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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
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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?
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."
