Université Charles-de-Gaulle-Lille III
UFR Angellier
How Did Kubrick Ever Make a Fairytale of Stephen King’s
The Shining?
Mémoire présenté en vue de la validation de la première année de
Master Arts, Lettres, Langues et Communication.
Spécialité Études Anglo-Américaines. Parcours Recherche.
Enzo VALENTI-MORANDO
Juin 2012
Sous la direction de
Madame Patricia KRUTH
Et Madame Anne ULLMO
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank my two supervisors, Dr Patricia Kruth and Dr Anne Ullmo, for their
supervision, their suggestions, and enthusiasm about my work, but also for their teaching me
what “rigour” really means and for coping with my delays and irregular work. I am most
grateful to Patricia Kruth whose help and benevolence were invaluable.
Thank you to Franck Baetens for his bibliography on Stephen King and fairytales.
Thank you to Perinne Janssoone for helping me to analyse some excerpts of the film score.
Thank you to Fanny Andelsmann for being curious about and interested in my work, but also
for helping me as much as she could and suggesting me some ideas.
Eventually, I would like to thank Sébastien Leclercq for his precious help, his motivation and
his patience (!). His knowledge of computing and designing were extremely helpful to me,
especially to create the cover page of this work.
Table of Contents
Introduction .............................................................................................................................................4
I) The Spatial Treatment of The Shining’s World
..............................................................7
A) Once upon a time, in a far-off realm… ...................................................................................8
B) Alienation as represented via the landscape .............................................................................11
C) Summer of ’42, the allegorical mise en abyme of the character’s alienation ...........................16
II) Once Upon a Time in The Shining’s World…
...............................................................21
A) “For ever, and ever, and ever…” ..............................................................................................22
B) Kubrick’s fairytale-like treatment of time ................................................................................24
C) Kubrick’s conquest of seasons .................................................................................................31
III) The Archetypal Treatment of Characters .......................................................................39
A) Lloyd, Grady and Hallorann as dramatis personae .................................................................40
B) Wendy or “What are you doing down here?” ..........................................................................45
C) Jack: “The one who has just flown out from the cuckoo’s nest” .............................................50
IV) The Marvelous in The Shining ..............................................................................................57
A) “You can rest assured that’s not going to happen with me.” ...................................................58
B) “Hi Lloyd. A little slow tonight, isn’t it?” ...............................................................................63
Conclusion .................................................................................................................................... 69
Bibliography.............................................................................................................................................71
List of illustrations ..................................................................................................................... 76
Introduction
Kubrick’s references to fairytales in The Shining are more or less obvious. The
characters themselves are aware that there are similarities between their own situation and the
stories of some well-known fairytales. Wendy refers to Tom Thumb when she talks about
leaving a trail of breadcrumbs because the hotel is an enormous maze. Jack explicitly alludes
to the Big Bad Wolf archetypal character when he recites the wolf’s speech before breaking
the door of the room with an axe, which is a direct reference to The Three Little Pigs. As for
Danny, his curiosity echoes that of Blue Beard’s seven wives, who could not resist the
temptation to open the door and were punished for their violating the interdiction. Those
examples are not an exhaustive list but a lot of critics, reviewers, and academics examined the
film in the light of the folktale genre (we use the notion of “folktale” and “fairytale”
interchangeably). A lot of psychoanalytical readings were made, which mostly referred to
Bruno Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment. They were all legitimate for, as Norman Kagan
points out in The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick, both the filmmaker and Diane Johnson (the
script co-writer) read this psychoanalytical approach of fairytales while writing the script of
the film.
However, our point is not to discuss or complete these psychoanalytical studies. It is
relevant to notice that they are reductive of the fairytale genre. Basically, these analyses were
based upon the content of the film and fairytales, meaning here, the motifs and storyline
features of these works of art. Bettelheim’s work was strongly influenced by Freud, which is
the reason why the oedipal complex is one of the principal themes of his book. Consequently,
most of the studies based on the fairytale were biased because they mostly took into account
the fact that Kubrick’s echoes to the folktale genre were mostly psychoanalytical: Danny
killing his father and achieving his oedipal complex for instance. However convincing these
analyses may be, they do not take into account the fact that the folktale is not only an issue of
themes, of content or of motifs, but also and foremost of form and structure.
We do not deny the fairytale’s preference for stories about kings, princesses, castles,
witches or dragons, but we would like to insist here on the difference between form and
4
content. In his study entitled The European Folktale: Form and Nature, Max Lüthi makes it
clear that the fairytale, as a genre, is “world-encompassing”. Actually, any motif can be
characteristic of the fairytale as long as it is treated in the folktale’s manner. When first seen,
Kubrick’s film does not seem to have anything to do with the fairytale, save for the implicit
references and parallels. The plot-line does not sound fairytale-like for it relates to a reality
that is possibly anchored in our world: a family spends the winter in an isolated hotel, things
go wrong because the hotel is haunted, and the father is eventually killed. We are far from the
well-known tale of the Little Red Riding Hood who meets the Big Bad Wolf, or Hansel and
Gretel who kill a witch or other stories that clearly have a marvellous connotation. However,
since –if we follow Lüthi’s hypothesis– the fairytale is world encompassing, its motifs are
unlimited. This is the reason why, despite its down-to-earth plotline, the film can still be
considered as a folktale for it formulates its story while respecting the features of this genre.
We could argue that Kubrick tried to respect the form and the structure of this genre
by finding cinematic equivalent. This is what will interest us in this work: we shall
demonstrate that Kubrick’s film is not a simple adaptation of Stephen King’s novel, but an
attempt to make a “fairyfilm”. To better understand this process, it is indispensible to refer to
Stephen King’s novel upon which Kubrick’s script was based. It is paramount though, to keep
in mind that the comparisons which we are going to make between the two works of art, are
not meant to highlight the changes due to the adaptation of the book to the screen. Obviously
we do not deny that some decisions which Kubrick made were due to the adaptation of two
different forms of art. However, the analyses of the novel will enable us to better understand
the process of transformation that regulates the film and gives it its “folktale-likeness”. This
is the reason why we will also refer to Mick Garris’s TV series, which was based upon
Stephen King’s own script. This version of The Shining is closer to the original novel and this
is why the changes which Kubrick made will be even more obvious: it will show what
Kubrick could have done if he had wanted to adapt the novel in a more straightforward way.
This threefold comparison will stress the changes which were not due to the adaptation
process, but –at least this is our thesis– to an attempt to get closer to the fairytale structure.
Consequently, we shall analyze a number of motifs and themes which are part and parcel of
the three versions of The Shining. However, we shall not focus on these common features, but
rather on the way they were treated by Kubrick in a “fairytale-like” manner.
5
According to Max Lüthi, Depthlessness, Isolation, One-Dimensionality, or
Sublimation are the most striking features common to all folktales. However, we shall not
study these characteristics one by one, trying to find where they can be found in Kubrick’s
film. On the contrary, we shall analyze certain themes of The Shining in order to show that
they were treated in a way that strongly echoes these fairytale features.
“Once upon a time, in a far-off realm...” is a famous opening formula of fairytales and
it tends to carry the audience away from their real world and into the fiction. We shall first
show that Kubrick’s own treatment of space and fiction strongly echoes the fairytale’s for it
completely alienates the audience. Secondly, it is paramount to study the way Kubrick shapes
and conquers time in his film in order to get closer to the folktale’s specific domination over
and ignorance of time. The characters of fairytales and films evolve in time and space, but
they are themselves sublimated in a specific way; this is the focus of our third part which will
demonstrate that Kubrick’s characters are more or less reduced to archetypes that strongly
echo folktale characters. Eventually, it has often been said that Kubrick’s film was fantastic,
but we also know that the notion of fantastic is alien to the fairytale which is more inclined to
the notion of “marvellous”. Consequently, our fourth part will suggest that, when studied in
the light of the fairytale structure, The Shining can also be considered as a marvellous film.
6
I) The Spatial Treatment of The Shining’s World
7
A) Once upon a time, in a far-off realm…
According to Bettelheim, to address their inner problems, children need to believe that
they are enjoying something that has no relation with the world they live in and this is exactly
what the opening line of the fairytale implies since it fictionalizes the tale1. Consequently, the
opening formula of a fairy tales is essential to make it efficiently address the psychological
problems of the child: “Once upon a time…”, “One day, a long time ago…”, “A long long
time ago…”, all these opening-lines clearly state that what is about to be told has no place in
the concrete world and it may have never happened: “Once there was, there never was”,
“There was and there wasn’t.“2 This formula, works like an in medias res incipit since the
listener/reader immediately enters the new world of the fairytale. The context of the narrated
events is supposed not to be explicitly meaningful. On the contrary, it aims at losing the
reader in this new world, preventing him from searching any anchor with the real world and
time, that is, the one he experiences in his life. This is what Max Lüthi states in his book
entitled The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man:
The simple “Once upon a time”, because it is a familiar fairytale opening, is indeed already the
signal that one is entering into a nonreal realm, the realm of literature. […] The formula
immediately sets the beginning narrative off from the present, from the everyday world of
teller and listener (or reader). To this degree, the use of the past has a specific narrative
function, not just in the sense that it fictionalizes, as in the theory of Käte Hamburger 3, but
also in that it clearly indicates that henceforth a closed and thus easily train of events is to be
described.4
The idea of closure clearly states that the world of the fairytale is different from the world and
the reality in which we live. This world has no relation, no continuity and no similitude with
ours: it is impervious to our own world though it obviously has similarities with it and deals
with some of its issues. As Lüthi puts it:
The opening words “Once upon a time”, “Una volta era” “Machin grec”, establish distance.
They create a distance from the present, and along with it, from reality and offer an invitation
to enter another world, a world past, thus one that does not exist […].5
The distance that is insisted on reminds the audience of the one which is evoked right
at the outset of The Shining. As a matter of fact, the very first scene of the film clearly aims at
1
2
3
4
See Bruno Bettelheim, The Uses of Enchantment.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 49.
See Käte Hamburger, The Logic of Literature.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 49.
8
taking us away from our seat to make us enter the nonreal distant world of the film. This
process is mostly physical. Indeed, there are no characters to identify with and it seems hard
to do so with the unknown character who is driving the car for we have not even seen him yet.
Thus, we have no choice but to be the unknown eye that travels through the landscape,
unhampered by the physical obstacles. This trip makes us physically move through the air,
above the mountains, the lakes, the cliffs and eventually above the Overlook, the end of the
trip and the main set of the plot.
The first tracking shot of the film moves forward to express the fact that the reader is
carried away and cannot struggle against this unknown force for he is trapped by the
viewpoint of the camera which he has to adopt. The camera does not start going forward
when the first shot is shown: it is already moving, just like the fairytale opening immediately
carries us into the tale right when it begins. Both openings of the folktale and the film suggest
that it is too late to stop, that we are already carried away right after the first image has been
screened or the first word pronounced. The sequence in itself is rather long but it is not
redundant: the duration of the helicopter shots and the variety of the landscapes (lake, forest,
mountains) permit the camera to show how remote the setting of the action is: the length of
the trip and the remoteness of the Overlook are insisted on. Moreover, the use of ellipses
between the eight shots also contributes to the impression of remoteness, for they imply that
the trip is even longer and that some parts of it were cut. The distance seems huge and this is
all we know about the place of the hotel. At no moment is there any explicit information
indicating where we are going, which paradoxically makes the message clear: the audience
does not need to know where they are going, they merely know that this world is not totally
identifiable, far away in the mountains.
The film actually starts with an aerial wide angle shot which can be considered as a
deceiving establishing shot in so far as it is supposed to inform the audience of the place and
the time in which the train of events is going to take place. The process at work in the
opening-shot of The Shining is subtle: Kubrick did not aim at creating a feeling of
disorientation (which would imply that one can rely on some signs or indication to find one’s
way, to re-orientate) but an impression of alienation. This sense of alienation is strengthened
by the eerie musical score: the long and grave notes of Berlioz’s Fantastic Symphony were
synthesized by Wendy Carlos and they prevent the audience from feeling well, they always
5
Ibid.
9
remind us that we are not in our own world. It could be argued that the audience does not
know this world and, as a way of consequence, does not even bother trying to know where it
was carried away since it is not helpful to appreciate the film. Indeed, in this opening shot as
well as in the next seven shots which make up the first sequence, there are no signboards, no
subtitles or any other time and/or space indication, either intra-diegetic (a sign for example),
or extra-diegetic (a subtitle for instance). The distance is not precisely measured (with
distances expressed in miles for instance) but felt in a somewhat abstract way. All is about
setting and time: nothing is even hinted at the characters who are only suggested by the car
going along the road and surrounded by the landscape. Though we do not know the character
driving it, it is likely that he is one of the heroes of the film and this long distance travelling is
reminiscent of the great distances evoked in Lüthi’s statement about the fairytale hero:
The long paths which the hero, and often the heroine, has to travel, the mobility of the figures
travelling great distances, and the reachability of goals- there being no unbridgeable gulf
between this world and the other (which mostly does not appear as such, but rather just as a
far-off realm) – all makes its contributions to the achievement of clarity in the fairytale.6
It seems impossible to pay real attention to the car though: one may wonder, for a
second, who can be in it and quickly forgets it in order to focus on the mesmerizing nature.
Though the audience completely overlooks the landscape and the car, it is, allegorically
speaking, in a position that is similar to that of the car. Indeed, cars are mostly meant to be
used in landscapes modified by men, made more convenient and practical to him: cities or
highways for instance. Here nature completely masters the place and human details are
completely lessened. The first shot especially, does not include any human element, any
reference to an existing world modified by men. As for the rest of the scene, one can
obviously notice human elements: the road, the tunnel and eventually the hotel. However, the
road is reduced to a tiny serpentine line which shyly tries to force its way through the forest,
the lakes and the mountains. In the fourth shot, it even completely disappears; it is absorbed
by the mountains. The landscape seems to be unaltered either by time or men. As far as the
other cars are concerned, something seems to go wrong with them: two have stopped on the
edge of the road, as if fearing to enter this new world, while the third one is going in the other
way, as if fleeing this unknown world which is not adapted to it. The Overlook itself is
overlooked by the mountains which have completely absorbed it. Alongside with the car
6
Ibid., p. 43.
10
which is lost in time and space, the audience is in a world that is completely unknown and in
which there are no referents to rely on, which brings to mind this statement about the
Overlook’s spatial situation:
[…] the perception of the Overlook hotel as a ‘‘non-space’ […] suffering from being the
wrong topography in every respect, a blasphemy on holy ground, as architecture in nature that
is uninhabitable by humans, as a metaphor for senseless loneliness.7
Hence, the series of establishing-shots can be considered as a bit deceitful for they do not give
any plain or factual indication about the place where the story is about to take place. They do
not primarily aim at losing the spectator or making him wonder where everything will
happen. On the contrary, it emphasizes the fact that there is no point in knowing where and
when the story takes place for it does not have any influence on the rest of the film. All the
spectator needs to know is that the events that are about to take place are not localizable in its
world. This device clearly goes along with that theorized by Lüthi:
And if the formula is not always transparent […], it reflects the nature of the fairytale, which
has a crystal-clear narrative technique, but, at the same time, fantastic or mysterious content.
That the Hungarian is not (or no longer) really so sure what the “Operenzer Sea” (Cf: Gyula
Ortutay: Ungarische Volksmärchen n°15) is causes no difficulty, but, on the contrary, is
precisely right for it is not a question of some place that is geographically localizable but of a
nonreal sea.8
Here, the way of shooting doubtlessly shows that the events will take place in a
faraway place, made of mountains, lakes, cliffs, natural elements untainted by any human
ones. However, at no moment is there any reference to a “geographically localizable” place,
though this landscape is reminiscent of some existing places in the world, like the Rocky
Mountains obviously, since this scene was shot there.
