The Shining
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by	Stanley Kubrick Diane Johnson
Based on	The Shining by Stephen King
Produced by	Stanley Kubrick
Starring	Jack Nicholson Shelley Duvall Scatman Crothers Danny Lloyd
Cinematography	John Alcott
Edited by	Ray Lovejoy
Music by	Wendy Carlos Rachel Elkind
Production companies	The Producer Circle Company Peregrine Productions Hawk Films
Distributed by	Warner Bros. (through Columbia-EMI-Warner Distributors in the United Kingdom)[1]
Release dates	May 23, 1980 (1980-05-23) (United States)[2] October 2, 1980 (1980-10-02) (United Kingdom)[3]
Running time	146 minutes (premiere) 144 minutes (American)[1] 119 minutes (European)[4]
Countries	United States[5] United Kingdom[5]
Language	English
Budget	$19 million[6]
Box office	$47.3 million[6]

The Shining is a 1980 psychological horror film^[7] produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson. It is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel of the same name and stars Jack Nicholson, Danny Lloyd, Shelley Duvall, and Scatman Crothers. Nicholson plays Jack Torrance, a writer and recovering alcoholic who accepts a new position as the off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel. Lloyd plays his young son Danny, who has psychic abilities ("the shining"), which he learns about from head chef Dick Hallorann (Crothers). Danny's imaginary friend Tony warns him the hotel is haunted before a winter storm leaves the family snowbound in the Colorado Rockies. Jack's sanity deteriorates under the influence of the hotel and the residents, and Danny and his mother Wendy (Duvall) face mortal danger.

Production took place almost exclusively at EMI Elstree Studios, with sets based on real locations. Kubrick often worked with a small crew, which allowed him to do many takes, sometimes to the exhaustion of the actors and staff. The new Steadicam mount was used to shoot several scenes, giving the film an innovative and immersive look and feel.

The film was released in the United States on May 23, 1980, and in the United Kingdom on October 2 by Warner Bros. There were several versions for theatrical releases, each of which was cut shorter than the preceding cut; about 27 minutes was cut in total. Reactions to the film at the time of its release were mixed; Stephen King criticized the film due to its deviations from the novel. The film received two controversial nominations at the first Razzies in 1981—Worst Director and Worst Actress—the latter of which was later rescinded in 2022 due to Kubrick's treatment of Duvall on set. Critical response to the film has since become favorable.

Frequently cited as one of the best horror films of all time, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" in 2018.^[8] A sequel titled Doctor Sleep based on King's 2013 novel of the same name was adapted to film and released in 2019.

Plot

Jack Torrance takes a winter caretaker position at the remote Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rocky Mountains, which closes every winter season. After his arrival, manager Stuart Ullman advises Jack that a previous caretaker, Charles Grady, killed his wife, two young daughters and himself in the hotel a decade prior.

In Boulder, Jack's son, Danny, has a premonition and seizure. Jack's wife, Wendy, tells the doctor about a past incident when Jack accidentally dislocated Danny's shoulder during a drunken rage. Jack has been sober ever since. Before leaving for the seasonal break, the Overlook's head chef, Dick Hallorann, informs Danny of a telepathic ability the two share, which he calls "shining". Hallorann tells Danny that the hotel also has a "shine", due to residue from unpleasant past events, and warns him to avoid Room 237.

A month passes and Danny starts having frightening visions, including of the murdered Grady twins. Meanwhile, Jack's mental health deteriorates; he suffers from writer's block, is prone to violent outbursts, and has dreams of killing his family. Danny gets lured to room 237 by unseen forces, and Wendy later finds him with signs of physical trauma. Jack investigates and encounters a female ghost in the room but blames Danny for inflicting the bruises on himself. Jack is enticed back to drinking by the ghostly bartender Lloyd. Ghostly figures, including Delbert Grady, then begin appearing in the Gold Room. Grady informs Jack that Danny has telepathically contacted Hallorann for assistance and says that Jack must "correct" his wife and child.

Wendy finds Jack's manuscript written with nothing but countless repetitions of "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy". When Jack threatens her life, Wendy knocks him unconscious with a baseball bat and locks him in the kitchen pantry, but she and Danny cannot leave, due to Jack having previously sabotaged the hotel's two-way radio and snowcat. Back in their hotel room, Danny says "redrum" repeatedly and writes the word in lipstick on the bathroom door. Wendy sees the word in the mirror and realizes that it is actually "murder" spelled backward.

Jack is freed by Grady and goes after Wendy and Danny with an axe. Danny escapes outside through the bathroom window, and Wendy fights Jack off with a knife when he tries to break through the door. Hallorann, having flown back to Colorado from his Florida vacation to respond to Danny's telepathic SOS, reaches the hotel in another snowcat. His arrival distracts Jack, who ambushes and murders him in the lobby, then pursues Danny into the hedge maze. Wendy runs through the hotel looking for Danny, encountering the hotel's ghosts and a vision of cascading blood similar to Danny's premonition.

