This is possibly the very first myth invented by the cinema. When this artform was entering its adolescence with the advent of the talkies, King Kong – released in 1933 during America’s Great Depression – burst onto the scene like some colossal monument. The creators of this fiction, whose triumphal success matched its outrageous proportions, were two explorer-filmmakers: Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack. Raised on adventure books and Joseph Conrad stories, these former soldiers, wounded in the First World War, began pooling their talents in 1920 on extraordinary shoots in the wild through Abyssinia, Iran and Siam (now Thailand). Their adage was: “Keep it distant, difficult and dangerous”. Returning to Hollywood, these hotheads dreamed up a major motion picture about a giant ape, a film on which no expense would be spared. They paid out for the services of special effects virtuoso, Willis O’Brien, who put together an animated King Kong frame by frame – back then a technical challenge – something to terrify the young heroine (the star Fay Wray), whose screams would go down in history. It was Ruth Rose, Schoedsac’s wife, who put the finishing touches to the screenplay. A woman of her time, she gave the film its social fabric, its critical voice and its eroticism… In short, its wild modernity. How did the images of King Kong – the creature perched atop the Empire State Building, or clutching Ann Darrow and peeling off her clothes – come into being? How did they become engraved on our collective consciousness? This documentary, chock full of archive material, retraces the film’s genesis by exploring the unconventional careers of its creators and shines a light on the reasons for the success of this cinematic icon, remakes, sequels and all. The story of this gorilla, forcibly snatched from his island home to become a circus freak, reads today like a revolt of a natural world mistreated by mankind, its only resource, self-defence.