| The Shining | |
|---|---|
Theatrical release poster |
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| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick Jan Harlan Martin Richards |
| Written by | Novel: Stephen King Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick Diane Johnson |
| Starring | Jack Nicholson Shelley Duvall Danny Lloyd Scatman Crothers |
| Music by | Wendy Carlos Rachel Elkind Various classical and pop |
| Cinematography | John Alcott |
| Editing by | Ray Lovejoy |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | May 23, 1980 |
| Running time | Original cut 146 min. Cut version 142 min. European cut 119 min. |
| Country | USA UK |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $22,000,000 |
| Gross revenue | $64,984,856 |
The Shining is a 1980 horror film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on Stephen King's novel of the same name. Kubrick co-wrote the screenplay with novelist Diane Johnson. The film stars Jack Nicholson as tormented writer Jack Torrance, Shelley Duvall as his wife, Wendy, and Danny Lloyd as their son, Danny.
The film tells the story of a writer, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), who accepts the job of the winter caretaker at a hotel which always gets snowed in during the winter. While his family looks around the hotel during closing day, the psychic hotel chef discovers the psychic abilities of Jack's son Danny, and Danny's ability to detect ghostly presences in the hotel. In the chef's family, this ability is called "shining". When the hotel becomes snowbound, Jack Torrance is driven mad by the ghosts in the hotel, and he tries to murder his wife and son.
Initial response to the film was mixed, and it performed moderately at the box office. Subsequent critical assessment of the film has been more favorable, and it is now viewed as a classic of the horror genre. The novel's author Stephen King had very conflicted feelings about it (see Reception and Comparison with the Book) which have oscillated over time. He produced a TV mini-series remake in 1997.
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Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) arrives at the Overlook Hotel for a job interview. Manager Stuart Ullmann (Barry Nelson) warns him that the previous caretaker got cabin fever and killed his family and himself during the long winter in which the hotel is entirely isolated. The hotel itself is built on the site of an Indian burial ground. Jack’s son Danny (Danny Lloyd) has had terrifying premonitions about the hotel. His mother, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), tells a visiting doctor about Danny's imaginary friend 'Tony', and that Jack, her husband, had given up drinking because he had physically abused Danny after a binge.
The family arrives at the hotel on closing day, and is given a tour. The elderly African-American chef, Dick Halloran (Scatman Crothers), surprises Danny by speaking to him telepathically and inviting him for an ice cream. He explains to Danny that he and his grandmother shared the gift; they called the communication "shining". Danny asks if there is anything to be afraid of in the hotel, particularly Room 237. Dick tells Danny that the hotel has a certain "shine" to it and many memories, not all of them good, and advises him to stay out of the hotel rooms.
A month goes by; Jack's writing project is going nowhere, Wendy is concerned about the phone lines being out due to the snow storm, and Danny is having more frightening visions. Jack tells Danny that he genuinely loves and cares for him, and that he would like to stay in the hotel forever.
Danny’s curiosity about Room 237 finally gets the better of him when he sees the room has been opened. Meanwhile, Jack confesses to Wendy that he's had a nightmare in which he killed her and Danny; immediately after this, Danny shows up injured and visibly traumatized. Wendy thinks Jack has been abusing Danny again. Jack wanders into the hotel’s Gold Room where he meets a ghostly bartender who serves him alcohol. Jack complains to the bartender about his difficulties in his relationship with Wendy. Wendy shows up and apologizes for accusing Jack, explaining that Danny told her a "crazy woman in Room 237" was responsible for his injuries.
In Florida, Dick Hallorann gets a premonition that something is wrong at the hotel. Jack investigates Room 237 and has an encounter with the ghost of a dead woman there, but tells Wendy he saw nothing. Wendy and Jack argue violently about whether Danny should be removed from the hotel, and Jack returns to the Gold Room, now filled with ghosts having a costume party. Here he meets the ghost of the previous caretaker, Delbert Grady (Philip Stone), who tells Jack that he has to ‘correct’ his wife and child.
Danny starts calling out the word “redrum” frantically, and scribbling it on walls. He goes into a trance, and withdraws; he now says that he is Tony, his own "imaginary friend." Jack sabotages the hotel radio, cutting off communication from the outside world, but Halloran has received Danny's telepathic cry for help and is on his way.
Wendy discovers that Jack has been typing endless pages of manuscript repeating “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” formatted in various ways. Horrified, she confronts Jack, he threatens her and she knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat, locking him in a storage locker in the kitchen, but Grady releases him.