In the hedge maze, Danny misleads Jack and hides behind a snowdrift while Jack follows a false trail. Danny and Wendy reunite and leave in Hallorann's snowcat, leaving Jack to freeze to death in the maze.

In a photograph in the hotel hallway, Jack is pictured standing amidst a crowd of party revelers from July 4, 1921.

Cast

In the European cut, all of the scenes involving Jackson and Burton were removed but the credits remained unchanged. Dennen is on-screen in all versions of the film, albeit to a limited degree (and with no dialogue) in the European cut.

The actresses who played the ghosts of the murdered Grady daughters, Lisa and Louise Burns, are identical twins.^[9] The characters in the book and film script are merely sisters, not twins. In the film's dialogue, Ullman says that he thinks that they were "about eight and ten". Nonetheless, they are frequently referred to in discussions about the film as "the Grady twins".

The resemblance in the staging of the Grady girls and the "Twins" photograph by Diane Arbus has been noted by Arbus' biographer, Patricia Bosworth,^[10] the Kubrick assistant who cast and coached them, Leon Vitali,^[11] and by numerous Kubrick critics.^[12][13] Although Kubrick both met Arbus personally and studied photography under her during his time as photographer for Look magazine, Kubrick's widow says he did not deliberately model the Grady girls on Arbus' photograph, in spite of widespread attention to the resemblance.^[12]

Production

Genesis

Before making The Shining, Kubrick directed the film Barry Lyndon (1975), a highly visual period film about an Irishman who attempts to make his way into the British aristocracy. Despite its technical achievements, the film was not a box-office success in the United States and was derided by critics for being too long and too slow. Kubrick, disappointed with Barry Lyndon's lack of success, realized he needed to make a film that would be commercially viable as well as artistically fulfilling. Stephen King was told that Kubrick had his staff bring him stacks of horror books as he planted himself in his office to read them all: "Kubrick's secretary heard the sound of each book hitting the wall as the director flung it into a reject pile after reading the first few pages. Finally, one day the secretary noticed it had been a while since she had heard the thud of another writer's work biting the dust. She walked in to check on her boss and found Kubrick deeply engrossed in reading a copy of the manuscript of The Shining".^[14]

Speaking about the theme of the film, Kubrick stated that "there's something inherently wrong with the human personality. There's an evil side to it. One of the things that horror stories can do is to show us the archetypes of the unconscious; we can see the dark side without having to confront it directly".^[15]

Casting

Nicholson was Kubrick's first choice for the role of Jack Torrance; other actors considered included Robert De Niro (who said the film gave him nightmares for a month),^[16] Robin Williams, and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with Stephen King's disapproval.^[17] Kris Kristofferson was Kubrick's backup choice if Nicholson had declined.^[18] King, for his part, disavowed Nicholson because he thought that, since his part in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the viewer would tend to consider him an unstable individual from the beginning. For this reason, King preferred Jon Voight, Michael Moriarty, or Martin Sheen for the role, who would more faithfully represent the profile of the ordinary individual who is gradually driven to madness.^[19][20] In any case, from the beginning the writer was told that the actor for the lead role "was not negotiable."^[21][22]

Although Nicholson initially suggested that Jessica Lange would be a better fit for the role of Wendy,^[23] Shelley Duvall knew early that she was the one cast for the role (Nicholson would work with Lange on his next movie, The Postman Always Rings Twice). Wendy's character in the film differs notably, appearing less capable and more vulnerable than the novel. Throughout the filming Kubrick pushed Duvall hard; it is said that the scene in which, armed with the baseball bat, she walks backward up the stairs before the attack of her husband (one of the most reshot scenes in all of cinema), she was not representing a terrified woman; Shelley was literally "terrified".^{[24][25][26][27]} According to The Guinness Book of Records, Kubrick demanded the shot be repeated 127 times.^[28]

Slim Pickens was offered the role of Dick Hallorann, and told Kubrick that he would take the role only if his scenes in the film were shot in fewer than 100 takes. Kubrick declined, and Scatman Crothers got the part after he had been suggested by Pickens's agent.^[29]

The director's initial candidate to play the Torrances' son was Cary Guffey (Close Encounters of the Third Kind), but the young actor's parents refused, claiming that the film was too gruesome for a child. In his search to find the right actor to play Danny, Kubrick sent a husband-and-wife team, Leon (who portrayed Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon) and Kersti Vitali, to Chicago, Denver, and Cincinnati to create an interview pool of 5,000 boys over a six-month period. These cities were chosen since Kubrick was looking for a boy with an accent that fell between Jack Nicholson's and Shelley Duvall's speech patterns, with Nicholson coming from New Jersey and Duvall from Texas.^[30] During the filming, the young actor selected, Danny Lloyd, was protected in a special way by Kubrick; the boy believed at all times that he was shooting a drama, not a horror movie. Following his role in the 1982 film Will: G. Gordon Liddy, Lloyd abandoned his acting career.^[31][32]

Filming

Main photography began in May 1978 and wrapped in July 1979, it took place mainly in Elstree Studios, in southern England.