B) Alienation as represented via the landscape
This alienation and lack of human referent is not common to the three versions of The
Shining. To better understand Kubrick’s work, it is relevant to compare the three versions of
The Shining. In Mick Garris’s TV series, when it is first seen surrounded by its natural
environment, the Overlook hotel is noticeable enough among the landscape for it is white and
7
Georg Seeblen and Fernand Jung, Stanley Kubrick und seine Filme, p. 254.
11
surrounded only by green and grey elements, making sure that the Overlook, though it is
surrounded by a natural environment, has clearly drawn the line between human and natural.
Opposite it, one can figure out the lawn on which the patrons of the hotel play Denver
Croquet (a game created by human beings and regulated with human rules) and most of the
trees and embossed surfaces have disappeared (29:40). It is then clear that human culture has
replaced the former wilderness of nature. This is more evidently suggested at the beginning of
the film, as Jack and Ullman are having a stroll all around the Overlook, while talking about
the responsibilities which the job implies (7:00).
Fig. 1ː The Overlook has powerfully set up in this unfriendly environment
This first vision of the hotel corresponds to the setting of King’s novel in so far as
the filming of the second Shining took place between February and June 1996 at the Stanley
Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, the hotel that served as the actual inspiration for King’s 1977
novel.9
Then, we first see the Overlook through Wendy Torrance’s eyes:
Further up, seemingly set directly into the slope itself, [Wendy] saw the grimly clinking pines
give way to a wide square of green lawn and standing in the middle of it, overlooking all this,
8
9
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 53.
Tony Magistrale, Hollywood’s Stephen King, p. 198.
12
the hotel. The Overlook. 10
In this excerpt, nature is replaced by the square green of lawn, that is, a parcel of untainted
nature shaped into a geometric human figure. The verb “give way” obviously suggests that
nature was replaced, but also that it struggled for its domination but partially lost it. The
shaping of nature is later evoked by the topiary, both in the novel and TV series. Eventually,
the Overlook, this stain in the landscape, a proof of human domination and presence, is said to
overlook “all”, including then its natural environment.
In Kubrick’s The Shining though, the hotel is not completely visible because it is
absorbed by the natural elements which surround it. When the hotel is first shown, it does not
immediately strike the eye: one first sees the trees and the snow which are natural elements
and only then can one figure out the shapes of the hotel which is camouflaged in the natural
environment on which it has no power. The few human constructions are reduced to their
minimum: the hotel and a simple car park. This lack of a strong human presence participates
in the impression of alienation of the audience. Human domination over nature is completely
denied. This idea is insisted on during the interview at the beginning of the film (06:10 in the
full-length version):
Ullman: I was about to explain that our season here runs from May 15th to October 30th. Then
we close down until the following May.
Jack: Do you mind if I ask why you do that? It seems to me that the skiing up here would be
fantastic.
U: Oh, it sure would be. The problem is the enormous cost it would be to keep the road to
Sidewinder open. It’s a 25 mile stretch of road. It gets an average of 20 feet of snow during the
winter and there is just no way to make it economically feasible to keep it clear.11
It is then obvious that the human (economic) rules cannot overcome those of nature, of the
weather, of the seasons, especially winter and the snow it brings about. Any domination of
man is denied in this world, just as human dominant rules of reality, logic and verisimilitude
are in a fairytale. Thus, seeing this man-made construction in a landscape that almost
completely denies the existence of human beings clearly states that the car enters a world that
in which its references have no meaning, just as the human references of the listeners have no
concrete meaning in fairytale. The new “rules” implied by a fairytale are taken for granted
right at its beginning and similarly in the film the audience is ready to accept the new rules
10
11
Stephen King, The Shining, p. 68.
Stanley Kubrick, The Shining.
13
implied by its willing to watch The Shining. It never raises the issue of the location and time:
where and when the narrated events take place is not a problem that needs to be solved by the
audience in order to fully enjoy the film, but rather a fact that they have to take for granted.
Fig. 2ː Establishing shot of the “overlooked” Overlook blending into the landscape
This incipit clearly goes against the one imagined by Stephen King in his novel, which
begins with an interview that provides the reader with all the factual information he needs to
set the scene. Indeed, Ullman says: “The closest town is Sidewinder, forty miles east of here
over roads [...]”12 These indications clearly relate to human creations: the town of Sidewinder
and the use of miles to count the distance, which is a unity of measurement created by men. It
evokes the isolation of the Overlook Hotel, but does not suggest any separation from the real
world. On the contrary, they more or less accurately situate it in Colorado. As for the TV
series made by Mick Garris, while the whole family is driving to the hotel, the camera shows
a sign indicating “Entering Sidewinder Pass” and Wendy even reads it loud for Danny who
cannot read yet (28:08, 1st part):
Danny: “What’s that one Mom?”
Wendy: “it says: Entering Sidewinder pass.”13
12
13
Stephen King, op. cit., p. 6.
Mick Garris, Stephen King’s The Shining.
14
Later, they stop at a scenic turnout that is indicated both in the film (29:03, 1st part) and in the
novel:”What’s that sign Mommy?” “SCENIC TURNOUT”, she read dutifully.”14
Before going on, we would like to insist on the fact that the isolation we are about to
deal with has nothing to do with the snow (since in the three versions, the hotel is physically
isolated) but is an intrinsic logic of isolation that differs in each version of The Shining. The
continuity of space between the Overlook and the characters’ world (and obviously ours) and
this possible junction between the two of them is suggested by the fact that the Torrances, in
Garris’s and King’s The Shining, can go back to Sidewinder. Actually, the isolation in the
novel and the TV series is not complete right from the beginning, but relatively progressive
when compared to Kubrick’s film. The family takes advantage of this fact in order to do some
shopping at Sidewinder, on October 20th for instance. Indeed, both in the TV series and the
novel, while Jack is alone repairing the roof, Wendy and Danny are not at the hotel: “It was
October 20. Wendy and Danny had gone down to Sidewinder in the hotel truck […] to get
three gallons of milk and to do some shopping”15. Likewise, when Danny is stung by wasps,
he goes to the doctor’s: “If it happens again, we have to take him to a doctor here. There is
one in Sidewinder that is supposed to be good” (01:16:45, 1st part). “And tomorrow I want to
make an appointment with that doctor to see Danny” (01:22:40, 1st part). Hence, an episode of
the TV series takes place in the doctor’s office while one can see Jack introducing himself
during an Anonymous Alcoholics meeting: “Hi. My name is Jack, I am an alcoholic from
Vermont. This is my first meeting in Sidewinder” (01:25, 2nd part). Concerning the chapter
“The Doctor’s Office” in the novel, it is not explicitly said where the story takes place but one
may assume that it is likely in Sidewinder as well. It could be stressed that a lot of real places
and regions of our world are evoked during the talk, which clearly reminds the audience that
there is continuity between the both worlds: Great Barrington (Massachusetts), Somersworth
(New Hampshire) and Boulder (Colorado). The hotel is then far from being an unknown place
in a faraway world: it is treated as if it were localizable and part of the audience’s world,
which does not create any mysterious or bizarre feeling.
On the contrary, in Kubrick’s The Shining, almost everything happens inside the hotel.
The family, after temporarily moving into the hotel, does not leave it anymore. Actually, there
are only two sequences during which the family (or rather Danny and Wendy, for Jack is only
14
15
Stephen King, op. cit., p. 67
Ibid., p. 113.
15
seen at the Overlook or on his way to it) is not at the hotel: as Wendy and Danny are talking
about living in the hotel (04:19) and later, when the doctor comes to cure Danny after he has
fainted (10:35 in the US version). Once the family has entered the Overlook, it does not leave
it anymore and the only contacts it has with the outside world are through the telephone and
the radio. However, instead of reminding the audience that the characters are not alone and
completely isolated, these contacts finally end up stressing the isolation. Indeed, in both
versions of the film, Wendy tries to use the phone to call the forest services. It seems it does
not work, which is why she decides to use the radio (48:00). But this conversation with the
ranger does not help at all to create a link with the outside world since he tells her that the
telephone lines are down and they will not be repaired until spring, reminding and enhancing
their isolation.
Before seeing what Jack sees and what Danny saw in room 237, Hallorann is quietly
watching Newswatch, and once again, the weather is dealt with: “[…] Central and Mountain
States are buried in snow. In Colorado, 10 inches of snow fell in just a few hours tonight.
Travel in the Rockies is almost impossible. Officials in Colorado tell Newswatch at least three
people have been killed by exposure to freezing winds. The governor of Colorado is expected
tomorrow to declare a weather emergency” (01:10:00). The challenge here is clear: to ensure
the audience that the Torrance family is on its own for they are completely secluded from the
rest of the world. The situation is even more claustrophobic when Jack puts the radio out of
order by taking off a component (01:34:30). Thus, it seems that, once entered, the world of
the Overlook cannot be left easily and does not seem to communicate with any other real
place. However, so far, we have mainly dealt with isolation as a plot device: we mean here
that the causes for isolation evoked above are merely matters of content and not of form, that
they are meant to keep the plot developing.
C) Summer of ’42, the allegorical mise en abyme of the character’s alienation
To better understand the intrinsic isolation that is at work in Kubrick’s film, it is
worth analyzing a sequence that was unfortunately taken off from the European version. From
now on, we will refer to the European version as The Shining (Eu) or the “short version of the
film”. As for the American version, we will refer to it as The Shining (US) or the “long
16
version of the film”. When we do not make the distinction, it means that what we study is
present in both versions of the film and we indicate the time of the US version. In the long
version of the film, Wendy is shown watching TV on several occasions. In the sequence that
interests us (see Fig. 3), she watches TV with Danny. It happens on Monday (51:29) and they
are both watching Summer of ‘42 by Robert Mulligan (1971). One way of interpreting the
episode is that the film on screen can be seen as an allegorical mise en abyme of the
otherworldliness of the hotel, of its being removed from our reality. Indeed, the scene starts
with a close-up on the rectangular TV on which a film is being screened, in other words, a
level of reality which neither Danny and Wendy, nor the audience (who also watch the
excerpt of the film within the film), can really reach. The only way to reach it is to watch the
film and pretend that we believe in what is told. By watching the film, we (including Danny
and Wendy, though we do not know it since they do not appear on the screen yet) enter the
first layer of a fiction (that of Summer of ’42) and enjoy it as if it were part and parcel of our
world. This physically unreachable reality is contained within another one: that of the film
we, spectators, are watching. Indeed, the camera progressively zooms back and we discover
that we are watching the characters of a fiction who are themselves watching other fictional
characters. This makes explicit our relationship to The Shining: the separation is obviously
intrinsic since we deceptively enter the fiction. Danny and Wendy enter the world of Summer
of ’42 as we enter theirs, though there are no ways of physically reaching it. This intrinsic
quality is ironically emphasized by the fact that both Danny and Wendy are captivated by a
world that is the right opposite of the one they are actually living in. While the story in
Mulligan’s film takes place during summer, that of The Shining takes place during winter.
The settings of both films are physically isolated: one by the sea, the other by the snow. The
heat and the island surrounded by sea are the total opposite of the hotel surrounded by the
mountains, the snow and the cold it implies.
Wendy and Danny can watch the film, enjoy it, but never physically enter it, and
neither can we. Nobody can interfere with what is screened for it has its own reality and thus
its own rules. Though Summer of ’42 was made in 1971, it implies that the audience (Danny
and Wendy, but also us) takes for granted that the events described took place in 1942 in
another place (both defined unreachable time and places). Basically, the frame within the
frame delimitates a reality physically unreachable and also insists on its closure. The screen,
this fourth wall, acts as an access to the film since it enables us to enter a world, but also as a
barrier since it prevents us from intervening in it, creating a twofold relation with the
17
spectator. This ambivalence is often reminded to us by the scene in which the lift opens and
blood floods out before splashing against the screen. The screen itself is the opening formula
of the fairytale, which makes us enter a new world, but also its closing formula (we will come
back to it later), for it reminds us that this is just a story which has nothing to do with our
reality and that we consequently cannot have any influence on the film.
Fig. 3ː Danny and Wendy are watching a film: the mise-en-abyme of embedded realities
It is paramount to notice that, though the Overlook seems otherworldly, it is never
completely unreachable. Indeed, all the characters of the film do reach it: the Torrances
(whose flat in Boulder, a real town, is shown at the beginning of Kubrick’s The Shining
[04:15]) Hallorann (who comes from Florida and whose only difficulties are due to the snow,
that is, a meteorological obstacle), the patrons of the hotel and people in charge of it. Thus,
the otherworldliness of the hotel, its lying in a different and physically unreachable world,
could be doubted and there is likely to be a continuity between our referential world, evoked
by Boulder in the Colorado and Florida, and that of the Overlook. This statement seems to
raise some issues about the “fairytale-likeness” of the film. However, even though there
doubtlessly is continuity between the two worlds, this statement does not go against the
otherness and the remoteness of the world which lies before us; on the contrary, to a certain
extent, it makes it even closer to the nature of a fairytale. Obviously, the film is on the first
18
level of reading, arguably anchored in a real world. Ullman evokes “people in Denver” during
the interview (05:49) and there is a map of the USA hanging on the wall in his office. In the
American version of the film, the doctor asks Wendy: “Have you been in Boulder long?”
(15:39) and she answers:”We are from Vermont”. Later, when Jack is woken up by Wendy,
he is wearing a T-shirt on which ‘Stovington’ is written (36:30). One could argue that this
information breaks the “folktale-likeness” of the film by evoking real places in order to make
the story look real, which is something that the folktale does not aim at doing. Indeed, the
audience of a fiction film needs to have a bare minimum of spatial and time references.
Anyway, though we find some hints referring to time and space, this statement is not
completely incompatible with the folktale structure. Indeed, folktales themselves sometimes
deal with precise references:
When a certain folktale gives specific information about place, time, and historical persons, it
still remains a folktale so long as it maintains folktale structure and style in other respects. But
specific places, times, and personal names are alien to it. They do not belong to the true
folktale style, which is of an abstract nature.16
The idea expressed in this statement comes from Lüthi’s conception of fairytale, according to
which, all is a matter of content and not of form. No matter if there are some exceptions in the
content as long as the tale has the form of a folktale. Thus, in The Shining US, we know that
the flat of the Torrances is situated in Boulder. This feature is uncharacteristic of fairytales
that never explain where a story takes place. It is particularly striking in Little-Red-RidingHood17 that starts with: “Once upon a time there lived in a certain village […]”. The adjective
“certain” is not meant to create any mystery but on the contrary, it enhances the uselessness of
knowing where the action takes place.
Eventually, though the hotel is not (and cannot be) completely otherworldly, the
feeling of alienation that assails the audience entering its world is far from being unjustified.
The mesmerizing camera movement at the beginning of the film clearly gives the impression
that this world is not the audience’s. We clearly have a point-of-view but there is no telling
exactly whose it is. The aerial long take makes the Overlook look so remote that it is almost
disconnected from reality, which echoes the statement made by Lüthi on the folktale. Indeed,
the latter writes:
16
17
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 102, my italics.
Charles Perrault’s Fairy Tales, with thirty-four full-page illustrations by Gustave Doré, p. 25.
19
In folktale, [the otherworld beings] are far away […]. Apparently the only way that folktales
can express spiritual otherness is through geographical separation. The folktale hero
encounters otherworld beings not in familiar woods, as in the legend, but in an unknown
forest. […] the folktale hero has to travel to the world’s end to reach the enchanted princess.