Danny has written “Redrum” in lipstick on the door of Wendy’s bedroom. When she looks in the mirror, she sees that it is “Murder” spelled backwards. Jack picks up an axe and begins to chop through the door leading to his family's living quarters. In a frantic maneuver, Wendy sends Danny out through the bathroom window but Wendy can't escape the same way because the window sticks half-way. Jack then starts chopping the bathroom door down with the axe. When Jack has almost hacked his way through, he pushes his face into the splintered wood and calls "Here's Johnny!" with homicidal intent. [1] As Jack unlocks the door, Wendy swipes at his hand with a butcher knife; Jack backs off and starts prowling around the hotel. Hallorann enters, but is killed by Jack, who then chases Danny into the hedge maze. Danny manages to evade his father by walking backwards in his own tracks -- a trick formerly used by Native Americans. Wendy and Danny escape in Hallorann's vehicle, while Jack freezes to death in the hedge maze. The final shot of the movie is of an old photograph taken at the hotel on July 4, 1921 in which Jack Torrance is clearly visible while Midnight, the Stars and You[2] is being played through the hallways.
Filming took place at both Pinewood Studios and Elstree Studios in England. The set for the Overlook Hotel was then the largest ever built. It included a full recreation of the exterior of the hotel, as well as the interiors. A few exterior shots were done at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. They are noticeable because the hedge maze is missing. The interiors are based on those of the Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite National Park. The Timberline Lodge requested Kubrick change the sinister Room 217 of King's novel to 237, so customers would stay in their own room 217 fearlessly.
The massive set would be Kubrick's first use of the Steadicam. 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 too quickly. Kubrick did not include the topiary animals of King's books in the hedge maze, which come alive at the novel's end, due to a lack of interest in them and limitations of special effects. 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.
Jack's line, "Heeeere's Johnny!", is taken from the famous introduction for The Tonight Show host Johnny Carson, as spoken by Ed McMahon. The line was improvised by Nicholson. Carson later used the Nicholson clip to open his 1980 Anniversary Show on NBC.
The opening panorama shots (which were used by Ridley Scott for the closing moments of the original cut of the film Blade Runner) and scenes of the Volkswagen Beetle on the road to the hotel were filmed from a helicopter in Glacier National Park in Montana on the road North of St. Mary's Lake.
Stanley Kubrick allowed his then-17-year-old daughter, Vivian, to make a documentary about the production of The Shining. Created originally for the BBC television show 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 both DVD and the Blu-Ray disc releases of The Shining.
Kubrick's first choice for the role of Jack Torrance was always Jack Nicholson, but he did consider Robert De Niro (who claims the movie gave him nightmares for a month),[3] Robin Williams and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with Stephen King's disapproval.[4]
The film opened to mixed reviews, but did very well commercially with audiences and made Warner Brothers a profit. For example, Variety staff criticized Kubrick for destroying what was terrifying in Stephen King's novel.[5] As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction reviews the film more favorably. Film website Rotten Tomatoes, which compiles reviews from a wide range of critics, gives the film a score of 86%.[6]
Stephen King has been quoted as saying that although Kubrick made a solid film with memorable imagery it was not a good adaptation of his novel.[7] He thought that his novel's important themes, such as the disintegration of the family and the dangers of alcoholism, were ignored. Kubrick made other changes that King disparaged. King especially 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.
Roger Ebert's initial review of the film was unfavorable [8], but he later re-evaluated. In 2006 The Shining made it into Ebert's series of "Great Movie" reviews. There Ebert notes that whenever Jack sees spirits, a mirror is always present; thus, given the themes of madness and isolation, this suggests he may be speaking with himself. However, Ebert concludes that overall the film is ambiguous. [9]
That leaves us with a closed-room mystery: In a snowbound hotel, three people descend into versions of madness or psychic terror, and we cannot depend on any of them for an objective view of what happens. It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's film so strangely disturbing.
King finally supervised a television adaptation of his original novel in 1997, which received lukewarm reviews. The author's animosity toward Kubrick's version appears to have dulled a bit over the years; during an interview segment on the Bravo channel King admitted that the first time he watched Kubrick's adaptation he found it to be "dreadfully upsetting".
References in the form of both parodies and homages to The Shining are prominent in U.S. popular culture, particularly in movies, TV shows and other visual media, as well as music.[10][11][12][13] See "In popular culture" for more info.
