Word: 16mm
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...wall of my office is a strip of celluloid about a foot long, flat as a knife blade until it folds at each end. It is a piece of 16mm film that must be 40 or 50 years old. Along one side you can see the waveform of the optical soundtrack, a continuous line of jagged ridges and valleys; on the opposite side runs a line of sprocket holes that allow the cogs of the projector to pull the film past the lamp. Letters can be seen between the holes: G, E, V, A, others I can't make...
...center are the frames themselves, a credit sequence in block-like lettering with deep perspective shadows. The words appear over a Deco keystone graphically linked to the logo of the studio that made this movie: RKO Radio Pictures. It's hard to make out the words in the 16mm frames; the sequence is right at the end of a dissolve, and in many of the frames you read two words in the place of one. Only at one end of the strip do the words become clear: there's "Technical Staff," under that "E.B." someone, maybe "Gibson," then "Marcel Delgado...
...ground; and the whole sequence with the wrong woman pulled out of her bed. Also missing was the tail end of the scene where he pulls off Ann's clothes (and smells them, wrinkling his nose). Unfortunately, when the movie was rebuilt in 1969, the restored footage came from 16mm prints; there are obvious shifts in density and contrast in consequence. Here are some screen captures from the missing scenes...
...would haul it out - a creaking projector and these two cans of 16mm film - and take it on the road. I took it to my high school. For three days straight I ran "King Kong" in segments to six different English classes. I ran it at home, out in the back yard, projected onto a sheet on the back of the house while we sat on blankets in the grass. And I ran it in the basement for my friends, including the 16-year-old with whom I was desperately in love, while we held hands in the dark, only...
...Almereyda's own admission, the film was shot "fast and cheap" on 16mm film, and it shows. This version is certainly a "poor man's" Hamlet that neither remains truthful to the original text, nor emerges as a stunningly relevant interpretation that redefines the tale for our time. Under the circumstances, the text can't be faulted, but what the production team does in interpretation and execution makes for largely uninvolving storytelling...