But this world’s end is really distant only geographically, and not spiritually. Any otherworld
kingdom can be reached by walking or flying. “You still have a long way to go” … The
bottom of the sea, the clouds, and the different otherworld kingdoms that can be reached by
flying, by climbing a tree, or in some magical way – for the folktale hero these are only distant
outwardly, not spiritually. […] . The folktale projects spiritual differences onto a straight line;
it expresses inner distance through visible separation. 18
The fact that the Torrances, Hallorann and all the other characters of the film, can
physically reach the otherworldly hotel can therefore be explained if we liken the film to a
folktale. Indeed, in spite of its otherness, the one-dimensionality of the folktale’s world (and
consequently, that of the film) implies and requires that everything happens at the same level,
in the same world.
18
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 9.
20
II) Once Upon a Time in The Shining’s World…
21
A) “For ever, and ever, and ever…”
Now that we have studied the outset of the film and explained to what extent it worked
like a fairytale, it seems necessary to analyze the ending scene of The Shining at the light of
the fairytale structure. The end of the film is quite disturbing because it makes the audience
doubt what has just happened. Though Kubrick explicitly claimed during an interview with
Michel Ciment that “The ballroom photograph at the very end suggests the reincarnation of
Jack”19, we would like to suggest a new reading of the end of the film. It seems relevant to
analyze this ending while taking into account the fact that the structure of the film is that of a
fairytale. Moreover, as we are about to see, the closing formula of the folktale is as important
as its opening formula.
The last sequence of the film is a twinkling of an eye, because, from a rational pointof-view, the elements contradict each other: Jack cannot be both the man on the photograph
on July 4th 1921, and the deceased father. The whole story was just a fiction, a completely
made up narrative; otherwise, how could you explain such an incoherence? When the story is
over, one goes out of the closure of the frame and one can contemplate the story from outside,
as an invented tale, not as a true story. In the last shot, it is as if the camera pointed out the
closure and framing of the story in order to reveal the falseness of what has been shown to the
audience, thus taking it back into the real world. This process, by which the illusion is broken
because its frame is pointed out– and even literally pointed out since we see a framed
photograph–, is similar to the ending of a fairytale as theorized by Lüthi. He writes: “But [the
closing formula] also still marks the end of the narrative and leads […] out of the sphere of
dreams and magic into the everyday world.”20 Thus, the character smiling at us, whoever he
is, seems to be laughing at the spectator who has been fooled during the screening of the film.
The audience grows aware of the real world and returns to it. Likewise, the narrator of a
fairytale overtly announces the return to the reality of the listener or reader, which could be
summed up by the formula: “This is the end of my tale, and now I would not mind having a
glass of vodka!”21 Likewise, Jack’s doppelgänger smiles and seems to look at us right in the
eyes. Consequently, he overtly breaks the fourth wall as the narrators of folktales do. He
seems to be saying that the film is over, his arms are wide open: “That’s all folks!” This is not
19
20
21
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html .
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 50.
Roman Jakobson, Selected Writings, Volume 4: “On Russian Fairy Tales”, p. 94.
22
that unlikely when one thinks about all the references to cartoons made in the film.
Moreover, the ending of the film may appear paradoxical for it reminds us of what
Lüthi states about the fairytale’s closing formula:
“And if they haven’t died, they are still living this way today” says the opposite from what it
appears to say. The narrative is closed; the persons that were spoken of are no longer living,
have really never lived, and exactly for this reason they live every place and always and thus
also today.22
The same impression dominates at the end of The Shining: Jack and his friends are all
immortalized on the picture, forever happy even if they may have never existed. The music
playing on (Midnight, the Stars and You, interpreted by Ray Noble and Al Bowley,) suggests
that the party is still going on, and it will still go on even when the film is over: over the end
credits, we can still hear the music which has not stopped. This symbolically suggests that the
end of the story does not necessarily mean that the characters and their deeds do not exist
anymore. Midnight is the beginning and the end of a day, of a temporal closure. The idea of a
rationalized passing of time is destroyed since the day has neither started nor ended; this
never-ending (or arguably never-starting) moment goes along with the idea of immortality via
timelessness. At the very end of the record, while the words “The End” appear on the screen,
one can still hear people applauding, chatting, and whistling. Even after the screen has turned
black, the audience knows that these characters still exist even though it leaves this reality and
goes back into its own, just as children do; even after the tale is over, the characters and
places it described still exist in the reader’s mind. This festive ending even reminds one of
some particular closing formula of fairytales, like: “They celebrated… forty days and forty
nights long, and ate and drank and enjoyed themselves. Neither we nor you were there, so you
don’t have to believe it.”23 The ball in the Gold Room is not over; it goes on, not for forty
days though, but, as the saying goes, “forever and a day”. This immortality and immutability
are enhanced by the fact that the Ball takes place in the Gold Room, for gold has a particular
meaning in fairytales. Indeed, it is a metal that does not progressively deteriorate itself in spite
of the passage of time: it remains as pure and as bright as it was when it was created. This is
confirmed by the following statement:
The fairytale portrays an imperishable world, and this explains its partiality for everything
metallic and mineral, for gold and silver, for glass and crystal. [...] [Certain kinds of tales] –
22
23
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 50.
Georgios A. Megas, ed., Griechische Volksmärchen, p. 216.
23
specifically the fairy tale and similar genres– remove us from the time continuum and make us
feel that there is another way of viewing and experiencing life, that behind all birth and death
there is another world, resplendent, imperishable, and incorruptible.24
Thus, a number of elements of the ending tend to allude to the everlasting events that
are told in fairytales. Thus, Kubrick managed to cinematically evoke the immortality
suggested by the fairytale opening and ending formulas. As the two sisters suggest earlier in
the film, the Ball, the dancing and living in the Overlook go on “Forever, and ever, and ever”,
even in death. Thus, Jack lived (happily?) ever after.
Fig.4 ː A tale, that’s all it was!
B) Kubrick’s fairytale-like treatment of time
Before analysing Kubrick’s treatment of time, it seems relevant to keep in mind how
King and Garris dealt with the passing of time. Actually, in the novel and the TV series, time
is treated in an accurate and realistic way in order to convey a sense of reality to the story.
24
Max Lüthi, Once Upon a Time on the Nature of Fairy Tales, p. 45.
24
This treatment of time also enables the audience to sense the passing of time that coincides
with the situation gradually getting worse and worse as the Torrances are getting snowbound.
Indeed, in the novel, explicit temporal references are made; they help the reader to feel, in a
somewhat accurate way that time is passing. We know for instance that Jack was stung by
wasps on October 20th (“It was October 20th”25) or that he discovered the scrapbook on
November 1st (“Jack discovered the scrapbook on the first of November”26). As for Danny, he
meets a dead boy in a snow tunnel and is jeopardized by the living hedges on November 29th:
It was November 29th, three days after Thanksgiving. The last week had been a good one, the
Thanksgiving dinner the best they’d ever had as a family. […] No, Wendy told him with a
little smile. Only until Christmas27.
When there is no precise date, the reader can at least rely on some indications like: “A week
and a half later […]”28. It is impossible to get lost in time with King’s narrative insofar as time
is constantly reminded to the reader who can almost draw a chronology for each event. The
same time pattern regulates the train of events in the TV series. As Mark Browning suggests
it:
Possibly due to its exhibition context on TV, with commercial breaks, Garris’ version reorientates the viewer a little with a greater number of subtitles, more precision in the dates and
a greater use of ‘weather shots’, purely to signal the passing of time.29
Indeed, screen titles are numerous and they all deal in a precise way with different
dates, but contrary to Browning, we argue that they aim at keeping the audience from being
lost in time. We know that the closing-day takes place on the 8th of October (26:13, 1st part),
that Jack is stung by bees on the 20th
of
October (57:15, 1st part) and that he finds the
scrapbook on the 1st of November (05:46, 2nd part). It starts snowing on November 2nd (12:48,
2nd part) and the isolation of the characters is even longer than in the book since the events of
December 8th, 9th and 20th are dealt with (respectively 29:29, 41:13 and 46:23 in the 3rd part).
This last date is even more relevant since it evokes Christmas (which is also evoked along
with Thanksgiving in the novel, see above), that is, a cultural element well-known almost
anywhere in the world. This destroys the closure of time and space both in the TV series and
the novel since the Overlook is part and parcel of our world and, hence, it submits to our
25
26
27
28
29
Stephen King, op. cit., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 167.
Ibid., p. 311.
Ibid., p. 233.
Mark Browning , Stephen King on the Big Screen, p. 203.
25
human creations and cultural references. The Torrances have stuck Christmas decorations on
the door and windows of the Overlook, they have decorated their room with a Christmas tree
and illuminations. It seems then clear that both King and Mick Garris tried to treat time in a
realistic (though condensed) way: obviously, they could not deal with all the events that
happen in the Overlook and this is why they enhanced those which were significant to the
story while making their best to make us grasp the passing of time as accurately as possible.
Fig. 5ː The schematic “chronology” of The Shining US
Contrarily to the TV series and the novel, in Kubrick’s film, the sense of temporality is
far harder to grasp, no to say impossible. The time of the story, as in fairy tales, is not
precisely described even if it seems to be. Despite what we could think, the different title
cards which are inserted during the film do not keep us from feeling lost. The first one gives
us an unclear temporal indication: “The interview” (03:00). This is the first temporal
reference that we have, but instead of giving us clear information, it is puzzling: when does
this interview happen? There is no clear answer to this question for this time indication has a
26
meaning only if it is put into context, if we know that an interview had been planned in the
past, which would justify the use of the definite article “The”, since it refers to a previously
mentioned interview. In this incipit, the context is not given; we are lost from the very outset
of the film which does not provide any plain contextual elements, just as fairytales do. It is
now time we studied Kubrick’s film, while keeping in mind our previous analysis of King’s
and Garris’s The Shining, in order to analyze the changes which Kubrick made when he
directed his film and which make it more “fairytale-like”.
As we said previously, the reader does not know anything about the setting of the plot.
Similarly to the spatial alienation previously dealt with, the fact that the audience is not given
any piece of information about time does not aim at making it feel at a loss: it merely insists
on the uselessness of such knowledge. A general sense of time is required to situate the film,
just like in the fairytales in which no dates are real or significant: one simply needs to know
that the time during which the events are told is a time when knights, princesses, kings
existed. The fairytale never explicitly says that it is dealing with such elements like dragons or
hags though: by simply telling about them, the audience takes it for granted that the time
when and the place where the tale takes place allow such marvelous elements. Likewise, the
film never explicitly evokes a special time when cars and roads existed and hotels were built
at the foot of mountains: it just shows them and the audience knows approximately at what
time the story happens, and it does not know more.
The time when an action takes place does not matter in the fairytale. For instance, in
Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood, the opening formula “Once upon a time, there was
a little village girl […]”30 is no more helpful than “At a certain time. This formula denies any
attempt to situate it in time or space. When the story really begins, once again, there is no
knowing when it starts; we just know that it does start:
One day her mother, who had just made and baked some cakes, said to her: “Go and see how
your grandmother is, for I have been told that she is ill. Take her a cake and this little pot of
butter.” […]31.
For the second time in the incipit, the time of the action is unclear, the day could be any day
and it does not matter. This outset is common to all fairy talesˑ as explained by
Bettelheim:”The fairy tales simplify all situations. Its figures are clearly drawn; and details,
30
Perrault, op. cit., p. 25.
27
unless very important, are eliminated.”32 Lüthi adds: “The fairytale does not delight just in the
line as such, but above all, in the simple clearly drawn line.”33
Likewise, the first sequence of the film is the equivalent of the “Once upon a time
formula”: it triggers the beginning of the story, sets it in a different place and at another time.
Then, the audience is made aware that the interview itself is important, not because it tells
something about the context or the situation of the characters, but because it is at this moment
that the story starts:”One day, Jack Torrance got a job interview.”Kubrick tried to get closer
to the simplifications operated by fairy tales, which gives a certain clarity and purity to the
main lines of the plot. Actually, the audience does not even need to know more, just like a
child contents himself with a simple “Once upon a time”. This clarity is even more obvious
when we think of the title card “A Month Later” (34:10). Why not 24 or 36 days? It does not
matter for we do not really know when the closing-day takes place. We just know that it
comes right after the interview. Since the “A Month Later” title card refers to a day whose
date was unknown, it is impossible to deduce the exact dat. Thus, contrary to the novel and
the TV series, Kubrick’s treatment of time does not have a realistic purpose aiming at making
the audience feel an accurate and exact passing of time. On the contrary, Kubrick deals with
time playfully.
Some will argue that in The Shining (US), if one is careful enough, it is possible to
figure out the accurate date of the “A Month Later” day. Indeed, the interview scene is uncut
in the American version of the film and we are made aware by Ullman that the hotel is closeddown from the 1st of November until May: thus, the day that is dealt with by the title card “A
Month Later” is likely to be the 1st of December. However, there are also some confusions of
time in the film, but there are in no case mistakes: everybody knows that Kubrick was a
perfectionist and he would never have blurred the treatment of time unless purposely. We can
assert that Kubrick plays with temporality in his film; this is confirmed Thomas Allen Nelson
who writes:
By parts two and three, the periodic screen-titles conform to an associative or symbolic logic,
to the film’s complex patterns of doubling and reversal (i.e., the every-other-day quality of
Tuesday/Thursday) which inevitably mock our desire for temporal sense and rational
31
32
33
Ibid., p. 25.
Bruno Bettelheim, op. cit., p. 8.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 41.
28
sequence. Early in the film, for instance, Kubrick creates subtle time confusions that become
even more pronounced later on. Wendy tells the doctor that “Tony” first appeared about the
same time that Jack, in a drunken rage, separated Danny’s shoulder, which, we learn later,
happened three years before […] Ever so quietly, the film implies from the beginning that
psychological time and real time do no operate according to the same causal schedule, that the
objective world and its temporal assertiveness may not explain character, but it does provide
clues to those who shine. 34
Consequently, Kubrick prevents the audience from trying to draw a chronology. Moreover,
there is no point in knowing the exact date; this assertion goes along with Michel Chion’s
assertion:
Notons que ces [têtes de chapitres] correspondent souvent à des indications de temps plus ou
moins vagues et nécessaires, voire absurdes. (Pourquoi préciser “Mardi” ou “Jeudi” alors que
le rythme de la semaine n’est pertinent ni pour l’action ni pour les personnages, qui sont
placés hors du rythme de travail, qui semblent avoir tout à disposition sur place et n’avoir
donc pas besoin de savoir quand les magasins sont ouverts).35
It is obvious that, once the hotel is physically isolated by the snow, time no longer means
anything when compared to our treatment of time, the way we feel it in reality. Sam Azulys
enhances this last point:
La temporalité dans The Shining a la forme d’une spirale infernale que ponctuent
d’énigmatiques balises: en l’occurrence, des intertitres qui, au lieu de renseigner les
spectateurs sur la situation des personnages dans le temps (comme ils le font habituellement),
servent au contraire à le déstabiliser. Les cartons qui coupent le flux visuel […] font référence
à une action qui ne concerne plus l’action des protagonistes. Il importe peu d’ailleurs au
spectateur de savoir quel jour précis se déroule tel ou tel événement dans la mesure où
l’Overlook est un lieu coupé du monde.36
We just would like to nuance one of the points which Azulys makes when he states that
Kubrick’s temporality aims at destabilizing the spectator: we claim that the director intended
to prevent the audience from trying to feel an accurate passing of time. Instead, he
emphasized the existence of a time similar to that of the fairytale.
The clarity and simplicity of temporality is even more striking at the beginning of The
Shining (Eu) for there is absolutely no means to figure out the date of the closing-day, nor of
the date referred to by the title card “One month later”. The first hint we have is the question
asked by Danny to his mother:”Do you really want to go and live in that hotel for the
Thomas Allen Nelson, Kubrick, Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, p. 209.
Michel Chion, Stanley Kubrick, l’humain ni plus ni moins, p. 408.