Interior sets

Having chosen King's novel as a basis for his next project, and after a pre-production phase, Kubrick had sets constructed on soundstages at EMI Elstree Studios in Borehamwood, Hertfordshire, England. Some of the interior designs of the Overlook Hotel set were based on those of the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park. To enable him to shoot the scenes in loose chronological order, he used several stages at EMI Elstree Studios in order to make all sets available during the complete duration of production. The set for the Overlook Hotel was at the time the largest ever built at Elstree, including a life-size re-creation of the exterior of the hotel.^[33] In February 1979, the Colorado Lounge set at Elstree was badly damaged in a fire, causing a delay in the production.^[34][35][36]

Exterior locations

While most of the film was shot on interior sets and the full-scale exterior facade replica at Elstree Studios, a second-unit crew headed by Jan Harlan shot some sequences on location in the American West. Saint Mary Lake and its Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park, Montana were featured in the aerial shots of the opening scenes, with the Volkswagen Beetle driving along Going-to-the-Sun Road. The Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon was filmed for a few of the establishing shots of the fictional Overlook Hotel; absent in these shots is the hedge maze, which the real Timberline Lodge does not have. The Ahwahnee Hotel (the Overlook Hotel's main interior reference) and the Timberline Lodge (the hotel's main exterior) were both designed by architect Gilbert Stanley Underwood, in the 1920s and 1930s respectively.^[37]

Outtakes of the opening panorama shots were later used by Ridley Scott for the closing moments of the original cut of the film Blade Runner (1982).^[38]

Writing

In 1977, a Warner Bros. executive, John Calley, sent Kubrick the proofs of what would become the novel.^[39] Its author, Stephen King, was already at that time a best-selling author who, after the blockbuster of Carrie, could boast of successes in adaptations for the big screen. For his part, Kubrick had been considering directing a horror film for some time; a few years before, while Barry Lyndon disappointed at the box office,^[40] another Warner film he had refused to direct, The Exorcist,^[41] directed by William Friedkin, was breaking box office records around the world.

Asked what it was that attracted Kubrick to the idea of adapting the novel by the popular writer, a regular on the best-seller lists, his executive producer (and brother-in-law) Jan Harlan revealed that Kubrick wanted to "try" in this film genre, although with the condition of being able to change King's novel. And that condition would finally be guaranteed by contract.^[42]

The script was written by the director himself with the collaboration of novelist Diane Johnson. Kubrick had rejected the initial version of the draft, written by King, as too literal an adaptation of the novel.^[43][44] Furthermore, the filmmaker did not believe in ghost stories because that "would imply the possibility that there was something after death," and he did not believe there was anything, "not even hell." Instead, Johnson, who was teaching a Gothic novel seminar at the University of California at Berkeley at the time, seemed like a better fit for the project.^[45] Shortly after the premiere, in an interview with the Parisian magazine Positif, she stated:

Among us, The Shining (the novel) is not part of great literature. It is scary, it is effective and it works, without further ado ... But it is precisely interesting to see how a very bad book can also be very effective.-  ... It's quite pretentious. But it is also true that one has less scruples when destroying it: one is aware that a great work of art is not being destroyed.^[46]

Kubrick, for his part, was more enthusiastic about the possibilities of the manuscript:

It was the first time that I had read to the end a novel that was sent to me with a view to a possible film adaptation. I was absorbed in its reading and it seemed to me that its plot, ideas and structure were much more imaginative than usual in the horror genre; I thought that a great movie could come from there.^[47]

Photography

The Shining had a very prolonged and arduous production period, often with very long workdays. Principal photography took over a year to complete, due to Kubrick's highly methodical nature. Actress Shelley Duvall did not get along with Kubrick, frequently arguing with him on set about lines in the script and her acting techniques. She eventually became so overwhelmed by the stress of her role that she became physically ill for months. ^{[citation needed]} At one point, she was under so much stress that her hair began to fall out. ^{[citation needed]} The shooting script was being changed constantly, sometimes several times a day, adding more stress. Nicholson eventually became so frustrated with the ever-changing script that he would throw away the copies that the production team had given him to memorize, knowing that it was going to change anyway. ^{[citation needed]} He learned most of his lines just minutes before filming them. ^{[citation needed]} Nicholson was living in London with his then-girlfriend Anjelica Huston and her younger sister, Allegra, who testified to his long shooting days.^[48] Joe Turkel stated in a 2014 interview that they rehearsed the "bar scene" for six weeks and that the shoot day lasted from 9 a.m. to 10:30 p.m., with Turkel recollecting that his clothes were soaked in perspiration by the end of the day's shoot. He also described it as his favorite scene in the film.^[49]

For the final Gold Room sequence, Kubrick instructed the extras (via megaphone) not to talk, "but to mime conversation to each other. Kubrick knew from years of scrutinizing thousands of films that extras could often mime their business by nodding and using large gestures that look fake. He told them to act naturally to give the scene a chilling sense of time-tripping realism as Jack walks from the seventies into the roaring twenties".^[50]

