Mighty Joe Young (1949) Directed by Ernest B. Schoedsack
It doesn’t have the groundbreaking perfection of King Kong but thank goodness it doesn’t have the rushed clumsiness of Son of Kong either. Mighty Joe Young has the self-contained grandeur and merits of its own to be considered solid entertainment. During the years when Hollywood was fascinated with gorillas running loose causing mayhem and terror in B movies, the legendary filmmakers of the monumental 1933 classic created Mighty Joe Young, returning to the genre’s empathetic and romantic origins and reclaiming its potential on the big screen. Although a box office flop, this thrilling 1949 film is a spectacle of masterful practical effects performed by the best in the business. Terry Moore is the good-natured and faithful friend of a formidable gorilla she adopted when she was a child in Africa. 12 years later she finds herself in the glamour of Hollywood with Joe working for an ambitious entertainment impresario putting on shows in extravagant nightclubs. Intense and energetic as always, Robert Armstrong plays this flamboyant tycoon in what is easily the best performance of his career; a brilliant meta-characterization of the ineffable Carl Denham – his iconic character from the past who now seems to be embodied in a euphemistic and redeemable version, fascinatingly humorous and wry.
The talented special effects prodigy Ray Harryhausen, under the tutelage of Willis O’Brien, in his first work as a technician and animator, materializes unforgettable sequences with precise agility and manual dexterity. While all of these breathtaking special effects were King Kong innovations, the result here is nothing short of exceptional. Joe Young’s interaction with the rear projection and vice versa is perfectly composed to synchronize the action and adventure with unerring rhythm. Although sometimes the scale of the gorilla and the miniatures are the wrong scale for the real action, the narrative is so fluid that it doesn’t even matter, it’s a negligible flaw. Ernest B. Schoedsack’s superb direction keeps everything in control. While the pacing can falter when the adventure gets too moralistic, in terms of action and spectacle the film is consistently smooth. As is to be expected in a film by this intrepid duo, Cooper and Shoedsack, the drama is routine, but the imagery and evocative naturalism is that of an enveloping ethnographic cinematography. King Kong is still the tragic behemoth par excellence in Hollywood fantasy cinema, but Mighty Joe Young in that epic finale – a stop-motion tour de force – earns its place in film history as another of the great cinematic myths of the 1940s.