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The Shining (film)

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The Shining
File:The Shining poster.jpg
A promotional poster for the film
Directed byStanley Kubrick
Written byNovel:
Stephen King
Screenplay:
Stanley Kubrick
Diane Johnson
Produced byStanley Kubrick
StarringJack Nicholson
Shelley Duvall
Danny Lloyd
Scatman Crothers
CinematographyJohn Alcott
Edited byRay Lovejoy
Music byWendy Carlos
Rachel Elkind
Krzysztof Penderecki
György Ligeti
Béla Bartók
Distributed byWarner Bros.
Release dates
23 May, 1980 (premiere)
Running time
Europe:119 min / USA:146 min (original version).
LanguageEnglish
BudgetUSD$15,000,000 (estimated)

The Shining is a 1980 horror film by Stanley Kubrick based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. The film stars Jack Nicholson as tormented writer Jack Torrance and Shelley Duvall as his wife Wendy.

Synopsis

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Jack Torrance is a former teacher who is trying to rebuild his and his family's life after his drinking problem and volatile temper lost him his teaching position at a small preparatory school. Having given up alcohol, he accepts a position maintaining a large and isolated hotel in Colorado for the winter, the Overlook Hotel, in the hope this will salvage his family, re-establish his career, and give him the time and privacy to finish a promising play. He moves to the hotel with his wife, Wendy, and young son, Danny, who is telepathic and sensitive to supernatural forces.

File:Overlook timberline.jpg
The Overlook (Timberline Lodge)

The next day, Jack meets with the hotel staff, who invite him and his family to get an idea of the facilities in the hotel. The family is introduced to the caretaker's quarters, the hotel's hedge maze and an Aktiv Snow Trac tracked snowcat vehicle. It was explained that the Snow Trac was as easy to drive as a car. They meet Dick Hallorann, the hotel's head chef. Dick suggests to Wendy that he and Danny get some ice cream. While the two sit together at the table, Dick explains to Danny that he is also telepathic, along with his grandmother, who referred to the communication as "shining". Danny asks Dick whether there is something bad at the hotel. While he does not respond directly, he notes that some events leave a trace on the places they are, "like if someone burns toast". When Danny asks what is in Room 237, Dick replies that there isn't anything in there, but still vehemently orders Danny to stay out.

About a month after their arrival, Jack's mental health is deteriorating. He is grouchy and aggressive with Wendy and Danny, spending most of his time writing reclusively. Danny sometimes has frightening, ghostly visions inside the hotel, but doesn't mention them to his parents.

Later, Danny is playing with his toys, when suddenly a ball rolls towards him from down the empty hall. Getting up, and walking towards where the ball had come from, he then notices one of the doors standing open. The sign reads Room 237. Danny slowly approaches the door, then goes inside.

Downstairs in the basement, Wendy hears a terrible scream. She runs towards the main lounge, where she finds Jack, asleep, screaming, in a nightmare. She rouses him, and he tells her that he dreamt that he killed her and Danny, chopping them up into little pieces. Although shocked, Wendy comforts him. Danny then walks in, trembling and sucking his thumb, his sweater ripped and his neck hurt. She wonders aloud how this happened, and then accuses Jack. Jack looks startled and confused. Wendy takes Danny to his room.

File:Dickhall2.JPG
Dick Hallorann with Wendy and Danny Torrance.

After Wendy's accusation, Jack wanders miserably around the hotel and comes across the Gold Room. The staff had removed all the alcohol before they left. Jack sits down at the bar, musing to himself that he would give anything, even his "goddamn soul" for a drink. He looks up and sees a bartender, Lloyd (Joe Turkel). Jack does not appear surprised, and simply asks for a bourbon. Jack unloads his problems to the bartender. Wendy then rushes in, crying, and tells him that Danny had seen a crazy woman in the hotel who tried to kill him. Jack asks which room Danny saw the woman in.

In Florida, Dick hears about the snow drifts in the Rocky Mountains. Suddenly, his eyes widen as he lies on the bed. We may assume he is receiving telepathic calls for help from Danny.

Back in the hotel, Jack walks into Room 237 and enters the bathroom. A very pretty young totally-nude woman (Lia Beldam), her hair wet and slicked back, draws back the curtain of the bath, rises up and steps out of the tub. She walks slowly towards Jack and stops in the middle of the room. When she stops, Jack moves towards her. She seductively moves her hands up over Jack's chest and around his neck. They embrace in a passionate kiss. Jack opens his eyes, and in the mirror, he sees the woman's back is covered with rotting skin. He pulls back, seeing that the woman is suddenly a completely naked elderly walking corpse (Billie Gibson), cackling and reaching out for him with her stretched arms. Disgusted and horrified, he staggers backwards, slamming the door on his way out and frantically locking it behind him.