36
Sam Azulys, Stanley Kubrick, Une Odyssée Philosophique, p. 247-248.
34
35
29
winter?”(04:20). The second one is given by Ullman who claims that “The winters can be
fantastically cruel” (05:00). This is the very minimum we need to understand the context of
what will later happen in the film, but it does not explain anything about the present context;
everything will take place during winter, which evokes the snow and its isolating role.
Consequently, the title-card “A Month Later”, even if it sounds realistic, is a really
unhelpful piece of information, which suggests that the passing of time in Kubrick’s film is
treated in a very abstract way that tends to make the audience less aware of it. Data like “28
days later” or “51 days later” would have complicated and darkened the clarity of the
temporality associated to fairytales. The Sleeping Beauty, where the heroine sleeps for a
hundred years before being awakened by the prince: “But instead of dying, [The Sleeping
Beauty] shall merely fall into a profound slumber that will last a hundred years. At the end of
that time a king’s son shall come to awaken her.”37 Why not 97 or 105 years? As Lüthi puts it:
“The fairytale conquers time by ignoring it”.38 This is the reason why, when she wakes up, the
“Sleeping-Beauty arises with a smile and is as young as she was 100 years ago.” 39 The
powerlessness of time over the Sleeping Beauty reminds the reader that time is not important
for its own sake and this is why the film and fairytales use round numbers. What is important
is that she has had to wait long before being able to deal with sexuality. There is no point in
knowing exactly how much time is needed for the hero to evolve, what is important is that the
result is always worth it. To this extent, time is dealt in a symbolic way: reducing the hundred
years to a more realistic amount of time (for instance 2 years) would give a realistic tone to
the story.
Here, the simplification completely prevents the audience from grasping time as we do
it in the real world. This makes the differences between the episodes clearer. Indeed,
immediately after the audience has seen the title card “A Month Later”, a scene depicts a
family which has completely settled in the place. In The Shining (US): Wendy is shot in the
corridor of the Gold Room while she brings the breakfast to her room on a tray. She likely got
accustomed to the corridors; she is no longer amazed by their hugeness or by the maze-like
structure of the hotel. She does not even look at the rooms and takes care of the tray instead.
Then, a shot shows Danny peacefully riding his tricycle along the corridors, while Wendy
finally reaches her room (34:21). The difference between the initial and the present situation
37
38
Perrault, op. cit., p. 5.
Max Lüthi, Once Upon a Time on the Nature of Fairy Tales, p. 44.
30
is clear: the family seems to have made its own marks. Hence, this title card focuses on the
evolution of the characters’ attitude to the hotel, not on the time they spent in it. It suggests a
change, and this is why it does not need to sound realistic.
C) Kubrick’s conquest of seasons
The clarity of Kubrick’s treatment of time is even more obvious when we compare the
evolution of the weather in the three versions of The Shining. Actually, King and Garris give
an important place to the passing of the seasons and the changes they bring about. Hence, in
the novel, the weather is described for the first time on October 20th and it seems that the
snow takes time to arrive, though the characters do not want to be surprised by its arrival.
Indeed, some flurries and patch ice foreshadow an upcoming snowing:
There had already been flurries, and in some places the road down from the Overlook was
slick with patch ice. […]So far, the fall had been almost preternaturally beautiful. In the three
they had been here, golden day had followed golden day. Crisp, thirty-degree mornings gave
way to afternoon temperatures in the low sixties […].40
There is nothing more serious than “flurries” and “patch ice” which are still rare compared to
the supposed autumnal colours associated with that season. The passing of seasons is slow
and dealt with in a realistic way. Indeed, on November 1st, the snow has still not arrived:
“The fine weather still held, and all three of them had acquired improbable autumn suntans”. 41
Eventually, a whole chapter is devoted to the first serious snowfall, for it is a turning-point in
the story: from that moment on, the characters cannot leave anymore. This description even
echoes the first one by evoking the flurries that first scared the Torrances on November 1st:
The sky had been completely clouded over by two-thirty and it had begun to snow an hour
later, and this […] it was serious snow […]. At first it had fallen in perfectly straight lines,
building up a snow cover that coated everything evenly, but now, an hour after it had started,
the wind had begun to snow from the northwest and the snow had begun to drift against the
porch and the sides of the Overlook’s driveway. Beyond the grounds, the highway had
disappeared under a blanket of white. The hedge animals were also gone [...] Now the hedges
were buried under amorphous white cloaks. 42
39
40
41
42
Ibid.
Stephen King, op. cit., p. 113.
Ibid., p. 167.
Ibid., p. 321.
31
The landscape is then likely to be completely white for the snow has covered everything,
burying the green topiary and reducing the vicinity of the Overlook to a white plain.
Fig. 6ː The landscape whitens as time goes by…
This whitening of the landscape is often illustrated in Mick Garris’s TV series (see
Fig. 6). The second part deals a lot with the evolution of the weather. On November 1st, the
sky is completely blue and the temperature seems to be warm (05:50, 2nd part). The first
snowfall surprisingly occurs the day after though; a short sequence shows the progressive
formation of a thin layer of snow before the family goes out to play a snow battle (12:32, 2 nd
part). After an ellipsis of 17 days, we are shown the sign indicating the Overlook, which is
almost completely covered by snow, alongside with the cars whose roof is hardly visible
(14:00, 2nd part). On December 9th, the snow starts melting away (41:00, 2nd part) and it tends
to make the evolution more convincing for it implies that, as in reality, things can change. It
seems to be a small detail, but it implies that the evolution of the weather is realistic and not
subordinated to the plot. If the weather had been subordinated to the story, the family would
have been snowbound right after the snowfall started and the weather would have fulfilled its
task: isolate the Torrances. This change mainly implies that the weather and the snow are
elements dealt with for their own sake to make the reader grow aware of the evolution of
time. However, this respite is short since, on December 29th, there is more snow than ever.
32
From that moment on, the isolation is total and the snow will not melt or even stop falling.
On the contrary, there is no progression of time in the two versions of Kubrick’s film.
From now on, the long version of the film is the one we shall refer to. Obviously, when the
Torrances arrive at the Overlook on the closing day, the weather is fine, as the long shot of the
Overlook proves it (19:35). Another long shot of the Overlook accompanying the title-card
“A month later” (34:14, see Fig. 7) shows that nothing has changed: the weather is still fine.
Later, on Tuesday (40:32), another shot tends to indicate that still nothing has changed since it
is very similar to the previous ones. However, it seems that things are about to change, for we
can see Wendy listening to the weather forecasts on TV:
Female presenter: “They have good weather right now but they may have to call off the search
if the predicted snowstorm moves in tomorrow […].”
Male presenter: “[…] I want to go outside and lie in the sun yet to our north, to our west, it’s
snowing and cold and it’s moving right here toward Colorado as we talk. It’s incredible.”
Fig. 7ː From a fairytale idyllic vision to a real nightmarish landscape
The snow finally arrives: on Thursday, Wendy and Danny are playing around the hotel and
the snow has completely covered the surroundings of the hotel (46:04). As we remarked
33
previously, there is a change since, similarly to the novel and the TV series, the snow has
finally arrived. However, there is no gradual evolution or progression whatsoever: we pass
from a nice autumn landscape (40:32, see Fig. 7) to one that is so covered by snow that one
can hardly see its roof (46:56, see Fig. 7).
This dissolves any idea of time by merely contrasting two different types of weather.
Indeed, the second picture is not the consequence of the first: we do not see any cloud or any
hint of a future snowstorm. This statement implies that the seasons do not evolve
progressively; they just change from autumn to winter, which adds dynamism to the action
which is not hampered by a realistic treatment of the weather. Indeed, the evolution is not
enhanced here: the film –similarly to the fairytale– merely shows that now, the family is
snowbound. While King’s and Garris’s The Shining abounded in descriptions that purposely
illustrated the realistic evolution of time, Kubrick completely ignores the slow progress and
does away with any realistic perception of time. Moreover, and contrary to Garris’s TV series,
Kubrick does not describe the time for its own sake but subordinates it to the plot. Actually,
Kubrick’s treatment of the seasons is minimal for snow is an essential element of the plot, but
not a central theme of the film. Consequently, it must be treated as sharply as possible, which
Kubrick succeeded in doing. This treatment of the evolution of seasons echoes Luthi’s
analysis of the treatment of time in fairytales:
In the folktale all changes of form come about with mechanical abruptness. They do not give
rise to a sense of development, of a process of becoming, growing, or vanishing, a sense of
any passage of time.”43
Likewise, at no moment in the film is the weather meant to illustrate the passing of time: it is
an element of the plot and it is dealt as such.
In Perrault’s version of The Sleeping Beauty, we are told that
[..] within a quarter of an hour there grew up all round the park so vast a quantity of big trees
and small, with interlacing brambles and thorns, that neither man nor beast could penetrate
them. The tops alone of the castle towers could be seen, and this only from a distance.44
This excerpt of the tale subtly perverts the temporal treatment of time in fairytales. Indeed, no
fairytale would give such an accurate duration as “a quarter of an hour”. “In the twinkling of
43
44
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 22.
Perrault, op. cit., p. 9.
34
an eye” would better suit the sharpness and clarity of the fairytale style. By doing so, Perrault
points out the magical and unrealistic treatment of time in fairytales. Further down in the
same tale, he writes:
The princess was already fully dressed, and in most magnificent style. As he helped her to
rise, the prince refrained from telling her that her clothes, with the straight collar which she
wore, were like those to which his grandmother had been accustomed. […] They passed into
an apartment hung with mirrors, and were there served with supper by the stewards of the
household, while the fiddles and oboes played some old music and played it remarkably well,
considering they had not played at all for just upon a hundred years.45
By evoking the changes of fashion, and realistic details, Perrault parodies the treatment of
time in the fairytale to point out its unrealistic aspect. Lüthi comments the previous excerpt,
saying that “With this charming and witty realism, the French author destroys the
timelessness that is an essential characteristic of the folktale”46.
This sudden change of weather illustrates the fairytale’s preference for extremes. The
two shots (see Fig. 7) are totally opposite. The first one is colorful, clear, the lines are sharp
and heat is even suggested by the smoke that arises from a chimney. It is very picturesque and
it could even be considered as a fairytale typical house, lost in the woods and mountains,
suggesting the peace and quiet of the secluded places and idyllic lifestyle evoked in fairytales.
This perfection is destroyed by winter though: in Fig. 6, the fog prevents us from seeing
anything, the contours are blurred, the white colors remind us of the coldness of the landscape
and the Overlook looks seems to be buried, as if dead. Hence, there is no evolution in the
weather, just a change: but this one is radical. Lüthi confirms this inclination of the tale:
The tendency to the extreme, which is at work in every nook and cranny of the fairytale, not
just in the contrastive juxtaposition of beautiful and ugly, contributes to this clarity and
sharpness.47
This contrastive effect was clearly intended and ironically evoked by the two TV presenters
who talk about a snowstorm (instead of a simple snowfall) and tell that they cannot believe
that it is coming (“It is so beautiful in Denver today. It’s hard to believe a snowstorm could be
that close. […] it’s moving right here toward Colorado as we talk. It’s incredible.” [41:00]).
Kubrick then, just like Perrault, points out the special treatment of time of his film and insists
on its jumpy and contrastive fairytale-like aspect. The surprise of the presenters actually
45
Ibid., p. 15.
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 20.
47
Ibid., p. 43.
46
35
comes from this lack of transition, of evolution, but is also due to the fact that the next day
will be the right opposite of the first one in all its extremes, which is later confirmed by the
ranger (48:45):
Wendy: Boy, this storm is really something, isn’it? Over.
Yes. It’s one of the worst we have had for years.
Not only is the first snowfall a dangerous snowstorm, but, as if it were not enough, it is one of
the worst they have seen over the past few years. It appears now clear that time, in Kubrick’s
film, is subordinated to the plot and treated in a fairytale-like manner that strongly contrasts
with the novel it was adapted from.
Now, we may wonder why, if time does not mean anything in the film, Kubrick
regularly informs the audience of the time that is passing by inserting title cards (see Fig. 5).
Our main assumption is that they do not aim at linking the episode to each other in term of
time duration but in term of succession. This explains why the indications they give are so
unhelpful: they do not give any sense of the time passing but they make the audience aware
that an episode is over and another starts. This is also made clear by the abruptness with
which the titles appear after a straight cut. These straight cuts are sharp visual divisions;
Kubrick could have used dissolves if he had wanted smooth transitions. Indeed, the absence
of any separation between each episode would obviously confuse the audience. Consequently,
telling about the duration of the ellipsis that constitutes the blank between two title cards was
not likely Kubrick’s goal. Basically, when the film/fairytale needs to use time, it does it (cf:
our previous analysis of the title card “A Month Later”). When it is not relevant to the
development of the plot, it just does not mention it and contents itself with a simple indication
making clear that two events do not happen at the same time.
This sharp distinction is important when we think of The Shining (Eu), in which the
title-card 8am (1:35:49) is cut off, which raises one issue: we do not know when Hallorann
hits the road. We do not need to know exactly the time when he takes the plane: we just need
to know when he does it in relationship to the other events. In The Shining (US), Hallorann
calls back the rangers in order to know if they could get in touch with the Torrances. They tell
him that they could not and, after he hangs up, he decides to go the Overlook. In The Shining
(Eu), this second call is not even shown and we are later informed that Hallorann is on a
36
plane. Consequently, the title cards basically aim at making things as clear as the different
steps of a fairytale, they just separate each stage of the plot when needed. They provide the
ordering and the direction of the action. This echoes to the following statement about
fairytales:
A complete perspective is afforded by the juxtaposition and succession of narrative events
rather than by their interlacements. Whatever in the real world forms an unfathomable or
unfolds in slow, hidden developments takes place in the folktale in sharply divided stages.48
Lüthi also states that:
[The fairytale] makes no use of retrospection, of flashback, an important means of linking and
organization; and, moreover, they are the factor expressing its forward-directed goal
orientation.49
However, the title cards “The Interview” until “Wednesday” are different from those
which follow (“8am” and “4pm”). While previous title card clarified the separation and drew
a conclusive line, these constitute the final movement of the tale. Time indications are no
more days but hours and they clearly relate to each other. They are all the more important
since they organize the different sequences of the film at a moment when they could easily get
blurred: Hallorann’s trip to the Overlook has started which implies that we have to cope with
a two-strand narration, which is something that is rare in fairytales, but does exist: “the
fairytale […] employs at times two-strand narration”50. The cross-cutting permits the audience
to follow the events in the order. The events now happen in almost real time: the ellipses are
short (Wendy going from the apartment to the Colorado Lounge and later dragging Jack from
the Lounge up to the storeroom). Then, the title card “4pm” informs us that an ellipsis of
several hours has happened and that the events shown still happen on the same day. During
the ellipsis, Jack slept, Wendy stayed with Danny in her room, and Hallorann was still on his
way. This ellipsis is the last respite for all the characters and it just skips the events that are
unimportant or too long: Hallorann’s trip takes him about five hours. The editing makes the
succession of the events clear, which is the reason why the title cards are not used anymore.
The treatment of time in Kubrick’s film’s aims at the clarity of the fairytale, from
which it borrows some features: the distinctive and structuring separation between two events,
48
49
50
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 25.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 56.
Ibid.