For the international versions of the film, Kubrick shot different takes of Wendy reading the typewriter pages containing "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" in different languages. For each language, a suitable idiom was used: 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 l'oro 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 it'", the equivalent of "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush"), Spanish (No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano / "No matter how early you get up, you can't make the sun rise any sooner.")^[51]

The door that Jack chops through with the axe near the end of the film was real; Kubrick originally shot this scene with a fake door, but Nicholson, who had worked as a volunteer fire marshal and a firefighter in the California Air National Guard,^[52] tore through it too quickly. Jack's line, "Heeeere's Johnny!", is taken from Ed McMahon's 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.^[53]

During production, Kubrick screened David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977) to the cast and crew, to convey the mood he wanted to achieve for the film.^[54]

Steadicam

The Shining was among the early half-dozen films (after the films Bound for Glory, Marathon Man, and Rocky, all released in 1976), to use the newly developed Steadicam,^[55][56] a stabilizing mount for a motion picture camera, which mechanically separates the operator's movement from the camera's, allowing smooth tracking shots while the operator is moving over an uneven surface. It essentially combines the stabilized steady footage of a regular mount with the fluidity and flexibility of a handheld camera. The inventor of the Steadicam, Garrett Brown, was heavily involved with the production of The Shining. Brown has described his excitement taking his first tour of the sets, which offered "further possibilities for the Steadicam". This tour convinced Brown to become personally involved with the production. Kubrick was not "just talking of stunt shots and staircases". Rather he would use the Steadicam "as it was intended to be used — as a tool which can help get the lens where it's wanted in space and time without the classic limitations of the dolly and crane". Brown used an 18 mm Cooke lens that allowed the Steadicam to pass within an inch of walls and door frames.^[57] Brown published an article in American Cinematographer about his experience,^[58] and contributed to the audio commentary on the 2007 DVD release.

Kubrick personally aided in modifying the Steadicam's video transmission technology. Brown states his own abilities to operate the Steadicam were refined by working on Kubrick's film. For this film, Brown developed a two-handed technique, which enabled him to maintain the camera at one height while panning and tilting the camera. In addition to tracking shots from behind, the Steadicam enabled shooting in constricted rooms without flying out walls, or backing the camera into doors.^[58] Brown notes that:

One of the most talked-about shots in the picture is the eerie tracking sequence which follows Danny as he pedals at high speed through corridor after corridor on his plastic Big Wheel tricycle. The soundtrack explodes with noise when the wheel is on wooden flooring and is abruptly silent as it crosses over carpet. We needed to have the lens just a few inches from the floor and to travel rapidly just behind or ahead of the bike.^[58]

This required the Steadicam to be on a special mount resembling a wheelchair, in which the operator sat while pulling a platform with the sound man. The weight of the rig and its occupants proved to be too much for the original tires, resulting in a blowout one day that almost caused a serious crash. Solid tires were then mounted on the rig. Kubrick also had a highly accurate speedometer mounted on the rig so as to duplicate the exact tempo of a given shot so that Brown could perform successive identical takes.^[59] Brown also discusses how the scenes in the hedge maze were shot with a Steadicam.^[58]

Music and soundtrack

The stylistically modernist art-music chosen by Kubrick is similar to the repertoire he first explored in 2001: A Space Odyssey. 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 known for attention to fine details and remarkably precise synchronization without excessive splicing.^[60]

The soundtrack album on LP was withdrawn due to problems with licensing of the music.^[61][62] The LP soundtrack omits some pieces heard in the film, and also includes complete versions of pieces of which only fragments are heard in the film.

The non-original music on the soundtrack is as follows:^[63]

1. Dies Irae segment from "Symphonie fantastique" by Hector Berlioz, performed by Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind
2. "Lontano" by György Ligeti, Ernest Bour conducting the Southwest German Radio Symphony Orchestra (Wergo Records)
3. "Music for Strings, Percussion and Celesta" by Béla Bartók, Herbert von Karajan conducting the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra (Deutsche Grammophon)
4. "Utrenja" – excerpts from the "Ewangelia" and "Kanon Paschalny II" movements by Krzysztof Penderecki, Andrzej Markowski conducting the Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra (Polskie Nagrania Records)
5. "The Awakening of Jacob", "De Natura Sonoris No. 1" (the latter not on the soundtrack album, Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyż) and "De Natura Sonoris No. 2" by Krzysztof Penderecki (Warsaw National Philharmonic Orchestra, conducted by Andrzej Markowski, Polskie Nagrania Records)
6. "Home", performed by Henry Hall and the Gleneagles Hotel Band. By permission of Decca Record Co. Remaster by Keith Gooden & Geoff Milne, 1977. (Decca DDV 5001/2)
7. "Midnight, the Stars and You" by Harry M. Woods, Jimmy Campbell, and Reg Connelly, performed by Ray Noble and his Orchestra, vocalist Al Bowlly

Segments that didn't appear on the soundtrack album also include:

1. "It's All Forgotten Now" by Ray Noble, performed by Noble and his Orchestra
2. "Masquerade", performed by Jack Hylton and his Orchestra
3. "Kanon" (for string orchestra) by Krzysztof Penderecki
4. "Polymorphia" (for string orchestra) by Krzysztof Penderecki, Cracow Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Henryk Czyż