File:Jacklloyd2.JPG
Jack with ghostly bartender Lloyd.

When he comes out, Jack lies to Wendy, saying there was nothing in Room 237. He suggests that Danny may have done this to himself. Wendy thinks they should leave the hotel and take Danny to a doctor. Jack becomes furious, saying it is "so fucking typical" of Wendy, that he has "let [her] fuck up [his] life this far", and he's not going to let Wendy "fuck this up" for him.

Jack goes back to the Gold Room, which is now crowded with people dressed in a 1920s ballroom manner, and asks Lloyd for a drink. However, he runs into a butler with a tray of advocaat, spilling it on his jacket. The butler suggests they go to the bathroom to try and remove the stain.

Jack discovers the butler is actually the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady. Grady tells him that his son is attempting to bring Hallorann into the situation. Jack wonders how, and Grady explains to him that his son has a "very great talent". Grady tells him about his own daughters and wife, how he corrected them, and he suggests Jack does the same to his family.

After getting no response to his calls, Dick makes the decision to journey back up to the Overlook, despite its being caught in a severe blizzard.

At the Overlook, Wendy grabs a baseball bat and goes searching for Jack down in the lounge. She walks to the typewriter, and reads what Jack has been writing all along: endless repetitions of the single sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.". Wendy is shocked and scared. The book Jack has been writing is composed of only that sentence.

File:Wendyshining.jpg
Wendy discovers Jack's 'writing'.

Jack approaches behind her, and asks her "How do you like it?" She is frightened and spins around. As Jack talks, Wendy walks backwards, increasingly frightened, and starts swinging the bat. Jack asks her to put the bat down and threatens to "bash her brains in". Wendy eventually manages to hit him on the head.

Wendy drags Jack's unconscious body to the pantry and locks him in. Jack, greatly amused, tells her he has sabotaged not only the radio, but also the snowcat, stranding Wendy there — unable to contact the outside world.

Whilst she is gone, Jack hears Grady's voice on the other side of the door. He sounds displeased with Jack, but Jack is defiant, and he assures Grady that he is looking forward to deal with his family "in the harshest possible way" and gives his word to resolve the issue. Mysteriously, the door opens.

While Wendy has fallen asleep in her room, Danny walks in, continually repeats the word "redrum" in Tony's voice. He takes Wendy's lipstick and writes "REDRUM" on the bathroom door. As his voice gets louder, Wendy awakens and quickly takes Danny in her arms. She notices the mirror, which reveals the writing on the door, reversed it says "MURDER".

Jack leers through the broken doorframe in an iconic shot.

At that same moment, Jack swings an axe into the locked door. Wendy and Danny are meanwhile trying to escape out the tiny bathroom window, which is covered in snow. Danny manages to escape out the window, but Wendy cannot get through. Jack starts to hack through the bathroom door, eventually smashing one of the panels. He sticks his head through and screams: "Heeeere's JOHNNY!" Jack then sticks his hand through the gap and seeks the lock, at which Wendy slashes at him with a knife, making him recoil and howl in pain. Then, he hears the low rumble of an engine outside. He turns around and stalks out.

Dick, meanwhile, has made it up to the hotel in a Thiokol Imp snowcat. He gets inside and calls out in the empty hotel. Jack suddenly runs out from behind a pillar and swings the axe into Dick's chest, killing him. Danny leaves his hiding place (a steel cabinet) and runs away. Jack notices this, and goes after him. Wendy, meanwhile, has mustered enough courage to leave the room. She walks upstairs, hears echoes of chanting, and then starts seeing ghosts and other sinister visions as well. Danny tries to escape downstairs, and Jack follows him with the axe, leading outside into the maze.

File:Overlook hotel 1.jpg
The photograph on the hotel wall: Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921. A young Jack stands smiling in the foreground.

Meanwhile, Danny is in the snow-covered maze, with Jack chasing him. Danny is able to retrace his steps and eventually manages to escape, leaving Jack still stumbling around in the maze.

Almost paralyzed by fear, Wendy manages to make her way out of the hotel and joins up with Danny. They get in Dick's Thiokol Imp snowcat and make their escape. Jack is hopelessly lost in the maze. He slumps down into the snow and freezes to death.