37
the use of round numbers and extremes to enhance the change (and not the evolution) from a
situation in a place and time to another, or eventually the fact that the film sometimes merely
ignores time. A lot of critics state the temporal distortion of the film and they are right to do
so as long as they study time in a realistic way. However, if we watch and analyze the film in
the light of the fairytale structure, we can conclude that everything is perfectly worked out
(which, coming from Kubrick, does not surprise anybody) and meant to be clear. Hallorann’s
arrival at the Overlook suggests this clarity and perfection: he arrives just on time, when
Wendy is about to be killed. Obviously, we did not expect Hallorann to arrive in such a
critical situation and this almost magical intervention looks more like a deus ex machina
without any verisimilitude. However, since the film’s treatment of temporality is that of a
fairytale, it is perfectly justified, since, “in the folktale, everything “clicks.” 51Indeed,
“whenever the story requires it, at specific turning-points, they [the gifts or appearance of a
character] show up without fail”52. This absence of randomness, inaccuracy and imperfection
(which are essential characteristic of our daily lives), are both perfectly embodied and put into
practice by Kubrick’s film and fairytales.
51
52
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 31.
Ibid.
38
III) The Archetypal Treatment of Characters
39
A) Lloyd, Grady and Hallorann as dramatis personae
As a matter of fact, when compared to the novel and the TV series, all the characters of
the film (the Torrances included) are reduced to a more or less archetypal picture, making
their relationships with each other a priori clear. Obviously, they are not as simplified as the
characters (we should even say, the dramatis personae) of the fairytale, yet, if we compare the
three versions of the film, it appears to us that Kubrick’s transformation of King’s characters
tends to simplify and reduce them to an almost stereotyped form. These transformations have
already been noticed by Steve Biodrowski who wrote in the print magazine Cinefantastique:
Stanley Kubrick’s film version, upon re-examination, reveals that he took the same course he
had often used in the past when adapting novels to the screen (such as Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita): he stripped away the back story and exposition, distilling the results down to the basic
narrative line, with the characters thus rendered in a more archetypal form.53
It is this idea of an “archetypal form” which we would like to work on now. There are
some extreme cases when the characters of the story are clearly reduced to simple dramatis
personae, for they enter the film only in order to carry the plot forward. It is the case of
Lloyd, the barman, for instance. Indeed, he appears at the moment when everything is ready
for Jack to completely turn crazy. The last thing he needs is a drink: “God, I would give
anything for a drink. I’d give my goddamn soul just for a glass of beer” (01:04:00). Right
after this request, Lloyd magically appears to serve Jack. He hardly says anything but his
apparition is essential to the plot since it breaks Jack’s “miserable five months on the wagon”.
He disappears right after his harm has been done and appears again twenty minutes later
(01:23:00) to serve alcohol again to Jack. Once again, he just does what his job demands and
he disappears right after that, when Jack leaves him and bumps into Delbert Grady. Lloyd can
then be considered as a helper (who helps the villain and not the hero though) and nothing
else, but a character significant to the storyline, which is reminiscent of Lüthi’s statement
about the characters of fairytales: “[The line of the plot] is sustained by individual characters
and in the true folktale each individual character is significant to the story line.” 54 Indeed,
Lloyd is literally used because he is needed at that moment of the film for he provides Jack
with alcohol. Lüthi states:
53
Steve Biodrowski, The Shining 1980 review, http://www.hollywoodgothique.com/shining1980.html , retrieved
17/04/2010.
54
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 28-29.
40
Otherworld helpers are not the domestic companions or fellow-workers of ordinary people,
but rather they flash from the void whenever the plot requires them. Each new situation
generally calls forth a new helper, but even if the same otherworld beings appear more than
once, they disappear from sight in the meantime –not to any particular place or into an abyss
existing behind things, but rather just by not being mentioned anymore. They materialize only
when they enter into the level of the action […] 55
This sudden disappearance is not surprising then: Jack does not even wonder where Lloyd is
after Wendy enters the room. Lloyd is not mentioned anymore and reappears later, when
needed again. The same statement could be made about Grady: though he is mentioned during
the interview, he starts acting about the end of the film and he is the one who fosters the idea
of killing in Jack’s mind. Indeed, after “randomly” bumping into each other, they both talk in
the bathroom. Grady warns Jack that Danny is “attempting to bring an outside party into this
situation”, in other words “a nigger cook”, and eventually suggests that Jack should correct
his son and wife. He disappears again abruptly (straight cut to a scene in which Wendy is
crying in her room) and is never heard of again, just as fairytale helpers and “otherworldly
beings fade from sight as soon as they have played their part”.
56
Consequently, both Grady
and Lloyd are reduced to their functions as dramatis personae, as defined by Propp:
“Functions of characters serve as stable, constant elements in a tale, independent of how and
by whom they are fulfilled. They constitute the fundamental components of a tale” 57. It is
indeed obvious that Lloyd and Grady’s functions are important despite their not being
provided with an identity or a psychological depth. They are not real characters but mere
disposable carriers of the action who are literally used when needed, then totally ignored.
This analysis can be applied to Hallorann who is indeed reduced to a donor. Indeed,
the character is simplified when compared to King’s and Garris’s Hallorann. Hallorann’s
physical aspect tells us a lot about him and adds personality to the character; Mark Browning
states:
The casting of Melvin Vann Peebles in the role of Hallorann adds credibility to his link with
Danny and, certainly, the sartorial decision of a dark red suit and placing him in an open-top
red car gives him a “Pimp my Halloran” feel. King had reservations about this Huggy Bearwith-a-makeover look but it effectively makes his character more active, in tune with the boy
[…]. Rather than Scatman Crothers’ more stereotypical ‘Yessah’ servant, Peebles, in a white
suit, listening to Wilson Pickett on the jukebox out in Miami, exudes an impression of
55
56
57
Ibid., p. 17.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p.138.
Vladimir Propp, Morphology of the Folktale, p. 21.
41
‘cool’.”58
It is then clear that Garris’s Hallorann does not only have the white smile and natural
benevolence of Crothers’s character: he also has a style and seems to have a personality. In
the TV series, immediately after they have met, we can sense a special bond between the two
characters, for Hallorann seems a bit strange and worried about Danny (35:40 and 36:00, 1 st
part). This special link is confirmed later when both Danny and the cook are together. When
Danny breaks a piece of Hallorann’s car, the cook tells: “this is between you and me” (36:45,
1st part). Later, they are swinging and talking freely: the tone is less grave than Crother’s
formal speech. Contrary to Danny Lloyd’s character, Courtland Mead‘s Danny talks more
freely and even says more than what Hallorann asks: he evokes a day when he was too
excited during a basketball game. Garris’s Hallorann tells Danny right away that something is
wrong with the place: “Now you listen to me. I have had bad dreams here myself, and some
bad feelings. And may be half a dozen times, I have seen things. Not real things, but not nice
either.” (44:30, 1st part) Moreover, he does not forbid Danny to go into a special room but
asks him instead to promise him that he will not enter any room on his own: “Just promise me
you won’t go in” (45:12, 1st part). Hallorann offers Danny to call him if he has any problem
(47:20, 1st part). The last time we can see Hallorann, he is asking the Lord to keep them safe,
“that little boy most of all” (56:55, 1st part). Eventually, he is only knocked out by Jack when
he arrives, but he does not die even if he is not useful to the plot anymore.
This description clearly aims at portraying him as a man, not as a cook or as any other
stereotype defined by a certain function. The elements of the TV series relating to Hallorann
do not differ much from the novel and this is why there would be no point in detailing again
what we have already studied. In the epilogue of the novel, Hallorann has this kind of fatherly
concern about Danny and he even seems to be part and parcel of the family now, or at least a
very close friend.
A for Kubrick’s Hallorann, he gives Danny information about his gift and advises him
to remain far from room 237. At the end of the film, he sacrifices himself to save the child
and her mother by giving them a means to leave before he is eventually killed by Jack.
Hallorann is helpful in only one way: that of a donor, and this is why it is not very surprising
that he is immediately killed after his arrival. Contrary to King’s novel and Garris’s TV series
58
Mark Browning, op. cit., p. 213.
42
in which Hallorann survives, in Kubrick’s film, the character is far more reduced to his
necessity, which is the reason why he gets killed right after his arrival: he has provided
Wendy and Danny with the Snowcat, he can disappear. To put it in Luthi’s terms, Hallorann
is isolated, meaning here:
Isolation is one of the governing principles in the fairytale. […] –but the figures are also
isolated; they wander individually out in the world. Their psychological processes are not
illuminated; only their line of progress is in focus, only that which is relevant to the action –
everything else is faded out. They are bound neither to their surroundings nor to their past and
no depth of character or psychological peculiarity is indicated. They are cut off from all that–
isolated. In extreme cases, they are just the carriers of the action, figures.59
This is the reason why, strictly speaking, we know very little about him, his past, his
personality. He is described by Ullman as “the head chef” but he could be the manager or the
secretary of the hotel, or even one of its clients, this would not really matter to the plot.
However, what is relevant is that he also has “the shining”, which, far from giving him a
psychological interest, justifies and enhances his role as a donor since he is the only one to be
aware of that gift and of the dangers of the Overlook. He spends his holidays in Miami, which
might account for his skin color but also emphasizes the fact that he is far from the Overlook,
he is isolated from it and from the events that are taking place there. Consequently, it makes
the rescue of Danny and Wendy even more difficult. Hallorann has no plain relationship with
the members of the family whom he has only seen once but, it is not surprising to see him
jeopardize his life like the helpers of fairytales to save three people he barely knows.
Obviously, he is a very friendly man, but he is warm with everybody, not especially to Danny.
It seems that there is no special link between the two of them: he sounds to like Danny as if he
were any child, and this friendly side is lessened when they talk about the gift which they both
have: this enhances his function as a helper. We can even go further by saying that they are
bound by the special gift they both have. Without it, their encounter would not have had the
same consequences and perhaps the story would have ended badly. This special link due to a
gift is reminiscent of the characters in fairytales; as Lüthi writes it:
In the folktale, […] [the hero and the otherworldly helper] only meet, [they do] not enter into
an intimate relationship. In spite of the encounter, they continue to exist side by side. Standing
between them is the gift that the otherworld being gives to the human being and that
nevertheless is not specifically tied to either of them. It simultaneously unites and divides
59
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 42-43.
43
them. 60
Indeed, when Danny and Hallorann are together, the latter looks and sounds far less
friendly. He is still benevolent, but this is what his role as a helper implies. Danny does not
seem to look well at ease, he answers questions shyly and hesitates before telling about Tony
and his gift. The coldness of this dialogue is amplified by the absence of colors in the kitchen:
the whole setting is almost completely white and we can even see several knives hanging on a
pillar and heading towards the floor, right over Danny’s head. This lack of a real link is
reminded to the audience by the fact that, contrary to the novel and TV series, Hallorann does
not offer Danny to call him if he has any problem. Of course, he does come to rescue them
when he feels that something terrible is going on in the Overlook, but he does not look
particularly worried, at best puzzled, when he grows aware that neither he nor the rangers
could reach the Torrances. Compared to King’s and Garris’s character, he is emotionally
detached and only plays his role in the plot: that of the rescuer. Thus, the link between Danny
and Hallorann is a bit artificial, though essential to the plot.
This link seems even more superficial when we take into account the fact that Danny’s
gift is uniquely used to call the chef. Indeed, this power is not really useful in the child’s daily
life. It warns Danny that there is something terrible about the Overlook, but it is not really
helpful since it does not prevent the child from jeopardizing his life: despite his knowing that
something will happen, he still goes to the hotel. This gift even puts him into danger at several
times: it enables him to sense that something is wrong in room 237, stirs his curiosity and
does not prevent him from entering it. Contrary to what Hallorann claims, it does not enable
Danny to see things that others cannot see: all the characters of the film can see the ghosts.
Eventually, this power (if we may say so) has nothing to do with Danny’s final escape from
the labyrinth: Danny survives thanks to his cunning and to his knowing the maze. From these
remarks, it derives that the gift is eventually used in a helpful way and at a crucial moment
only once. Its origin is unknown but it can be considered as a special ability or, more
precisely, as a special gift which is treated in a way similar to that of fairytales:
The hero’s special abilities may be attributed to his miraculous birth, to gifts presented by
otherworld beings, or to a successful apprenticeship, but they may also remain totally
unexplained. One person understands the language of animals because he has eaten magical
food, another person understands it because a wise tutor has taught him, but a third person
60
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 19.
44
simply understands it but we are not told why.61
Thus, the origin of the “shining” does not matter: what is important is that Danny has
it and can use it at a very specific moment. Consequently, we can assume that “the shining” is
essential to the plot insofar as it is used in order to “call” Hallorann. Danny does not seem to
do it on purpose, which undermines any real relationship between the two characters. After
this call, it is barely alluded to, which echoes the fairytale heroes’ relationship to particular
gifts:
One can also call natural the way the fairytale hero deals with things. They are for him to use,
but he does not become a slave to them. He can forget magical gifts that he has received as
long as he does not need them, but he has kept them with him; they are at hand as soon as they
are needed.62
It is then obvious that the “shining” is “tailored to a very special situation in a sequence of
adventures and used only once”63: it is a link that is merely meant to bind Danny to Hallorann,
reducing the cook to a prop useful to the plot at a crucial turn of the film, and which can
disappear right after he has been “used”, for it is not useful anymore.
B) Wendy or “What are you doing down here?”64
To better understand the transformation of Kubrick’s Wendy, it seems relevant to
know what the filmmaker himself thought of his treatment of the character. In one of the
interviews with Michel Ciment, we can read:
Michel Ciment: Did you see Shelley Duvall after seeing her in Three Women?
Stanley Kubrick: I had seen all of her films and greatly admired her work. I think she brought
an instantly believable characterization to her part. The novel pictures her as a much more
self-reliant and attractive woman, but these qualities make you wonder why she has put up
with Jack for so long. Shelley seemed to be exactly the kind of woman that would marry Jack
and be stuck with him. 65
In the light of this explanation, it seems that Wendy was not created and modified for
her own sake, but to fit Jack. This must be the reason why, when we watch the film, we can
immediately sense Kubrick’s simplification of the character; it was not meant to sound and
61
Ibid., p. 60.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 147.
63
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 12.
64
Jack Torrance to his wife, after she read his « work » (01 :44 :30 in The Shining [US] ).
65
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html
62
45
look realistic, but to fit another character and a plot alike without hampering them. Wendy is
literally used as a character unable to do anything on her own and that is why she is emptied
of any psychological depth; she is just a foil. This lack of a true personality intrinsically
prevents her from modifying the course of the plot, but eventually, she drives the Snowcat
away from the hotel and finally finds her function as a dramatis persona.
Wendy’s lack of psychological depth is immediately noticeable the first time she
appears on the screen. She is talking with Danny and we grow aware that, while the prospect
of being trapped for five months in a hotel would scare anybody, she sounds completely
ignorant of the risks that they will all run when they are there. She is unaware of the danger
like Little Red Riding Hood’s mother. She eventually grows aware of the risks when it is too
late. Danny, who is only five years old, asks his mother if she really wants “to go and live in
that hotel for the winter”. This apprehension is not due to a vision provoked by Danny’s gift:
it is a legitimate and commonsensical question but Wendy did not even think of it. On the
contrary, she sounds enthusiastic since she answers “Sure I do. It will be lots of fun”. Frank
Manchel also explains that, later in the conversation,
Wendy asks the child what Tony, his imaginary friend, thinks about the possibility of moving
to the hotel for the winter. [...] But she tells her son that she is sure Tony is looking forward to
the new surroundings. Danny says he isn’t. Before another dissolve takes us back to Ullman’s
office, Wendy assures her son that they’re “...all going to have a real good time there”. This
cliché-ridden comment represents the first of her many denials about impending psychological
dangers threatening the family. 66
She does not even consider questioning Danny’s anxiety and is persuaded that they “are all
going to have a real good time”. It is worth noticing the use of the adjective “cliché-ridden”
in Frank Manchel’s quotation, for it enhances Wendy’s lack of personality: it implies that she
is devoid of any idiosyncratic feature, except for her stupidity which is plainly shown for it is
an essential element of the plot. This goes along with Lüthi’s statement about the intellectual
features of the characters of fairytales:
Only rarely does the folktale mention sentiments and attributes for their own sake or to create
a certain atmosphere. It mentions them when they influence the plot.67
She does not talk as a person but as a role, according to her function in the film:
Frank Manchel, “What about Jack? Another Perspective on Family Relationships in Stanley Kubrick’s The
Shining”, in Tony Magistrale’s Discovering Stephen King’s The Shining, p. 89.