Upon their arrival at Elstree Studios, Wendy Carlos and Rachel Elkind were shown the first version of the film by Kubrick: "The film was a little on the long side. There were great gobs of scenes that never made it to the film. There was a whole strange and mystical scene in which Jack Nicholson discovers objects that have been arranged in his working space in the ballroom with arrows and things. He walks down and thinks he hears a voice and a ghost throws a ball back to him. None of that made it to the final film. We scored a lot of those. We didn't know what was going to be used for sure".^[64] After having something similar happen to her on Clockwork Orange, Carlos has said that she was so disillusioned by Kubrick's actions that she vowed never to work with him again. She and Elkind had considered legal action against Kubrick, but because no formal contract was in place, they reluctantly accepted the situation. Carlos's own music was released in its near entirety in 2005 as part of her Rediscovering Lost Scores compilation.^[65]

Release

Unlike Kubrick's previous works, which developed audiences gradually through word-of-mouth, The Shining initially opened on 10 screens in New York City and Los Angeles on the Memorial Day weekend, then was released as a mass-market film nationwide within a month.^[66][67][68] The European release of The Shining a few months later was 25 minutes shorter due to Kubrick's removal of most of the scenes taking place outside the environs of the hotel.

Post-release edit

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 shows Wendy in a bed talking with Mr. Ullman, who explains that Jack's body could not be found; he then gives Danny a yellow tennis ball, presumably the same one that Jack was throwing around the hotel. 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 cut the film's running time to 144 minutes. Roger Ebert commented:

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.^[69]

The general consensus among those who saw the first few shows was that the film was better without it because keeping it would weaken the Overlook's threat to the family and reintroduce Ullman, who had barely had a leading role in the story, into the conflict.^[70] Co-writer Diane Johnson revealed that Kubrick had a certain "compassion" from the beginning for the fate of Wendy and Danny, and in that sense the hospital scene would give a sense of a return to normality. Johnson, on the other hand, was in favor of a more tragic outcome: she even proposed the death of Danny Torrance. For Shelley Duvall, "Kubrick was wrong, because the scene explained some important things, such as the meaning of the yellow ball and the role that the hotel manager played in the intrigue."^[70] Kubrick decided that the film worked better without the scene.^[71]

European version

For its release in Europe, Kubrick cut about 25 minutes from the film.^[72][73][74] The excised scenes included: a longer meeting between Jack and Watson at the hotel; Danny being attended by a doctor (Anne Jackson), including references to Tony and how Jack once injured Danny in a drunken rage; more footage of Hallorann's attempts to get to the hotel during the snowstorm, including a sequence with a garage attendant (Tony Burton); extended dialogue scenes at the hotel; and a scene where Wendy discovers a group of skeletons in the hotel lobby during the climax. Jackson and Burton are credited in the European print, despite their scenes having been excised from the movie. According to Harlan, Kubrick decided to cut some sequences because the film was "not very well received", and also after Warner Brothers had complained about its ambiguity and length.^[75]

The scene when Jack writes obsessively on the typewriter "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" was re-shot a number of times, but changing the language of the typed copy to Italian, French, Spanish, and German, in order to match the respective dubbed languages.^[51]

Three alternative takes were used in a British television commercial.^[76]

Home media

The U.S. network television premiere of The Shining (on ABC's Friday Night Movie of May 6, 1983)^[77] started with a placard saying, "Tonight's Film Deals With the Supernatural, As a Possessed Man Attempts to Destroy His Family."^[78] With the movie's ambiguities, it is not known how Kubrick felt about or if he agreed with this proclamation. The placard also said that the film was edited for television and warned about the content.^[76]

DVDs in both regions contain a candid fly-on-the-wall 33-minute documentary made by Kubrick's daughter Vivian (who was 17 when she filmed it) entitled Making The Shining, originally shown on British television in 1980. She also provided an audio commentary track about her documentary for its DVD release. It appears even on pre-2007 editions of The Shining on DVD, although most DVDs of Kubrick films before then were devoid of documentaries or audio commentaries. It has some candid interviews and very private moments caught on set, such as arguments with cast and director, moments of a no-nonsense Kubrick directing his actors, Scatman Crothers being overwhelmed with emotion during his interview, Shelley Duvall collapsing from exhaustion on the set, and Jack Nicholson enjoying playing up to the behind-the-scenes camera.^[79]

In May 2019, it was announced that the film would be released on Ultra HD Blu-ray in October. The release includes a 4K remaster using a 4K scan of the original 35 mm negative. Filmmaker Steven Spielberg and Kubrick's former personal assistant Leon Vitali closely assisted Warner Bros. in the mastering process. This is the same cut and 4K restoration that was screened at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. According to the official press release, the official full-length run-time is 146 minutes.^[80]

