New York, August 16, 2013
One would associate dragons, griffins and other mythical
beasts to antiquity or the middle ages, not to the modern city.
But I am, coming to New York and suddenly it flashed through my mind:
King Kong.
Fittingly, the year is 1933 and King Kong appears in a movie
rather than in an illuminated manuscript.
Otherwise it has all the traits of the legendary tale, from the beast, a
giant prehistoric ape, all the way to the blond Ann Darrow (Fay
Wray) as the sacrificial maiden. Kong's origin is remote and
obscure: the jungles of a lost island in the Indonesian archipelago. He is brought to another, very
different island, Manhattan, to be displayed on Broadway as a form of
entertainment. The plot includes a
number of elements associated with new technologies, such as the flashbulbs that
startle the beast and the airplanes from where he's shot at the end. But more than anything else, the
confrontation is between the giant animal and the great metropolis, culminating
in the scene atop of the skyscraper (construction of the Empire State Building
had just been completed in 1931) where finally the heroine is rescued and the city
is safe again. If not the story of
a mythical foundation, at least a tale of rebirth, an affirmation of modernity
against the threat of the unknown.
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