66
46
consequently, she talks and acts nonsensically for the plot requires it. In The Shining (US),
during her talk with the doctor, Wendy evokes Jack’s alcoholism and violence as well as
Danny’s strange behaviour: his imaginary friend or his not adjusting well at school. To the
audience, it obviously foreshadows the events that will happen, but to her, it seems these
elements will not have any importance when they are at the Overlook.
Obviously, it would have been a major flaw to reduce Wendy to a mere dramatis
persona. Nevertheless, she could not be ignored and this is why she is reduced to her role as a
bad mother and wife. This statement has been formulated in sociological terms by Frank
Manchel who writes:
Except for the isolated case of the doctor, women exist as clerks, secretaries, and mothers.
None of them is aggressive. They serve coffee, rear children and don’t involve in making it
big. Wendy portrays the suffering wife, homebound, caught in a loveless marriage, and ineptly
trying to keep the family together by suppressing any doubt about Jack or Danny’s mental
health. In her mind, that is what a good wife is supposed to do: wash, weep, and wait
patiently. Under no conditions is it “proper” for her to take action against “her sea of trouble”.
Self-control, not anger, is the traditional way. 68
This is Wendy’s function: to avoid creating problems by simply doing things Jack’s way and
contenting herself with following him in spite of the dangers that await them. Consequently,
in terms of intellect, she becomes unable of having any real influence on the plot before she is
really needed. Basically, her character is sublimated as fairytale characters are:
The folktale loses [...], in nuance and in fullness of content, and in ability to express the deeper
dimension of human experience and relationships, but it gains in formal definition and clarity.
“Emptying” (Entleerung) also means sublimation.69
This is obviously what happens to Wendy: she is denied any psychological depth, but
also any usefulness to the plot until the end of the film. She is empty compared to King’s and
Garris’s heroine who is far more active and intelligent. Wendy’s sublimation is extreme
though for she is even denied a real function.
This is the reason why Wendy can be considered as a negative double of the notion of
dramatis persona. As a matter of fact, Wendy is as “empty” as a dramatis persona, and even
more if we consider her minor role during most of the film. Contrary to the carriers of an
67
68
69
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 13.
Ibid., p. 91.
Ibid., p. 73.
47
action who appear uniquely when they are needed and then disappear, Wendy is always here,
though never useful: the perfect anti dramatis persona. When we really think of it, Wendy
does not act on her own, she is a mere puppet whose strings are pulled both by Jack and
Kubrick when needed. Their problem is that none of them can get rid of her:
Grady: Women, can’t live with them, can’t live without them.
Jack: Words of wisdom Lloyd. Words of wisdom. (01:07:05)
We may consider Wendy as an anti dramatis persona. As we noticed previously,
Wendy does not have any direct influence on the plot even though her mere presence
obviously has repercussions on it. Wendy’s role is to fulfil the tasks that are unimportant to
the plot: she cooks and prepares breakfast. She plays her role as a mother and not as a carrier
of the action. She is sometimes useful to Jack: when she prepares breakfast for instance.
Consequently, he is glad to have her with him and he is in a good mood. However, when he
does not need her, her presence and her uselessness annoy him.
This is confirmed during the scene in which Jack is typewriting (43:17). This implies
that he must be writing a plot, creating characters and events, as Kubrick is when he makes
the film. Wendy comes to see him without having anything special to do or to tell him. She
interrupts, so to speak, both Kubrick and her husband: as she enters, she both breaks the
melody created by the typing sounds and appears as a growing flaw, a stain in the symmetric
shot. Her being a burden is then suggested. Jack explicitly tells her that he does not care about
what she says: “What do you want me to do about it?” Eventually, Jack’s speech does not
need any clarification:
Whenever you come in and interrupt me, you’re breaking my concentration. You’re
distracting me and it will then take me time to get back to where I was. Understand?
This speech explicitly designates her as a burden for she carries the action away from the
essential and basic plot. Indeed, the scene itself is relatively unimportant to the plot: nothing
relevant happens; we already know that it is going to snow and Jack’s anger is just a warning
among others that something is wrong with him. Because of her stupidity, she makes a scene
that is not directly useful and this makes the film longer without efficiently carrying it
forward.
It can also be argued that, once the family is at the Overlook, Wendy does not carry
48
the plot forward: on the contrary, she even almost stops it when she suggests that they all
should leave the hotel. All the decisions she makes imply that they abandon the Overlook. In
a word, she tries to stop the story from going on and wants to put an end to it. Whereas
helpers are necessary to help the hero to fulfil his task and appear right at the moment when
they are needed, Wendy never leaves and always tries to bring the tale to an end. However,
her willing to leave is not due to a decision she has made: it is forced upon her. Wendy does
not act, she merely reacts to the dangers of the situation. While dramatis personae act on their
own when they are needed to carry the plot forward, Wendy reacts to terminate the story.
Eventually, it is relevant to take into account the importance of Wendy’s physical
look. It was a paramount element when Kubrick chose to cast her:
The wonderful thing about Shelley is her eccentric quality– the way she talks, the way she
moves, the way her nervous system is put together. I think that the most interesting actors have
physical eccentricities about them which make their performances more interesting and, if
they don’t, they work hard to find them.70
This peculiarity is also mentioned by Mark Browning who compares the two actresses
playing Wendy Torrance:
The casting of Rebecca de Mornay [...] gives [Garris] plenty of opportunity to make Wendy a
strong, intelligent, slightly-overprotective but resourceful woman (who slashes her husband
with a razor) and not the one-dimensional shrieking face of Shelley Duval (for which Kubrick
must also take responsibility).71
Contrary to Browning who seems to suggest that Kubrick made a mistake, we assert
that Wendy’s face and general look perfectly fit her psychological features, like in fairytales.
As a matter of fact, Wendy’s “one-dimensional” look and behaviour were sought by Kubrick
in order to make the character correspond to what Lüthi suggests when he talks about
The unequivocalness which is peculiar to the fairytale “black and white contrasts”
(Schwarzweissmalerei), extreme completeness of form, the partial equation of beautiful with
good, on the one hand, and ugly with bad, on the other...”72
Obviously, fairytales do not take it for granted that what looks ugly is necessarily bad:
sometimes, appearances are misleading, as Cinderella’s story proves it. However, when a bad
character is beautiful (Snow-White’s stepmother) and a good character ugly (Cinderella),
70
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html
Mark Browning, op. cit., p. 216.
72
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 127.
71
49
these seemingly paradoxical details are not randomly added to the tale: they remind the child
that the appearances are not the reality in spite of the tale’s describing it as a truth in order to
add clarity to the tale. Anyway, most of the time, ugly (though good) characters eventually
turn up becoming beautiful, like Cinderella or Ricky of the Tuft. There is an undeniable link
between the look of a character and its inner simplified life: the internal attributes of a
character are expressed externally by the way they look in order to clarify the situation
without having to describe the inner attributes.
This is the reason why Shelley Duval’s face simplifies the character and adds another
fairytale-like feature: when seeing her, we immediately know what sort of character she is and
we do not doubt her being unable to cope with what will happen in the Overlook. When Jack
tells her that she prevents him from working, instead of leaving him alone, she idiotically
smiles at him and tells that she will come back later. Another physical representation of her
lack of inner depth is the way she often moves mechanically, as a simple puppet, which
implies that she is a character used and subordinated to the plot and other characters, built to
fit them. Her puppet-like gait was noticed by Mark Browning who writes:
Wendy (Shelley Duvall), in the version seen by most cinemagoers, is reduced to a shrieking
mess. Her physical movement is as ineffectual as her character so that her flailing the baseball
bat at Jack from the top of the stairs, her racing out into the snow, her arms flapping stupidly
or, at the end, her running to Danny make her look like one of Jim Henson’s Muppets. 73
Thus, as in fairytales which represent the world as plainly as possible, Wendy’s emptiness and
her being used like a puppet are visually expressed. This goes along with our previous
assumptions: Wendy is as empty as a dramatis persona and is even denied any real function
until the end of the film. She is the puppet neither Kubrick nor Jack can get rid of.
C) Jack : “The one who has just flown out from the cuckoo’s nest”74
As we started our previous analysis of Wendy’s character with Kubrick’s opinion, we
would like to begin with King’s statement on Jack. As we know, King has never missed an
opportunity to overtly criticize Kubrick’s film, but some of his remarks are not always
73
Mark Browning, op. cit., p. 205.
This is a reference to Milos Forman’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (1975), which stars Jack Nicholson
as the patient of a mental institution.
74
50
gratuitous:
Another problem [...] is that Jack Nicholson should not have been cast as Jack Torrance. He is
too dark right from the outset of the film. The horror in the novel comes from the fact that
Jack Torrance is a nice guy, not someone who has just flown out from a cuckoo’s nest. People
have said to me that Jack Nicholson is crazy from the beginning of the film: there’s never any
progression. People impute that craziness to Nicholson because of other parts that he has
played. [...] I got the impression more and more every time I saw the picture that Kubrick
really did not know how to show a warm relationship between this father and his son. There is
a scene in the bedroom where Jack takes Danny on his lap and tries to reassure the kid: “I’d
never hurt you; I’d never hurt your mother.” It’s very cold and stilted, and you have the
feeling that it’s there because Kubrick knew that something had to be there at this point purely
from a story perspective.75
When we consider King’s novel, it appears that Jack is far different from what
Kubrick made of him, which is obviously the reason why most of King’s readers were
disappointed by Kubrick’s adaptation. Indeed, contrary to King’s novel which shows Jack’s
slow and progressive mental disintegration, Kubrick’s film portrays a man who, from the
beginning of the film, is likely to suffer a mental breakdown and harm his family. Kubrick
himself acknowledged this clear difference from King’s character. In an interview with
Michel Ciment, the filmmaker states:
Jack comes to the hotel psychologically prepared to do its murderous bidding. He does not
have very much further to go for his anger and frustration to become completely
uncontrollable. He is bitter about his failure as a writer. He is married to a woman for whom
he has only contempt. He hates his son. In the hotel, at the mercy of its powerful evil, he is
quickly ready to fulfill his dark role.76
Jack is far less subtle than he was in the novel and it clearly adds clarity both to the
situation and the character: we do not doubt that something horrible is going to happen. This
is even more noticeable if we keep in mind King’s novel, in which the details about the family
are numerous and aim at nuancing the characters. King does not hesitate to explain everything
about the past of the characters in the first part of his novel: “Preparatory Matters”. It provides
the reader with as much information as possible about each character, their past and family
relationships. The first chapter of the novel, “Job Interview”, explicitly deals with Jack’s
problems with alcohol and his bad temper:
Yes, Mr. Shockley told me you no longer drink. He also told me about your last job… your
75
76
Underwood and Miller, Feast 85, p. 100-101
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html
51
last position of trust, shall we say? You were teaching English in a Vermont prep school. You
lost your temper.77
This is the reason why Jack applies for the job of caretaker at the Overlook. His bad
temper is later evoked by Wendy in the chapter “Night Thoughts”, which aims at explaining
the reasons for the Torrances’ current situation. Nothing happens in this chapter: Wendy
remembers the whole story of the couple, from the beginning until he is hired as the caretaker.
The couple struggles to forget the past: Jack’s alcoholism and the evocation of a divorce:
“She had decided to ask him for a divorce”.78 After breaking Danny’s arm, Jack decided to go
to the Anonymous Alcoholics meetings. Since that day, he had not touched a glass of alcohol.
This job as a caretaker is a real opportunity for Jack to earn a living, get closer to his family
and even work on a play. This whole family background is accurately evoked in Garris’s TV
series, for he wanted “to make the book”79. Consequently, details about the family are inserted
throughout the film. The dialogues inform the audience about the family’s past: the talk with
Ullman and on the phone with Al Shockley for instance (respectively 09:40 and 23:35, 1 st
part). Flashbacks are numerous: Jack beating a student and breaking Danny’s arm
(respectively 10:55 and 15:00, 1st part). We can feel that Jack’s alcoholism has clearly
changed Wendy’s behavior toward him: she is overprotective and cannot help checking that
Jack is still on the wagon. Even if cinema and literature are two different arts, Garris’s
treatment of the characters is similar to that of the novel. Thomas Allen Nelson’s statement
about the novel can also be applied to the TV series:
Unlike the script written by Kubrick and American novelist Diane Johnson, King’s work does
not locate its mystery or ambiguity in the characterization of Jack Torrance. King’s omniscient
style allows the reader to figuratively “shine” and rationalize practically every nuance of
character […].80
Kubrick’s first scene raises some questions about the characters: who is Jack, what is
his past, what led him to apply for such a dangerous job? None of these questions is answered
and The Shining (Eu) is even less informative since a part of the interview was removed.
Hence, there are few things we know about the basic story: Jack, his wife Wendy and their
son Danny, who seems to have a paranormal gift, decide to spend the winter in a secluded
hotel. In The Shining (US), some hints are given during the interview and the dialogue with
77
78
79
80
Stephen King, op. cit., p. 8.
Ibid., p. 54.
Jones, Stephen, Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, p. 110-111.
Thomas Allen Nelson, Op. Cit., p. 207.
52
the doctor. Yet, we barely know more about the characters: Jack was “formerly a
schoolteacher”, even if teaching has been, to him, “a way of making ends meet.” During the
dialogue with the doctor, we learn that the family has been in Boulder for only about three
months and they used to live in Vermont, where Jack was a teacher. We do not know more
about the past of the family, though some hints are later given.
Kubrick’s incipit is thus particularly clear, and by “clear”, we do not mean that
everything is so detailed that we have an accurate and general view of the initial situation: on
the contrary, it implies that the features of the characters and the elements that could tell us
more about their situation are reduced to their bare minimum. We do not need to know why
Jack is a not a teacher anymore and why he applied for this job: what is important is that he
did it. The parallel with fairy tales is then obvious, insofar as everything in them is
oversimplified. Let us go back to the incipit of Charles Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood:
One day her mother, who had just made and baked some cakes, said to herː
“Go and see how your grandmother is, for I have been told that she is ill. Take her a cake and
this little pot of butter.”
Little Red Riding Hood set off at once for the house of her grandmother, who lived in another
village.81
So many questions could be asked, but the children who listen to a fairytale never ask
them for they know that what is essential and needs to be known is evoked: the rest is not
even hinted at. Likewise, Kubrick does not provide any information that could have been
helpful, though unnecessary. It is not meant to create a mystery or raise diverse questions: it
aims at clarity and simplicity. These important features have been theorized by Lüthi who
writes:
The characters of folktales not only possess no internal reality, they also lack an environment.
[…] Folktales tell us nothing about the town or village where the hero has grown up. On the
contrary, they prefer to show him at the moment when he leaves home and sets out into the
world. […] The hero must set forth from home in order to meet with what is essential. […] In
like manner, the folktale hero is not embedded in a family structure. He separates himself
from his parents except insofar as they remain instigators of the plot […]. 82
Consequently, it seems relevant to notice that Kubrick did not really deal with the
environment of the characters, especially that of Jack who is arguably the main character of
the film. Contrary to King’s novel, he has no family, no friends, no colleagues, and no
81
Perrault, op. cit., p. 25.