Ad campaigns

Various theatrical posters were used during the original 1980–1981 international release cycle,^{[81][82][83][84][85]} but in the U.S., where the film first opened, the primary poster and newspaper advert was designed by noted Hollywood graphic designer Saul Bass.^{[82][86][87][88][89][90]} Bass and Kubrick reportedly went through over 300 potential designs before settling on the final design of an unsettling, angry-looking, underlit, pointillistic doll-like face (which does not appear in the film) peering through the letters "The", with "SHiNiNG" below, in smaller letters. At the top of the poster are the words "A MASTERPIECE OF MODERN HORROR", with the credits and other information at the bottom.^[82][89][90]

The correspondence between the two men during the design process survives, including Kubrick's handwritten critiques on Bass's different proposed designs. Bass originally intended the poster to be black on a red background, but Kubrick, to Bass's dismay, chose to make the background yellow. In response, Bass commissioned a small, silkscreened print run of his original version, which also lacks the "masterpiece of modern horror" slogan, and has the credits in a compact white block at the bottom.^[82][89][90]

4K version

Turner Classic Movies and Fathom Events had a limited screening in October 2016 in 2K and 4K resolution.^[91]

In April 2019, a 4K resolution remastered version from a new scan of the original 35 mm camera negative of the film was selected to be shown in the Cannes Classics section at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival. The length is listed as 146 minutes^[92] and 143 minutes.^[93]

Reception

Box office

The Shining opened on the same weekend as The Empire Strikes Back but was released on 10 screens and grossed $622,337 for the four-day weekend, the third highest-grossing opening weekend from fewer than 50 screens of all time, behind Star Wars (1977) and The Rose (1979).^[67] It had a per-screen average gross of $62,234 compared to $50,919 for The Empire Strikes Back from 126 screens.^[94]

Initial reviews

The film had mixed reviews at the time of its opening in the United States.^[95] Janet Maslin of The New York Times lauded Nicholson's performance and praised the Overlook Hotel as an effective setting for horror, but wrote that "the supernatural story knows frustratingly little rhyme or reason ... Even the film's most startling horrific images seem overbearing and perhaps even irrelevant."^[96] Variety was critical, stating "With everything to work with ... Kubrick has teamed with jumpy Jack Nicholson to destroy all that was so terrifying about Stephen King's bestseller."^[97] A common initial criticism was the slow pacing, which was highly atypical of horror films of the time.^[98] Neither Gene Siskel nor Roger Ebert reviewed the film on their television show Sneak Previews when it was first released,^[99] but in his review for the Chicago Sun-Times, Ebert complained that it was hard to connect with any of the characters.^[100] In his Chicago Tribune review, Siskel gave the film two stars out of four and called it "a crashing disappointment. The biggest surprise is that it contains virtually no thrills. Given Kubrick's world-class reputation, one's immediate reaction is that maybe he was after something other than thrills in the film. If so, it's hard to figure out what."^[101] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times wrote "There are moments so visually stunning only a Kubrick could pull them off, yet the film is too grandiose to be the jolter that horror pictures are expected to be. Both those expecting significance from Kubrick and those merely looking for a good scare may be equally disappointed."^[102] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker stated "Again and again, the movie leads us to expect something – almost promises it – and then disappoints us."^[103] Gary Arnold of The Washington Post wrote "Stanley Kubrick's production of The Shining, a ponderous, lackluster distillation of Stephen King's best-selling novel, looms as the Big Letdown of the new film season. I can't recall a more elaborately ineffective scare movie."^[104] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic described The Shining as 'laborious filmmaking' and 'a grab bag of spook stuff, with no rhyme or reason of its own' and that Nicholson's 'mouthy work here makes the late Bela Lugosi look conservative'.^[105]

It was one of only two films of Kubrick's last eleven films, the other being Eyes Wide Shut, to receive no nominations from the BAFTAs. It was the only one of Kubrick's last nine films to receive no nominations from either the Oscars or Golden Globes. Instead, it was Kubrick's only film to be nominated at the Razzie Awards, including Worst Director and Worst Actress (Duvall),^[106] in the first year that award was given.^{[107][108][109]} These nominations, especially Duvall's, have provoked backlash and controversy for years,^{[110][111][112]} with Razzies founder John J. B. Wilson defending his choice claiming he expected the adaptation to be more similar to the book,^[113] and Duvall's nomination was retracted by the Razzie committee on March 31, 2022, stating that she did not deserve it due to the "extenuating circumstances" of Kubrick's treatment of her.^[114] Vincent Misiano's review in Ares magazine concluded: "The Shining lays open to view all the devices of horror and suspense – endless eerie music, odd camera angles, a soundtrack of interminably pounding heart, hatchets and hunts. The result is shallow, self-conscious and dull. Read the book."^[115]

Reappraisal

According to Rotten Tomatoes, 83% of 105 critics gave the film a positive review, with an average rating of 8.6/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Though it deviates from Stephen King's novel, Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is a chilling, often baroque journey into madness — exemplified by an unforgettable turn from Jack Nicholson."^[116] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 68 out of 100 based on reviews from 26 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".^[117] Tim Cahill of Rolling Stone noted in an interview with Kubrick that by 1987 there was already a "critical re-evaluation of in process".^[118]

