THE SHINING…
A classic horror film…
Production notes…
Other actors considered for the part played by Jack
Nicholson: Robert De Niro, Robin Williams, Harrison Ford
De Niro says the film gave him nightmares for a month…
The hotel
Built the biggest indoor set at that time
Outdoor shots are of the Timberline Logde in Oregon near
Mt Hood (notice there is no hedge maze in those overhead
shots)
Interior sets of hotel were designed to look like the Awahnee
Hotel in Yosemite
Opening aerial shot
Filmed in Glacier National Park on the the Road to the Sun
Shadow of a helicopter can be seen
Same footage was used at the end of Blade Runner
Filming…
The steadicam was new to film making (only
used in Bound for Glory, Marathon Man and
Rocky)
Kubrick used it extensively and the creator of
the device, Garrett Brown, was on location
Having the ability to move the camera with
such quick and steady movement helps create
tension, suspense, and the feeling of being in
the hotel, in the horror…..
Steady Cam Use
Created a wheelchair mount for the camera and this
wheelchair also pulled a platform for sound equipment
This setup created the shots in which the camera follows
Danny riding his bigwheel through the halls of the hotel
The scene is powerful, giving a sense of both the closed in,
claustrophobic space of the hotel, and the jarring noise of the
wheels alternating between wood and carpet
Foreign language releases
Kubrick changed the film for different countries…
When Wendy is reading the pages Jack has been writing all
winter, they say different things in different languages
In English the idiom is ALL WORK AND NO PLAY
MAKES JACK A DULL BOY
Translations…
German (Was du heute kannst besorgen, das
verschiebe nicht auf morgen"Never put off till
tomorrow what may be done today"),
Italian (Il mattino ha laro in bocca "The morning
has gold in its mouth”
French (Un Tiens vaut mieux que deux Tu
l'auras "One 'here you go' is worth more than two
'you'll have its'", the equivalent of "A bird in the
hand is worth two in the bush" Spanish No por
mucho madrugar amanece muy temprano "No
matter how early you get up, you can't make the
sun rise any sooner
Production…
The door that Jack chops through with the axe near the
end of the film was a real door. Kubrick had originally
shot the scene with a fake door, but Nicholson, who had
worked as a volunteer fireman, tore it down too quickly.
Jack's line, "Heeeere's Johnny!", is taken from Ed
McMahon's famous introduction to The Tonight Show,
starring Johnny Carson, and was improvised by
Nicholson. Kubrick, who had lived in England for some
time, was unaware of the significance of the line, and
nearly used a different take. Carson later used the
Nicholson clip to open his 1980 Anniversary Show on
NBC
Critic’s comments
The final scene alone demonstrates what a
rich source of perplexity The Shining offers.
At first sight this is an extremely simple, even
static film. [..] Kubrick had put so much effort
into his film, building vast sets at Elstree, mak
ｭing a 17-week shoot stretch to 46, and what
was the result? A silly scare story �
something that, it was remarked at the time,
Roger Corman could have turned around in a
fortnight.
The setting…
The dominating presence of the Overlook Hotel
designed by Roy Walker as a composite of
American hotels visited in the course of research
is an extraordinary vindication of the value of
mise en scene. It's a real, complex space that we
don't just see but come to virtually inhabit. The
confinement is palpable: horrror cinema is an art
of claustrophobia, making us loath to stay in the
cinema but unable to leave. Yet it's combined
with a sort of agoraphobia we are as frightened
of the hotel's cavernous vastness as of its
corridors' enclosure.
An ambiguous film
The film sets up a complex dynamic between
simple domesticity and magnificent grandeur,
between the supernatural and the mundane
in which the viewer is disoriented by the
combination of spaciousness and
confinement, and an uncertainty as to just
what is real or not.
