King Kong (1933)

King Kong, the version from 1933, features some faltering special affects (dated to the extent that they appear to me as cute) and a dose of some kind of civilization/media critique. It remains an impressive film for all its - or because of - technical clumsiness. The acting is terrible, but the film takes the viewer to a world of terrible spectable that is laughable (stop motion effects!) and somehow moving at the same time. King Kong offers you a frantic film director, a (racist-tinged and colonialist) journey into unknown, foggy land which culminates in the film crew being chased by Kong and ... some dinosaurs. There's of course a love story (between whom?) and the climactic end that switches the colonial gaze: it is now New York that is exoticized, marvelled at. Kong roams around in chains and the idea is that the beast is to provide innocent moments of diversion to the bored but curious city-dweller. It is almost as if we see the diminuitive-looking city from his point of view. Maybe it is too much to think of King Kong as an anti-colonialist film, but - well, traces of that is certainly present.