In 2001, the film was ranked 29th on AFI's 100 Years...100 Thrills list^[119] and Jack Torrance was named the 25th greatest villain on the AFI's 100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains list in 2003.^[120] In 2005, the quote "Here's Johnny!" was ranked 68 on AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes list.^[121] It had Channel 4's all-time scariest moment,^[122] and Bravo TV named one of the film's scenes sixth on their list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Film critics Kim Newman and Jonathan Romney both placed it in their top ten lists for the 2002 Sight & Sound poll. In 2005, Total Film ranked The Shining as the 5th-greatest horror film of all time.^[123] In 2012, Sight & Sound directors' poll ranked it the 75th greatest film of all time.^[124] Director Martin Scorsese placed it on his list of the 11 scariest horror films of all time.^[125] Mathematicians at King's College London (KCL) used statistical modeling in a study commissioned by Sky Movies to conclude that The Shining was the "perfect scary movie" due to a proper balance of various ingredients including shock value, suspense, gore and size of the cast.^[126] In 2010, The Guardian newspaper ranked it as the 5th "best horror film of all time".^[127] It was voted the 62nd greatest American film ever made in a 2015 poll conducted by BBC.^[128] In 2017, Empire magazine's readers' poll ranked the film at No. 35 on its list of "The 100 Greatest Movies", and in 2023 Empire also ranked it No. 1 on its list of "The 50 Best Horror Movies".^[129][130] In 2021, The film was ranked at No. 2 by Time Out on their list of "The 100 best horror movies".^[131] Critics, scholars, and crew members (such as Kubrick's producer Jan Harlan) have discussed the film's enormous influence on popular culture.^{[132][133][134]} In 2006, Roger Ebert, who was initially critical of the work, inducted the film into his Great Movies series, saying "Stanley Kubrick's cold and frightening The Shining challenges us to decide: Who is the reliable observer? Whose idea of events can we trust? ... It is this elusive open-endedness that makes Kubrick's film so strangely disturbing."^[69]

While Duvall's performance was originally nominated for a Razzie, Razzies co-founder Maureen Murphy stated in 2022 that she regretted giving Duvall the Worst Actress nomination.^[135][136] On March 31, 2022, the Razzie committee officially rescinded Duvall's nomination, stating "We have since discovered that Duvall's performance was impacted by Stanley Kubrick's treatment of her throughout the production."^[114] The retraction of the nomination was in response to public backlash The Razzies received after refusing to retract Bruce Willis's win for "Worst Bruce Willis Performance in a 2021 Movie", a one-off award for his roles in eight films released that calendar year.^[137] Willis's family announced the star's retirement after being diagnosed with aphasia, a cognitive brain condition, on March 30, 2022.^[138] The Razzie committee retracted both Willis's win and Duvall's nomination the following day.^[114] On Duvall's performance, Vulture magazine wrote in 2019: "looking into Duvall's huge eyes from the front row of a theater, I found myself riveted by a very poignant form of fear. Not the fear of an actor out of her element, or the more mundane fear of a victim being chased around by an ax-wielding maniac. Rather, it was something far more disquieting, and familiar: the fear of a wife who's experienced her husband at his worst, and is terrified that she'll experience it again."^[139] Media site Screen Rant described Duvall as "the heart of the film; she is out of her depth in dealing with her husband's looming insanity while trying to protect her young son, all while being fearful of the malevolence around her."^[140]

Horror film critic Peter Bracke, reviewing the Blu-ray release in High-Def Digest, wrote:

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.^[98]

In 1999, Jonathan Romney discussed Kubrick's perfectionism and dispelled others' initial arguments that the film lacked complexity: "The final scene alone demonstrates what a rich source of perplexity The Shining offers ... look beyond the simplicity and the Overlook reveals itself as a palace of paradox". Romney further explains:

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 scène. It's a real, complex space that we don't just see but come to virtually inhabit. The confinement is palpable: horror 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 ... 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.^[141]

Response by Stephen Kingedit

Stephen King has been quoted as saying that although Kubrick made a film with memorable imagery, it was poor as an adaptation^[142] and that it is the only adaptation of his novels that he could "remember hating".^[143] In his 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre, he noted that Kubrick was among those "filmmakers whose particular visions are so clear and fierce that ... fear of failure never becomes a factor in the equation," commenting that "even when a director such as Stanley Kubrick makes such a maddening, perverse, and disappointing film as The Shining, it somehow retains a brilliance that is inarguable; it is simply there," and listed Kubrick's film among those he considered to have "contributed something of value to the horror genre."^[144] Before the 1980 film, King often said he gave little attention to the film adaptations of his work.^[145]

The novel, written while King was suffering from alcoholism, contains an autobiographical element. King expressed disappointment that some themes, such as the disintegration of family and the dangers of alcoholism, are less present in the film. King also viewed the casting of Nicholson as a mistake, arguing it would result in a rapid realization among audiences that Jack would go insane, due to Nicholson's famous role as Randle McMurphy in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975). King had suggested that a more "everyman" actor such as Jon Voight, Christopher Reeve, or Michael Moriarty play the role, so that Jack's descent into madness would be more unnerving.^[145] In the novel, the story takes the child's point of view, while in the film the father is the main character; in fact, one of the most notable differences lies in Jack Torrance's psychological profile. According to the novel, the character represented an ordinary and balanced man who little by little loses control; furthermore, the written narration reflected personal traits of the author himself at that time (marked by insomnia and alcoholism), in addition to abuse. There is some allusion to these episodes in the American version of the film.