As a coda, the audience sees a photograph which was hanging one of the walls of the hotel all the time, with various partygoers at a ball. We see a young man who looks like Jack in the foreground. A sign says "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921".

Template:Spoiler-end

Reception

Trivia

Wikiquote has quotations related to The Shining (film).
  • Stephen King himself notoriously disliked Kubrick's vision. He thought that his novel's important themes, such as the disintegration of the family and the dangers of alcoholism, were ignored. In the 2001 reissuing of The Shining, King stated that he always believed it was the ghosts of the hotel that made Jack crazy, yet Kubrick chose to believe it was moreso the cabin fever. King also viewed the casting of Nicholson as a mistake and a tip-off to the audience (due to Nicholson's identification with the character of McMurphy in One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest) that the character Jack would go mad. King finally supervised a television remake of The Shining in 1997, which received lukewarm reviews.
  • The interiors and exterior scenes were filmed in studios in England.
  • Room 217 from the novel was changed (to 237) at the request of the owners of the Timberline Lodge.
  • The door that Jack breaks down with the axe near the end of the movie was a real door. Kubrick originally used a fake door, made of a weaker wood, but Jack Nicholson, who had worked as a volunteer fire marshal, tore it down rather quickly.
  • Jack's most famous line, "Heeeeere's Johnny!", is taken from the famous introduction for The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, as spoken by Ed McMahon. It was adlibbed by Nicholson.
  • During the making of the movie, Kubrick would call Stephen King during the middle of the night and ask him questions like "Do you ever think of dying?" and "Do you believe in God?"
  • The set for the Overlook Hotel was the largest ever built at the time of shooting. Because it included a full recreation of the exterior of the hotel, as well as all of the interiors, it is very often mistaken for being a real location.
  • The movie that Danny and Wendy watch on television at the beginning of the "Monday" segment is Summer of '42, reportedly one of Kubrick's favorite movies, and a rare instance of modern pop culture in one of his films.
  • In the novel, there were several hedge animals in the front of the hotel that would suddenly come to life. Kubrick felt that this would be unworkable with the available technology of the time, so he decided to use a hedge maze instead.
  • The Grady sisters' footage is unmistakably reminiscent of a photo by Diane Arbus.
  • Kubrick was able to film all of Danny's parts without the young actor (Danny Lloyd) playing Danny realizing he was in a horror movie.
  • The film features the first extensive use of the Steadicam to create long and elaborate tracking shots.
  • According to the Guinness Book of World Records, The Shining holds the record for the film with most retakes of a single scene (with spoken dialogue) at 127 takes. The participant in those retakes was Shelley Duvall.
  • In another incident of numerous retakes that Kubrick was infamous for, Jack Nicholson asked Stanley Kubrick to take it easy on the aging Scatman Crothers after the actor broke down crying, "What do you want, Mr. Kubrick?"[citation needed]
  • In the beginning of the movie, Shelly Duvall (Wendy) is seen reading The Catcher in the Rye
  • In the opening scene, where Jack is seen driving towards the Overlook, at one moment, you can see the helicopter the cameramen are shooting from in the bottom right corner of the screen.
  • After Jack gets mad at Wendy, takes the sheet out of the typewriter and rips it up, you can see another sheet of paper already placed in the machine.
Main article: List of cultural references to The Shining

Making The Shining

Stanley Kubrick allowed his then-17-year-old daughter, Vivian, to make a documentary about the production of The Shining. Created originally for the British television show BBC Arena, this documentary offers rare insight into the shooting process of a Kubrick film.

The documentary, together with full-length commentary by Vivian Kubrick, is included on the DVD release of The Shining.

Versions

There are several versions of The Shining. After its premiere and a week into the general run (which ran for 146 minutes), Kubrick cut a scene at the end that took place in a hospital. The scene had Wendy in a bed talking with Mr. Ullman, the man who hired Jack at the beginning of the film. This scene was subsequently physically cut out of prints by projectionists and sent back to the studio by order of Warner Bros., the film's distributor. This left the film at 143 minutes, and this is the version available in North America.

The European version runs for 119 minutes. Kubrick personally cut 24 minutes from the film. Interestingly, many of the excised scenes in some way made reference to the outside world, usually with a television.

Music/Soundtrack

The film features a brief electronic score by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind, including one major theme in addition to a main title based on Hector Berlioz's interpretation of the "Dies Irae", as well as pieces of modernist music. The soundtrack LP was taken off the market due to licensing issues and has never appeared as a legitimate compact disc release. For the film itself, many of the pieces were overdubbed on top of one another.

The non-original music on the soundtrack is as follows:


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