53
relationship whatsoever but with the other characters of the tale. Obviously, this relationship
is a bit artificial for he seems to consider Wendy and Danny as what they are: his wife and
son. He never really feels something for them though, which echoes Lüthi’s following
analysis of sentiments in fairytales:
Only rarely does the folktale mention sentiments and attributes for their own sake. The whole
realm of sentiment is absent from folktale characters and as a result, they all lack
psychological depth. Individual narrators, of course, may interject a word about the hero’s joy
or sorrow. But we clearly sense that this is incidental embellishment and does not pertain
essentially to the folktale as a form. 83
This coldness and lack of feelings are perfectly embodied by Jack who never spends
time with his family (he is not even shown at their flat), and when he does, either he argues
with Wendy or he sounds and looks dangerous. Jack is a character that does not develop.
There is no progression, no nuance in this villain: he is mad from the beginning and things are
likely to get worse, which differs a lot from King’s novel. Steven Weber’s character also
portrays a fragile man who might harm his family, “however, it must be said that, unlike Jack
Nicholson’s manic pursuit with the axe, there is much less sense here that Jack will do real
harm to either Danny or Wendy.”84
This danger is physically embodied by Jack whose physical appearance immediately
warns the audience that he is potentially dangerous. To add clarity to the situation, Kubrick’s
choice reflects the sharpness and disambiguation which he wanted to give to Jack. As Sidney
Poger puts it, “Jack Nicholson is so expert at displaying madness that he is, either in
performance or in the viewer’s mind, never the affectionate father, the warm lover that we see
developed in King’s novel.”85 This fairytale characteristic that associates an inner feature with
a physical one is paramount when we consider all the comments that have been written on
Jack Nicholson’s face. Norman Kagan wrote that “Jack Torrance was already wildly smirking
and fearfully out of control before the film started”86. Along with him, Jack Kroll claims that
Nicholson has a “sharp nose, wild mobile mouth, and angled eyebrows that can redeploy
themselves in an instant from sunny friendliness to Mephistophelean menace.”87Eventually,
Jack’s true nature is illustrated by his physical changes. While, at the beginning of the film, he
82
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 16-17.
Ibid., p. 17.
84
Mark Browning, op. cit., p. 215.
85
Sidney Poger, “Character Transformations in The Shining”, in Discovering Stephen King’s The Shining, p. 48.
86
Norman Kagan, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick, p. 213.
87
Jack Kroll, “Stanley Kubrick’s horror Show”. Newsweek, May 26, 1980, p. 96.
83
54
is cleanly shaven, wears a suit and walks straight, his true nature is eventually revealed by his
physical look: he does not shave anymore, he staggers when he leaves room 237 and chases
Danny. He even howls somewhat like a wolf at the right end of the film, as he is lost in the
maze.
As a conclusion, it clearly appears to us that Kubrick did not aim at creating characters
supposed to look and sound like complex human beings. They were obviously emptied and
simplified in order to keep the audience from being confused. This is the reason why some
characters are entirely reduced to their role as carriers of the action: they just intervene to
keep the story going on. Similarly to fairytales, The Shining aims at clarity and sharpness and
this is why the main characters are devoid of any real psychological depth. Even the inner
features that are necessary to the plot are sharply defined and lack nuance, each character is
reduced to only a few emotions or psychological features (and consequently to one role or
function).
This is the reason why the roles are sharply defined in the film: Wendy is reduced to
an incapable mother, Jack to a mad villain, and the other carriers of the action are emptied of
any inner nuance, which makes the relationship between the characters explicit, and their
utility to the plot obvious. The archetypal treatment of characters goes along with the
simplifications carried out by the folktale: the Torrances and the other characters of the plot
are reduced either to functions or to one-dimensional psychological features. This treatment
does not allow the existence of nuances and subordinates the characters to the plot by giving
them a specific role at a specific moment.
55
Fig. 8ː “I would never do anything to hurt you. Never.” 88
88
Gustave Doré’s engraving for Perrault’s Little Red Riding Hood, op. cit., p. ii, and quote from The Shining.
56
IV) The Marvellous in The Shining
57
A) “You can rest assured that’s not going to happen with me”
Before starting our analysis of the marvellous in The Shining, it seems relevant to keep
in mind that, in the audience’s eyes, this film has nothing to do with the marvellous events
that are associated to fairytales: Kubrick’s The Shining is mainly considered as a
fantastic/horror film. This is why it is important to clarify the notion of fantastic and
marvellous. Tzvetan Todorov claims that the fantastic can be theorized as hesitation. As he
puts it:
“I nearly reached the point of believing”: that is the solution that sums up the spirit of the
fantastic. Either total faith or total incredulity would lead us beyond the fantastic: it is
hesitation that sustains life. 89
If the hesitation between two solutions is what the fantastic is about, the act of
choosing breaks the balance and either gives an uncanny or marvelous tone to the story. As
far as Kubrick’s film is concerned, we do not even need to deal with the issue of whether or
not the ghosts are real: this notion of hesitation is alien to the fairytale and consequently to the
film. As we are going to see, the clarity, simplicity and sharpness of the film cannot enable
any doubt.
Obviously, the elements which foreshadow a massacre in classic horror/fantastic films
also paradoxically tend to make the reader doubt its happening. King’s novel and Garris’s TV
series, even if they give hints of what may happen, still make us hope that it will not. This is
the reason why Jack’s character is so important in them: contrarily to Kubrick’s character,
King’s Jack struggles against his weaknesses. This job as the caretaker of the hotel is a new
opportunity to forget the past. He is often tempted to drink, as proved by the sequence in
which he is looking through the window of a bar proves (25:43, 1st part). However, he
manages to resist. On several occasions, he is shown regretting the harm he has done, almost
crying because of guilt (16:00, 1st part). When he hits Danny in the bathroom, he is
immediately shown despising himself and angry at himself (“What the hell you think you’re
doing?” 01:19:50, 1st part). Thus, contrary to Nicholson’s character who, as the villain of the
film, is destined to kill his family, Weber’s character is less likely to do any harm to those he
loves, which creates a hesitation that is alien to the fairytale.
89
Tzvetan Todorov, The Fantastic : a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, p. 31.
58
The scene in which the whole family is going to the Overlook helps to better
understand the tone of each film. In Garris’s TV series, the music over the first shots (26:14,
1st part) conveys hope: the audience, alongside with the Torrances, hope that this last chance
will be a new departure. On the contrary, in Kubrick’s film, the background music is slow,
grave and gloomy: notes are long, there is no real melody, and the atmosphere is tense for the
characters talk about cannibalism. It does not leave us any hope and foreshadows ominous
events. What Lüthi states about fairytales could also be said about Kubrick’s The Shining:
[The fairytale’s] individual stylistic features are in harmony with each other; they aim for
clarity, exactness, positiveness, and precision. There is no “if” and no “perhaps”.90
Indeed, we have already explained previously that Jack’s ambiguity has disappeared in
Kubrick’s film, and he is a stock character. When Wendy discovers Jack’s work, we are
shown hundreds of pages, which suggests that Jack has been crazy for long and that his
madness does not derive from a slow evolution. Kubrick’s film does not foreshadow the
events: it anticipates them as fairytales do. Michel Chion’s states this anticipation:
On sait quel jeu joue Shining : tout annoncer, tout afficher, dès les premières images, dès les
premières scènes. […] L’impression de déstructuration […] est créée par ce défi consistant à
abattre ses cartes très vite, à « user » les effets, par le refus de recourir à la gradation. Ainsi,
Danny voit tout d’emblée sous une forme définitive, dont le fameux ascenseur remplissant le
pallier et l’écran de sang. […] Il y a bien dans le projet de Shining l’idée de renouveler le
cinéma de terreur en prenant le spectateur de vitesse. Tout est dit, tous les lieux sont montrés,
rien n’est caché, le jeu des acteurs semble d’emblée paroxystique, la musique est très vite
funèbre, catastrophiste. Le parti-pris visuel est celui d’un film de terreur sans pénombre, sans
le moindre petit recoin échappant à la lumière. Le challenge est très clair.91
Consequently, the audience does not watch the film until the end to know whether or not the
events foreshadowed will happen: they watch it to see how everything will happen. This
echoes Lüthi’s statement about the events anticipated in fairytales:
Even when one knows that something will come to pass [...] one remains, so long as the
realization has not occurred, in a state of suspense, which is relieved only when what has been
anticipated actually occurs, when the expected chord sounds.92
In the fairytale and in Kubrick’s film, no doubt subsists. The interview does not only
introduce the characters of the story: it foreshadows the macabre events that are going to take
place later in the film. Indeed, there are no gratuitous details when Ullman speaks about
90
91
92
Max Lüthi, Once Upon a Time on the Nature of Fairy Tales, p. 57.
Michel Chion, op. cit., p. 391.
Max Lüthi, The Fairytale as an Art Form and Portrait of Man, p. 91.
59
Grady’s massacre: we know it will happen again. If Ullman speaks about this tragedy, it does
not mean that, what he calls “the cabin fever”, is a risk to take into account for it might
happen: to the audience, it means that it will necessarily happen, we never doubt that even if
Jack claims: “You can rest assured that it is not going to happen with me” (10:20). This
device echoes a tale entitled Faithful John (Grimm’s version) in which an old king says to his
servant:
After my death, you are to show [my son] the entire castle, all the rooms, halls, and cellars,
and all the treasures that lie therein; but the last room at the end of the long hall you are not to
show him, the room where the picture of the princess of the golden roof is hidden. If he sees
the picture, he will fall hopelessly in love with her and swoon dead away and face great
dangers because of her. You have to protect him from this.
Lüthi’s comment upon this excerpt is relevant to our point: “This is exactly what will happen:
the plot brings the realization of what has been prefigured in words.”93 Wendy and Danny’s
stroll in the maze also anticipates the ending of the film since it enables Danny to find his way
in it when his life is jeopardized. Likewise, Danny’s interdiction to enter Room 237 is also a
foreshadowing of his doing so. It is indeed important to notice that the end of the day is
marked by a straight cut which also ends the sequence right after Hallorann’s injunction “Stay
out!” (34:05). These words resonate and have an ominous tone which leaves no place for
doubt: Danny will enter the room. This assumption goes along with Lüthi’s statement about
the paramount role of interdiction in fairytales:
Prohibitions are also anticipations. They state negatively what will with certainty happen later
on; to this degree the later event is a repetition of what was announced in the prohibition.
Every foreshadowing, whether it is an announcement, a directive to act, or a prohibition,
creates expectation: tension results. Every anticipation, even one with minus sign–indeed
especially this sort–cries out for realization.94
Thus, even if all the versions of The Shining finally show Jack’s mental breakdown, it
appears to us that Kubrick does not play with the audience’s expectation in the same way as
the novel and the TV series do. Likewise, when the teller of a fairytale sometimes says that
what he has just told may not be true, he does not draw the attention of the audience on the
veracity of the tale but on its point of termination. This is also one of the reasons why the
removed ending of the film could not work. As a matter of fact, this removed ending cannot
be viewed anymore and seems to have been lost, destroyed or is still secretly kept in the
Warner Bros Studio’s archives. It was released for only some days in the USA before being
93
94
Ibid., p. 90.
Ibid., p. 91.
60
cut. Even though a mystery seems to hang over this ending, some facts about its content have
been verified:
When first released, the film had an alternate ending: after the shot of Jack’s body, the film
dissolves to a scene of policemen outside the hotel. It then cuts to a scene in a hospital, where
Wendy is resting in a bed and Danny is playing in a waiting room. Ullman arrives and tells her
that they have been unable to locate her husband’s body anywhere on the property. On his way
out, Ullman gives Danny a ball– the same one that mysteriously rolled into a hallway earlier in
the film, before Danny was attacked in room 237. Ullman laughs and walks away and the film
dissolves to the move through the corridors towards the photo. Stanley Kubrick had the scene
removed a week after the film was released.95
Here are some pictures which can be found in Stanley Kubrick’s Archives96:
Fig. 9: Wendy in her bed at the psychiatric hospital
95
96
www.IMDB.com
We found these images on : http://pineapples101.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/shining-deleted-scenes.html .
61
Fig. 10: Ullman visits Wendy and Danny in the hospital
Fig. 11: Danny is playing a game with the nurse
Diane Johnson, the co-writer of the script explains below why they had to do it:
Mark Steensland: Why was the original ending removed?
Diane Johnson: I know there were time considerations, some kind of contractual obligation to
take out a few minutes, so it could be that. 97
97
Kamera, issue n° 2, 2003
62
As for Michel Chion, he seems to rely on what Georg Sesslen and Fernand Jung claim98 :
En raison de l’accueil mitigé, Kubrick raccourcit son film deux jours après la première- il
coupa la séquence finale de quatre minutes, dans laquelle nous voyons Shelley Duvall, après
les terribles événements de l’hôtel Overlook, dans un asile psychiatrique […] 99
Whatever the reason for this removal may be, in a narrative whose clarity is fairytalelike, there cannot be any doubt at the end of the film. However, Kubrick’s removed ending
clearly implied that we had to doubt what we had just watched. If we study this ending, the
fact that hesitation does not fit the film becomes clear. When studied in the light of the
fairytale, Roger Ebert’s statement is meaningful:
If Jack did indeed freeze to death in the labyrinth, of course his body was found –and sooner
rather than later, since Dick Hallorann alerted the forest rangers to serious trouble at the hotel.
If Jack’s body was not found, what happened to it? Was it never there? Was it absorbed into
the past and does that explain Jack’s presence in that final photograph of a group of hotel
party-goers in 1921? Did Jack’s violent pursuit of his wife and child exist entirely in Wendy’s
imagination, or Danny’s, or theirs? … Kubrick was wise to remove that epilogue. It pulled one
rug too many out from under the story. At some level, it is necessary for us to believe the three
members of the Torrance family are actually residents in the hotel during that winter,
whatever happens or whatever they think happens.100
It is then obvious that such an ending is the total opposite of what is expected in a
fairytale for its clarity and simplicity are completely lessened here. Too many issues are
raised, and we know for sure that these kind of unanswered questions are alien to the tale. It
appears now that, when studied and watched in the light of the fairytale features, The Shining
cannot be a fantastic film for it annihilates its conditions: every doubt, every belief, every
hesitation is transformed into indubitable events and happenings.
B) “Hi Lloyd. A little slow tonight, isn’t it?”
In spite of our previous analysis, some will argue that the film still has a fantastic tone
for we, as an audience, can see things that cannot happen in our world. Obviously, we cannot
deny this fact: ghosts, haunted hotels and paranormal activities whatsoever are alien to our
world and this is the reason why the audience tends to doubt the different events that are
98
See Fernand Jung and Georg Sesslen, op. cit., p. 23.
Michel Chion, op. cit., p. 397.
100
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/REVIEWS08/606180302 .
99
63
shown during the film and tries to explain them rationally. However, as we argued in our first
part, the world of fairytales has nothing to do with our own world. Consequently, our rules
about what is possible and impossible are completely meaningless in it. Since the Overlook’s
world is not our world, what is enabled by its rules cannot be judged according to our own
conception of reality. Todorov insists on this point in his approach to the fantastic:
In a world which is indeed our world, the one we know, a world without devils, sylphides, or
vampires, there occurs an event which cannot be explained by the laws of this same familiar
world. The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or
the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The
fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature,
confronting an apparently supernatural event.101
Todorov was not the first one to consider this foundation in the reader’s world as a
condition of the fantastic; as Louis Vax put it, “the fantastic narrative generally describes men
like ourselves, inhabiting the real world, suddenly confronted by the inexplicable.” 102
Consequently, even if, in most cases, both the reader and the character of the fantastic
narrative share doubts, the fantastic immediately derives from the hesitation of the reader.
However, “the fantastic […] implies an integration of the reader into the world of the
characters [...]”103 which means that we have to take into account the fact that the Overlook’s
world is not our world. As a consequence, we have to take it for granted that, however strange
and impossible the events which we are going to see may look and sound, their uncanny tone
is only due to the fact that we refer to our world.