In an interview with the BBC, King criticized Duvall's character, stating that she is "basically just there to scream and be stupid, and that's not the woman that I wrote about."^[146] King's Wendy is a strong and independent woman on a professional and emotional level; to Kubrick, on the other hand, it did not seem consistent that such a woman had long endured the personality of Jack Torrance.^[45]

King once suggested that he disliked the film's downplaying of the supernatural; King had envisioned Jack as a victim of the genuinely external forces haunting the hotel, whereas King felt Kubrick had viewed the haunting and its resulting malignancy as coming from within Jack himself.^[147] In October 2013, journalist Laura Miller wrote that the discrepancy between the two was almost the complete opposite:^[148]

King is, essentially, a novelist of morality. The decisions his characters make – whether it's to confront a pack of vampires or to break 10 years of sobriety – are what matter to him. But in Kubrick's The Shining, the characters are largely in the grip of forces beyond their control. It's a film in which domestic violence occurs, while King's novel is about domestic violence as a choice certain men make when they refuse to abandon a delusional, defensive entitlement. As King sees it, Kubrick treats his characters like "insects" because the director doesn't really consider them capable of shaping their own fates. Everything they do is subordinate to an overweening, irresistible force, which is Kubrick's highly developed aesthetic; they are its slaves. In King's The Shining, the monster is Jack. In Kubrick's, the monster is Kubrick.

King later criticized the film and Kubrick as a director:

Parts of the film are chilling, charged with a relentlessly claustrophobic terror, but others fall flat. Not that religion has to be involved in horror, but a visceral skeptic such as Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer inhuman evil of The Overlook Hotel. So he looked, instead, for evil in the characters and made the film into a domestic tragedy with only vaguely supernatural overtones. That was the basic flaw: because he couldn't believe, he couldn't make the film believable to others. What's basically wrong with Kubrick's version of The Shining is that it's a film by a man who thinks too much and feels too little; and that's why, for all its virtuoso effects, it never gets you by the throat and hangs on the way real horror should.^[149]

King was disappointed by Kubrick's decision not to film at The Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, which inspired the story (a decision Kubrick made since the hotel lacked sufficient snow and electricity). He supervised the 1997 television adaptation, also titled The Shining, filmed at The Stanley Hotel.

The animosity of King toward Kubrick's adaptation has dulled over time. During an interview segment on the Bravo channel, King stated that the first time he watched Kubrick's adaptation, he found it to be "dreadfully unsettling". Nonetheless, writing in the afterword of Doctor Sleep, King professed continued dissatisfaction with the Kubrick film. He said of it, "of course there was Stanley Kubrick's movie which many seem to remember – for reasons I have never quite understood – as one of the scariest films they have ever seen. If you have seen the movie but not read the novel, you should note that Doctor Sleep follows the latter which is, in my opinion, the True History of the Torrance Family."^[150]

Mike Flanagan, director of the film adaptation of Doctor Sleep, would reconcile the differences between novel and film versions of The Shining there. Doctor Sleep is a direct adaptation of its novel counterpart, which itself is a sequel to the novel version of The Shining, but is also a continuation of Kubrick's film; in explaining the latter, Flanagan expressed, "The Shining is so ubiquitous and has burned itself into the collective imagination of people who love cinema in a way that so few movies have. There's no other language to tell that story in. If you say 'Overlook Hotel', I see something. It lives right up in my brain because of Stanley Kubrick. You can't pretend that isn't the case".^[151] King initially rejected Flanagan's pitch of bringing back the Overlook as seen in Kubrick's film, but changed his mind after Flanagan pitched a scene within the hotel near the end of the film that served as his reason to bring back the Overlook.^[152] Upon reading the script, King was so satisfied with the result that he said, "Everything that I ever disliked about the Kubrick version of The Shining is redeemed for me here."^[153]

Awards and nominationsedit

Zdroj:https://en.wikipedia.org?pojem=The_Shining_(film)
Text je dostupný za podmienok Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License 3.0 Unported; prípadne za ďalších podmienok. Podrobnejšie informácie nájdete na stránke Podmienky použitia.

---



---

www.astronomia.sk | www.biologia.sk | www.botanika.sk | www.dejiny.sk | www.economy.sk | www.elektrotechnika.sk | www.estetika.sk | www.farmakologia.sk | www.filozofia.sk | Fyzika | www.futurologia.sk | www.genetika.sk | www.chemia.sk | www.lingvistika.sk | www.politologia.sk | www.psychologia.sk | www.sexuologia.sk | www.sociologia.sk | www.veda.sk I www.zoologia.sk

---

Awards and nominations^[154][155]