Over the years the film has become widely regarded as one of the greatest films of the horror genre and a staple of pop culture. In 2001, the film was ranked 29th on AFI's 100 Years... 100 Thrills list and Jack Torrance was named the 25th greatest villain on the AFI's 100 Years... 100 Heroes and Villains list in 2003. It was named the all-time scariest film by Channel 4,[14] Total Film labeled it the 5th greatest horror film, [15] and Bravo TV named one of the film's scenes 6th on their list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. In addition, film critics Kim Newman[16] and Jonathan Romney[17] both placed it in their top ten lists for the 2002 Sight and Sound poll.
The film differs from the novel significantly with regard to characterization and motivation of the action. The most obvious differences are with regard to the personality of Jack Torrance, as these are the source of much of author Stephen King’s dissatisfaction with the film.[18][19][20]
The novel presents us with a Jack who is initially well-intentioned but is struggling with alcohol and has issues with resentment of authority. In spite of good intentions, he becomes gradually overwhelmed by the evil forces in the hotel, though near the end of the book he has a moment of recovered goodness, helping Wendy and Danny escape during a moment of recovered sanity.[21] The film’s Jack is established as a bit sinister much earlier in the story, and his final redemption never occurs. Furthermore, Jack actually kills Dick Hallorann in the film, but kills no one in the novel. King attempted to talk Stanley Kubrick out of casting Jack Nicholson even before filming began, on the grounds that the whole theme of an Everyman's slow descent into madness would be undercut by casting Nicholson, who had starred in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest a few years before. He suggested Jon Voight among others for the role. [22] [23] [24] Stephen King has openly stated on the DVD commentary of the 1997 mini-series of The Shining that the character of Jack Torrance was partially autobiographical, as he was struggling with both alcoholism and unprovoked rage towards his family at the time of writing. [25]
Writing in Hollywood's Stephen King, Tony Magistrale writes
Kubrick's version of Torrance is much closer to the tyrannical HAL [ from Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey ] and Alex [ from Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange ] than he is to King's more conflicted, more sympathetically human characterization. [26]
Jack's twin demons in the novel are alcoholism and authority-issues, but his demons in the film seem to be alcohol and severe writer's block, though some authority-issues on his part are implied indirectly.[27] The book gives more overt illustrations of Jack’s issues with authority that are absent from the film. In both versions, Jack hears the voices of previous tenants of the hotel, but only in the novel does Jack also hear the voice of his father who was a heavy-handedly authoritarian personality.[28] Similarly, though the film downplays the book's theme of Jack's authority issues, it gives indications of Jack's struggling with writer's block which he does not suffer from in the novel.[29]
The downplaying of the theme of Jack's issues with authority allows the film to alter the characters of Ullmann and Wendy. In the novel, Jack’s authority issues are triggered by the fact that his interviewer, Mr. Ullmann, is highly authoritarian, a kind of snobbish military martinet. The film’s Ullmann is far more humane and concerned about Jack’s well-being, as well as smooth and self-assured. Writing in Stanley Kubrick and the Art of Adaptation author Greg Jenkins writes "A toadish figure in the book, Ullman has been utterly reinvented for the film; he now radiates charm, grace, and gentility."[30] Only in the novel does Ullmann state that he disapproves of hiring Jack but higher authorities have asked that Jack be hired.[31] Especially notable is the film's omission of Ullmann mentioning that both the previous caretaker Grady who killed his family and Jack are alcoholics. In the book, Ullmann discusses Grady's history in an almost threatening way, whereas he does so in the film in a concerned way. [32]
Wendy's concern about Danny also triggers Jack's authority issues in the novel[33], while in the film he mainly finds her concerns irritating and hysterical.[34] Wendy Torrance in the film is relatively meek, submissive, passive, and mousy. In the book, she is a more self-reliant and independent personality who is tied to Jack in part by her poor relationship with her parents.[35] Writing in Hollywood's Stephen King author Tony Magistrale writes about the mini-series remake:
De Mornay restores much of the steely resilience found in the protagonist of King's novel, and this is particularly noteworthy when compared to Shelley Duvall's exaggerated portrayal of Wendy as Olive Oyl revisited: A simpering fatality of forces beyond her capacity to understand much less surmount. [36]
In the novel, the motivation of the ghosts to possess Jack Torrance is to get him to kill Danny so that as a ghost they will have access to Danny's "shining" ability, thus making the ghosts far more powerful. [37] In the film, the motive of the ghosts is ambiguous but seems to be to reclaim Jack Torrance who is apparently a reincarnation of a previous caretaker of the hotel.[38] Thus in the film Jack has been the focus of their attention all along rather than Danny.[39] This plot difference massively re-contextualizes the line “You’ve always been the caretaker” which in the novel is a lie told by the ghosts to bolster Jack’s ego[40], but may in some sense be literally true in the film.