Peter Bracke, film critic:
..just as the ghostly apparitions of the film's fictional
Overlook Hotel would play tricks on the mind of
poor Jack Torrance, so too has the passage of time
changed the perception of The Shining itself. Many
of the same reviewers who lambasted the film for
"not being scary" enough back in 1980 now rank it
among the most effective horror films ever made,
while audiences who hated the film back then now
vividly recall being "terrified" by the experience.
The Shining has somehow risen from the ashes of
its own bad press to redefine itself not only as a
seminal work of the genre, but perhaps the most
stately, artful horror ever made.
Various interpretations of the
film
Jack Torrance’s deal with the devil…gave his word, becomes
a demon, grunts like an animal at the end..kills his own
progeny, sees them as a threat to completing his job?
alcoholism
King has admitted to suffering an intense bout with
alcoholism when he wrote the novel
Jack Torrance hurt his son’s shoulder during a drunken rage
They no longer drink; there is no alcohol in the hotel
Yet, Jack Torrance drinks at the bar? He acts like an
alcoholic and he lashes out at his family
Is this just about his disease infecting the hotel and his
family?
Native American genocide
Blakemore's general argument is that the film
as a whole is a metaphor for the genocide of
Native Americans. There is the image of the
Indian on the Calamut Baking Soda in the
pantry. He notes that when Jack kills
Hallorann, the dead body is seen lying on a
rug with an Indian motif. The blood in the
elevator shafts is, for Blakemore, the blood of
the Indians in the burial ground on which the
hotel was built. As such, the fact that the date
of the final photograph is July 4 is meant to
be deeply ironic.
A ghost story?
Film is populated with ghosts
Delbert Grady – former caretaker, Charles Grady
The twins
The nasty old woman
Jack has returned as the caretaker “ I have never felt more at home”
“I had the strongest sense of déjà vu when I entered the hotel”
“I want to stay here forever and ever”
A film about a mind unraveling
Are the “ghosts” just seen in the mind of Jack Torrance…his
delusions?
He is the father of Danny, perhaps he has “the shining”
too….he has never felt so at home….
He has that awful dream of killing Danny and Wendy and
cutting them up. He is very disturbed by his dream. Then
Danny enters with bruises on his neck. Wendy believes it is
Jack….this is a pivotal moment in the film…how to explain
it…he then enters the ballroom and meets the “bartender”
has a drink….give my soul for a glass of beer…
An interesting motif..
In the scenes where Jack Torrance speaks with the hotel or
his visions, there is always a mirror…"It has been pointed
out that there's a mirror in every scene in which Jack sees
a ghost, causing us to wonder whether the spirits are
reflections of a tortured psyche…or his split identity?
Jack’s vision?
Lots of other mirror images
Danny/Tony
Jack the father/Jack the lunatic
The twins
The twins before blood/after blood
Delbert/Charles Grady
The beautiful woman/hag in rm 237
Redrum…murder
Catcher in the Rye….ask me!
Psychological or supernatural?
Jack is locked in the storeroom….
But he gets out? HOW??
Grady
Early in film he is mentioned as Charles Grady
who got cabin fever and murdered his familiy
He is Delbert Grady at the party, who has a
naughty wife and children….
Two halves/two people and he has a choice – to kill
his family, or be a waiter, but he indicates he is both
The photo at the end sets up Jack Torrance in the
same manner
The Photo at the end…
Kubrick overtly declared that Jack was a
reincarnation of an earlier official at the hotel
As the ghostly butler Grady (Philip Stone)
tells him during their chilling confrontation in
the men's toilet, 'You're the caretaker, sir.
You've always been the caretaker.' Perhaps
in some earlier incarnation Jack really was
around in 1921, and it's his present-day self
that is the shadow, the phantom photographic
copy
But if his picture has been there all along,
why has no one noticed it? After all, it's right
at the center of the central picture on the wall,
and the Torrances have had a painfully
drawn-out winter of mind-numbing leisure in
which to inspect every corner of the place. Is
it just that the thing in plain sight is the last
thing you see? When you do see it, the effect
is so unsettling because you realise the
unthinkable was there under your nose
overlooked the whole time."
You decide…