Though not as famed as they once were, Mickey Mouse remains the best-known talking mouse and King Kong is still the best-known giant ape to climb the Empire State building. In the 1930s they either delighted movie goers or scared them enough to hide under their theater seats.
They have something in common: They’re both animated. Neither exists other than as single images run together rapidly enough to simulate actual movement. Those are the movies for you. Unlike other art forms they can’t get along without technology. You don’t need more than a pencil to write a poem or your two legs to dance. You can sing in the shower.
Movies are different. The great advances in film have been mostly technical: such as the addition of sound or color.
But then came digital. With digital technology you can generate King Kong on your laptop. This has been a mixed blessing: with spectacular special effects now, moviemakers can turn to those in lieu of telling a story. This wasn’t true for King Kong, so behind the horror of his kidnapping Fay Wray and climbing to the top of the world’s tallest building with her, there was a tender beauty and the beast story.
Movies depend on technology, but beneath the greatest of them is the foundation of a compelling story that engages human interest, beyond our two eyes.
I’m Tom McBride, and that’s my Perspective.
