cinema history class: kongo

Session: Bring Your Own Movie Month, Week 4 (Christina)
Movie: Kongo (1932)
Directed by William J. Cowen

As always, there may be spoilers here. And the trailer may be NSFW and/or NSFL

Plot:
An old paraplegic white man has carved out his own little jungle kingdom in the Congo. In his realm he has ultimate control. But he lives for his fantasies of revenge. Hilarity ensues.

Reaction:

In some sense, it felt strange watching this movie, with all the casual racism contained in it, in today's climate of hyper-sensitivity to all matters concerning race. That said, I think it's important to judge the movie with due consideration to the fact that it was made in 1932.

There were a couple of issues that the movie made me think about which are really tangential. Arguably, they're really not worthy of discussion in this writeup, but -- fuck it: Blog mea, et praecepta mea. So I will bring up the issues, and do it now in order to get them out of the way.

The first such issue relates to religion and superstition. At one point Flint (Walter Huston), in explaining his influence over the native Africans, says that their religion is based on superstition. As an atheist, I've wondered for years about the distinction between religion and superstition. I've asked a lot of people about it, but I've never really gotten an answer that satisfies me. Some Orthodox Jewish friends have tried putting it in terms of revelations -- belief systems that have been validated by predictions that came true, as opposed to those that seek to explain observed phenomena but without any predictive element. I don;t think I buy it, but I can't put into words a coherent reason why. Of course, I don't expect this blogpost to lead to my having a useful explanation. At any rate, the semantiophilosophical question was something in my head that doesn't really have any bearing on the movie.

The other issue is the nature of parental love and its dependence (or lack of dependence) on a blood tie. I know people who have adopted children (some of whom also have bio-children). They would be horribly offended were I to imply that the adopted children are any less theirs than the bio-children are. It's clear that the bond of parenthood is based on a devotion that doesn't depend on the genetic bond. But a major plot element of Kongo hinges on the idea of parental love being driven by and dependent on genetics. This issue is actually significant because it speaks to the believability of two characters' feelings -- and these are feelings that are fundamentally important to the plot.

I showed a few friends some Youtube clips from the movie, including the one above -- with no trailer available, I went with a clip instead. They were taken aback by the poor special effects and the overacting. I noted, however, that both were the result of this being a film from 1932. The effects were reliant on 1932 technology. As for the overacting, this was made when talkies were still a new thing, and movie actors were still used to the overacting that was necessary in silent films.

One of the interesting aspects of this movie is the fact that the main characters are all largekly devoid of redeeming characteristics. I suppose Kingsland (Charles Nagel) and Ann (Virginia Bruce) are intended to be the hero and heroine. And while they are certainly more sympathetic than the others, it's really hard to like them -- admittedly, part of that has to do with the casual racism that I mentioned above.

The fact is, this is a gritty, dirty disturbing film that can really make your skin crawl. It also makes me want to see West of Zanzibar, the 1928 silent film, of which Kongo was a remake.

Ratings:

Me: 10

Ethan: 10

Keith: 10
Sean: 1 out of 4