Because of the limitations of special effects at the time, the living topiary animals were omitted and a hedge maze added. [41] [42] The hedge maze plays a crucial role in the film’s plot, acting as a final trap for Jack Torrance as well as a refuge for Danny.
Although Danny has supernatural powers in both versions, the book makes it clear that his apparent imaginary friend "Tony" really is a projection of hidden parts of his own psyche, though heavily amplified by Danny’s psychic “Shining” abilities. At the end it is revealed that Danny Torrance's middle name is "Anthony".[43] In the film, the status of Tony is unknown; he could be a separate entity. Only in the film does Danny describe “Tony” as “the little boy who lives in my mouth".
In the novel the Overlook hotel is completely destroyed by a fire caused by an exploding boiler, while the movie ends with the hotel still standing. More broadly, the defective boiler is a major subplot element of the novel which is entirely missing from the film.
More trivial differences include Jack’s choice of weapon (a roque mallet in the book, an axe in the movie) and the nature of Danny’s injury before the action of the story (a broken arm in the book and a dislocated shoulder in the movie).
Some of the film's most famous iconic scenes such as the ghost twins in the hallway [44] and the blood in the elevator shaft [45] are unique to the film. The most notable of these would be the “novel” that Wendy discovers in Jack’s typewriter.[46] Similarly, much of the film's most memorable lines of dialogue ("Words of wisdom" and "Here's Johnny!") are unique to the film.
Although Stephen King and King fans were critical of the book's adaptation on the grounds that Kubrick monolithically reduced the novel's themes, a defense of Kubrick's approach was published by Steve Biodrowski, a former editor of the print magazine Cinefantastique, in his online publication Hollywood Gothique.[47]. His review of the film is one of the few to go into detailed comparison with the book. At the beginning of his review he states
Widely reviled by Stephen King fans for abandoning much of the book (King himself said his feelings balanced out to zero), 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. The result ...[is] a brilliant, ambitious attempt to shoot a horror film without the Gothic trappings of shadows and cobwebs so often associated with the genre.
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' interpretation of the "Dies Irae", used in his "Symphonie Fantastique", 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, pieces were overdubbed on top of one another.[48]
Carlos and Elkind had composed a great deal of music for the film, with the expectation that it would be used. However, Kubrick decided to go with classical music from other sources, as he has done on previous occasions. Some of Carlos' unused music appears on her album Rediscovering Lost Scores, Vol. 2.
The non-original music on the soundtrack is as follows:
The stylistic contemporary art-music chosen by Kubrick is similar to the repertoire he first explored in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It is little known that, although the repertoire was selected by Kubrick, the process of matching passages of music to motion picture was left almost entirely at the discretion of music editor Gordon Stainforth, whose work on this film is notable for the attention to fine details, and remarkably precise synchronisation without excessive splicing. [49]
There are several versions of The Shining. After its premiere and a week into the general run (with a running time of 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. He explains that her husband's body could not be found, thus raising several questions and implications. 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.
As noted by Roger Ebert:
| “ | 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. | ” |
The European version runs for 119 minutes due to Kubrick personally cutting 24 minutes from the film as mentioned above.[50] The excised scenes made reference to the outside world.
The Shining has had an enormous influence on popular culture mostly in the form of having its most memorable scenes and iconic imagery imitated and parodied multiple times in many television shows, films and music videos.
A full list would be very long, but some of the most well-known include in television a The Simpsons episode called "The Shinning"[51] and two episodes of Family Guy called "Peter, Peter, Caviar Eater" and "PTV". Imitated scenes are the twin girls in the hallway[52], the usage of the word "Redrum" ("murder" spelled backwards)[53], the blood spilling out of the closed elevator doors[54] and Jack Torrance's sticking his head through the axe-hewn hole in the bathroom door leeringly saying "Here's Johnny".[55]
Two music videos imitate the entire plot of the film, "The Kill" by 30 Seconds to Mars and the Slipknot music video "Spit It Out".
One film homage in a major motion picture is in the tornado thriller Twister. In this film a drive-in movie theatre is showing The Shining. The famous "Here's Johnny!" scene is projected at the drive-in theater just before the tornado rips away the outdoor movie-screen altogether.
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