. And oh man, do they want you to think it’s sexy too. And the worse part is, I think they think it’s smart to think it’s sexy.” [Read more]

Read this and more in our first month at ThePotemkin.com. We look at King Kong, 20th Century, and all things March 1933. 

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“In 1932, in a country reeling from the Great Depression, there might have been some pleasure in seeing the mighty like Jaffee fall and the “little nobody,” rise so high. Though Broadway was arguably more affordable in the 30s than it is today, not many Americans got to savor this role reversal on stage, but its certainly possible they enjoyed it when Howard Hawks brought the story to the screen in 1934. The movies of the 1930s managed to incorporate both the realities of America’s situation (primarily through gritty crime dramas) and the escapism of musicals like 42nd Street. 20th Century, as an early standard bearer of a genre specific to the 1930s, the screwball comedy, managed to do a little bit of both, while perhaps also pointing towards a new direction for American women.” [Read more]

Read the rest of Lois Anne DeLong’s article on the play 20th century and its various revivals and adaptations over the years.

“So on a merely functional level, these scenes establish a romance plot that drives the man to fight to save the woman. The film simply requires a love story because being a pretty blonde woman does not sufficiently warrant rescue from certain doom. Someone has to love her to make her life matter. Or, perhaps mirroring the uncompleted project Carl Denham set off to film in the first place, the studios insisted on a romance plot. So if you’re writing a romance that really just needs to exist, but that doesn’t really matter, that will fade into the background entirely, why not write your own? And if it means you can get in a few jabs at your husband in the process—his vocal misogyny and likely ineptitude at romance—even better. It’s a perfect revenge for all those times she must have had to listen to his criticisms of women, of how much trouble we all are, of what a burden we are to take along, needing our own rooms to sleep and change in, needing our own toilets to use, needing protection so we don’t get raped all the time. So many needs. Sigh.” [Read more]

As part of our inaugural issue dedicated to March 1933, Corbett Treece explores the ridiculous and preposterous love story between Ann Darrow and Jack Driscoll in the 1933 classic King Kong and discovers an appreciation for the woman who wrote it. Quite the feat considering the story starts with the heroine getting slapped in the face.