To better understand this point, it is relevant to study the character’s reaction when
they cope with something that is, to us, uncanny and unexplainable: they react as we would
react. The first otherworldly happening occurs when Danny is talking to Tony and asking him
what he knows about the hotel. Danny never doubts Tony, let alone the fact that he exists and
lives in his mouth. The audience may find it impossible that Danny has a friend who tells him
the future, whereas Danny directly speaks to him as if they were in the same room. This
startling fact is considered as normal to Danny for he lives in a world in which this kind of
gifts are not so rare, since even Hallorann has the shining. Danny easily copes with this gift
and even masters him since he asks Tony for a piece of advice: “Now, Tony, tell me” (11:35).
This particular way of coping with that kind of capacity as if it were genuine and normal is
101
102
103
Tzvetan Todorov, op. cit., p. 25.
Louis Vax, L’art et la littérature fantastique, p. 5.
Tzvetan Todorov, op. cit., p. 31.
64
reminiscent of the fairytale hero:
[…] the folktale hero sees and experiences things far more fantastic than [a white woman
sitting in a meadow] and never bats an eye. […] The hero shows neither astonishment nor
doubt. […] Neither curiosity nor a thirst for knowledge spurs him on to hell, the great griffin,
the land at the world’s end, or the land of the water of life and golden apples […] The folktale
hero acts and he has neither the time nor the temperament to be puzzled with mysteries.104
Of course, Danny is then afraid, but we must notice that he is frightened by what he sees and
not by the fact that he can see things which will happen. This reminds us of Lüthi’s next
statement:
In folktales, the numinous excites neither fear nor curiosity. […] Similarly, if the folktale hero
is afraid, his fear is of an everyday kind. He is afraid of dangers, not of the uncanny. Witches,
dragons, and giants frighten him no more that human rogues or robbers. He avoids such
creatures because they have power to kill or injure, not because of their supernatural character.
All fear of the numinous is absent.105
The fact that ghosts may just be part of the Overlook world is enhanced by their looking
normal to the characters of the film and therefore possibly to the audience. When asked about
this, Kubrick answers:
From the more convincing accounts I have read of people who have reported seeing ghosts,
they were invariably described as being as solid and as real as someone actually standing in
the room. The movie convention of the see-through ghosts, shrouded in white, seems to exist
only in the province of art.106
Thus, since Kubrick wanted the ghostly apparitions to look as real as possible, the
matter-of-fact way in which he makes them appear as real as normal persons conveys the idea
that they are legitimate parts of the Overlook world. Lüthi states that “[the fairytale hero]
lacks all sense of the extraordinary. To him, everything looks to the same dimension.”107 The
fact that everything seems to belong to the same dimension is reminiscent of Kubrick’s
ghosts: they do not look or sound like ghost because they are emptied of their fantastical and
uncanny features. If we did not know that they were ghosts, we could see them as normal
persons.
On the contrary, Garris’s TV series and King’s novel make the audience doubt the
presence of the ghosts. Obviously, the film is anchored in the real world, which is the reason
104
105
106
107
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 6-7.
Ibid., p. 7.
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 7.
65
why the fantastic can exist. Danny constantly sees things which then disappear, and he always
wonders whether or not he imagined them or if they were real. Likewise, Jack is shown
dancing with a woman while a band is playing. Danny and Wendy both hear the band, which
tends to prove that it does exist. However, he is later seen imagining everything, at the
moment when he bumps into someone and apologizes (25:00 3rd part). The film seems to
hesitate as well as the audience and, partially because of Garris’s awkward treatment of the
fantastic, the audience always wonders whether or not everything can be explained
(alcoholism, hallucination) or if the ghosts are real. As in the novel, we know for sure that
ghosts exist when the door of the storeroom is unlocked and Kubrick was well aware of this:
Stanley Kubrick: “As the supernatural events occurred you searched for an explanation, and
the most likely one seemed to be that the strange things that were happening would finally be
explained as the products of Jack’s imagination. It’s not until Grady, the ghost of the former
caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack
to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural.”108
Consequently, both the novel and the TV series play with the hesitation of the reader
and make him hesitate until the fantastic (created by hesitation) turns into the marvellous,
that is, the fact that ghosts do exist, though we encounter them infrequently.
In Kubrick’s film though, we are supposed to take the supernatural events literally
since there is no reason why their existence should be doubted. We should not doubt what we
see more than the characters do. When Danny first sees the two sisters (21:30), he does not
over-react at all and remains completely adamant, barely puzzled. He does not even seem
afraid of them, which gives the impression that, to him, these girls may be the daughters of
some customers who have not left the hotel yet. As he is talking with Hallorann, the latter
clearly states that their gifts are not so rare and that it is not as strange as it first seems: “For a
long time I thought it was just the two of us that had the shine to us. […] But there are other
folks, though mostly they don’t know it, or don’t believe it.” (29:50). Danny does not feel ill
at ease because this discussion about paranormal powers sounds strange to him, but because
he is “not supposed to” talk about Tony. However, once he finally starts talking about it, he
does it as if they were normal to him: “Tony is the little boy who lives in my mouth.” When
Hallorann is asked if he is afraid of the Overlook, he answers that he is not and tries to find an
explanation that sounds logical and unstartling: “Some places are like people. Some shine,
some don’t. I guess you could say that the Overlook hotel has something about it that’s like
66
shining.” Then, he explains in a trivial way what the Overlook hotel’s shining is about: “You
know doc, when something happens, it can leave a trace of itself behind. Say like, if someone
burns toast.” Eventually, no particular atmosphere is created by that sequence; there is no
music and no noticeable effect that could draw the attention of the audience to its uncanny
side. The characters are not confessing and this discussion, though important, does not give
the reader the impression that some revelations were made.
Similarly, when Danny sees the two sisters again, we do not doubt their being real.
Danny looks startled but his reaction is not extreme: he does not even move. He seems more
frightened by their invitation to play. Their being real or not does not matter to him, and the
fact that he hides his eyes prevents him from seeing these frightening girls. They seem
uncanny, not because they are “ghosts”, but because they look and sound dangerous, which is
confirmed by the inserted flashback: to play with us, you have to die. As for Tony, who
claims that this is not real, he is obviously wrong since, later in the film, the ghost do not
“hide” anymore and both Jack and Wendy can see them in spite of their not having the
shining.
Jack is not surprised at all when Lloyd suddenly pops out of nowhere to serve him
alcohol. Though he first looks amazed, this is not due to his seeing a ghost or an uncanny
event. The surprise comes from the fact that Lloyd is here while there is nobody to serve: “Hi
Lloyd. A little slow tonight, isn’t it?” (01:04:25) Then, they start talking as if they had known
each other for years and Jack does not even doubt Lloyd’s presence. When Wendy enters the
room, Lloyd disappears again for he has fulfilled his task. When the caretaker enters the
bathroom of room 237, he is first afraid of the figure he sees behind the curtain (01:12:52).
But as soon as this figure pulls the curtain aside, he is immediately relieved and even smiles
(01:13:17). The apparition itself does not frighten him and he does not doubt whether or not
what he sees is true. After growing aware that the woman radically transformed into an old
hag, he is afraid and disgusted and leaves the room, after locking her in. He looks no more
puzzled when he sees the balloons and confetti in the corridor leading to the Gold Room: at
best, he is a bit intrigued (01:21:00). He even answers the waiter in a matter-of-fact way when
he is wished a good evening (01:23:34). As for the scene when Jack is freed from the
storeroom by Grady, the latter is not shown since his being real becomes obvious and is
confirmed when the door opens. As far as Wendy is concerned, she also sees marvelous
108
http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/doc/interview.ts.html
67
apparitions. She is both surprised and afraid of them: before seeing the first ghost (“Great
Party isn’t it?” 02:12:50), she had no idea of what was going on in the hotel but she never
wonders whether or not they are real.
68
Conclusion
As a conclusion, it appears to us that, when Kubrick’s The Shining is watched and
studied in the light of the fairytale style and structure, it can be argued that, contrary to what is
commonly stated, the film is not an adaptation but a transformation of King’s novel.
Obviously, the themes and motifs of both the novel and the film are more or less the same, but
the way in which Kubrick treats them adds simplicity, clarity and sharpness to his film, whose
structure and form are then more “fairytale-like”. This is the reason why Kubrick’s The
Shining has more to do with the fairytale than King’s book, despite their both dealing with the
same content. Even if the novelist claims: “To my mind, the stories that I write are nothing
more than fairytales for grown-ups.”109, and even if his motifs are reminiscent of the fairytale,
The Shining remains a novel for it has the form of a novel.
Some will now argue that watching The Shining in a fairytale-like manner is too
reductive of the film’s enigmatic content for it does not allow any doubt or hesitation. We do
not deny this point, for we are neither the first nor the last to study this film. However, we do
not claim that this reading goes against those of other academics in any way: our point-ofview is just different and enables us to have an alternative reading of the film. Moreover, the
folktale world has its own rules and the audience cannot and do not need to explain ghostly
happenings rationally. We may wonder who these ghosts are then, but contrary to King’s
novel and Garris’s TV series, there is no way we can confidently answer this question, for
fairytales never legitimate or explain the possibility of marvelous events: they just show these
events. Both Kubrick’s film and the fairytale have blunted motifs that are not relevant to the
plot, but which still raise some questions: it is precisely because of its clarity and simplified
features that the film can be interpreted in so many different ways. We do not know why the
villain causes harm to the princess or to the hero; neither do we know why the hotel is so
malevolent.
Consequently, reviewers cannot help trying to find answers to these unexplained facts.
The assumptions are numerous and do not necessarily take into account the fairytale aspect of
109
Tony Magistrale, Stephen King, The Second Decade : Danse Macabre to The Dark Half, p. 4.
69
the film. Though there is no telling where the ghosts come from, and even if it is not even
necessary to do so, we may assume that these otherworldly beings are people from the past, as
the date on the photograph suggests. This is at least one of the assumptions allowed by the
fairytale reading of the film. Lüthi states: “The otherworld of the folktale is not only not a
different dimension, but in it the past stands at ease side by side with the present.” 110 In
Kubrick’s The Shining, the otherworldly beings belong to the past and keep on living and
dancing in the hotel: since the folktale ignores time, they do not grow old or die. They simply
stand side by side with people from the present.
110
Max Lüthi, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, p. 22.
70
Bibliography
71
Primary sources:
King, Stephen, The Shining, London, Hodder and Stoughton Edition, 1977.
Kubrick, Stanley, The Shining (Eu), Warner Brothers, 1980 (115 minutes).
Kubrick, Stanley, The Shining (US), Warner Brothers, 1980 (144 minutes).
Garris, Mick, Stephen King’s The Shining, Warner Brothers, 1997.
Secondary sources
Stephen King:
Browning, Mark, Stephen King on the Big Screen, Chicago, Intellect Books Edition, 2009.
Jones, Stephen, Creepshows: The Illustrated Stephen King Movie Guide, New York,
Billboard Books, 2002.
Magistrale, Tony, Stephen King, The Second Decade: Danse Macabre to The Dark Half, New
York, Twayne, 1992.
Magistrale, Tony, Hollywood’s Stephen King, New York, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.
Magistrale, Tony, Discovering Stephen King’s The Shining, Rockville, Wildside Press, 2006.
72
Kubrick:
Allen Nelson, Thomas, Kubrick. Inside a Film Artist’s Maze, Bloomington and Indianapolis,
Indiana University Press, New and Expanded Edition, 2000.
Azulys, Sam, Stanley Kubrick. Une Odyssée Philosophique, Paris, Les Éditions de la
transparence, Cinéphilie, 2011.
Castle, Alison, The Stanley Kubrick Archives, Taschen, 2005.
Chion, Michel, Kubrick. L’humain ni plus ni moins, Paris, Cahiers du Cinéma, 2005.
Kagan, Norman, The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick, Northam, Round House, 3rd edition, 2000.
Kamera, issue n° 2, 2003.
Kroll, Jack, “Stanley Kubrick’s Horror Show”. Newsweek, May 26, 1980.
Seesslen, Georg, and Jung, Fernand, Stanley Kubrick und seine Filme, Maburg, Schüren,
1999.
Fairytales:
Bettelheim, Bruno, The Uses of Enchantment, London, Penguin Books, 1976.
Hamburger, Käte, The Logic of Literature, trans. Marilynn J. Rose, Bloomington and London,
Indiana University Press, 1973.
Jakobson, Roman, Selected Writings, Volume 4: “On Russian Fairy Tales”, The Hague-Paris,
Mouton & Co, 1966.
Lüthi, Max, Once Upon a Time on the Nature of Fairy Tales, trans. Lee Chadeayne and Paul
Gottwald, Bloomington and Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1976.
73
Lüthi, Max, The European Folktale: Form and Nature, trans. John D. Niles, Bloomington and
Indianapolis, Indiana University Press, 1982.
Lüthi, Max, The Fairytale as Art Form and Portrait of Man, trans. John Erickson,
Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1984.
Megas, Georgios A., Griechische Volksmärchen, Düsseldorf and Köln, MdW, 1965.
Perrault, Charles, Fairy Tales, with thirty-four full page illustrations by Gustave Doré, trans.
A. E. Johnson, New York, Dover Publications, Inc., 1969.
Propp, Vladimir Morphology of the Folktale, trans. Laurence Scott, Austin, University of
Texas Press, 1928 (1968).
The Fantastic:
Todorov, Tzvetan, The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, trans. Richard
Howard, Ithaca-New York, Cornell University Press, 1975 (1970).
Vax, Louis, L’Art et la littérature fantastique, Paris, P.U.F (Collection « Que-Sais-Je ? »),
1960.
Internet Websites:
Biodrowski, Steve, The Shining 1980 review. Retrieved 17/04/2010:
http://www.hollywoodgothique.com/shining1980.html .
The Kubrick Site: www.visual-memory.co.uk/amk/ .
Roger Ebert’s review of The Shining:
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060618/REVIEWS08/606180302 .
74
www.IMDB.com .
http://pineapples101.blogspot.co.uk/2009/01/shining-deleted-scenes.html .
Additional Films
Summer of ’42, Robert Mulligan , Warner Brothers, 1971.
, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Milos Forman, Fantasy Films, 1975.
Three Women, Robert Altman, Lion’s Gate films, 1977.
75
List of Illustrations
Cover page: Detail from an engraving for Perrault’s Tom Thumb, by Gustave Doré, and the
Overlook Hotel in Kubrick’s The Shining, page design by Sébastien Leclercq.
Fig.1: The Overlook has powerfully set up in this unfriendly environment, in Stephen
King’s The Shining .................................................................................................................. 12
Fig. 2: Establishing shot of the “overlooked” Overlook blending into the landscape, in The
Shining ..................................................................................................................................... 14
Fig. 3: Danny and Wendy are watching a film: the mise-en-abyme of embedded realities,
in The Shining (US) ................................................................................................................ 18
Fig. 4: A tale, that’s all it was! In The Shining ....................................................................... 24
Fig. 5: The schematic “chronology” of The Shining (US) ...................................................... 26
Fig. 6: The landscape whitens as time goes by… in Stephen King’s The Shining ................ 32
Fig. 7: From a fairytale idyllic vision to a real nightmarish landscape, in The Shining ......... 33
Fig. 8: “I would never do anything to hurt you. Never.” In The Shining ............................... 56
Fig. 9: Wendy in her bed at the psychiatric hospital (alternate ending of The Shining) ........ 61
Fig. 10: Ullman visits Wendy and Danny in the hospital (alternate ending of The Shining) . 62
76
Fig. 11: Danny is playing a game with the nurse (alternate ending of The Shining) ............. 62
77