The Shining (film)
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The Shining (1980) is a film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel of the same title by Stephen King. The film stars Jack Nicholson as frustrated writer Jack Torrance and Shelley Duvall as his wife Wendy.
The film features the first extensive use of the Steadicam to create long and elaborate tracking shots.
Synopsis
New job
The audience is introduced to Jack Torrance, driving up to the Overlook Hotel in the mountains of Colorado, to be interviewed for the position of caretaker for the winter. The hotel is completely blocked off by winter snows which make it inaccessible, requiring an on-site caretaker to keep the building in repair. Jack sees this new position as an opportunity to start a writing career. Jack is unfazed when the manager informs him about one of the previous caretakers who killed his wife and two daughters, cut them into pieces, and then "put both barrels of a shotgun in his mouth". However, Jack warns that his wife, Wendy, would be affected by the story as she is "a confirmed ghost story and horror film addict."Back at home, Wendy asks their son, Danny, whether he is excited to go to the Overlook for the winter. She is answered by Tony, Danny's (apparently) imaginary friend, who speaks through Danny, accompanied by a change in voice and a wiggling of Danny's finger. "No he ain't, Mrs. Torrance", Tony says. Wendy tries to encourage him, saying that it will be fun, but he is not convinced.
Later on, Danny asks Tony what the problem with the Overlook is. Tony is reluctant to show Danny, but Danny pleads with him and the audience is treated to images which cut between lift (elevator) doors releasing torrents of blood and two twin girls in blue dresses and white stockings. The audience sees Danny screaming (while nothing is audible), and he passes out.
The doctor arrives to check Danny over. She asks him about what he remembers, and about Tony, but Danny won't let much about him slip. The doctor and Wendy discuss the fact that Jack is an alcoholic in recovery, who had hurt Danny one evening while he was still drinking. Jack came home from his job as a teacher to find Danny playing with his father's papers, which were now strewn around the room. This irritated Jack enough to yank Danny up by the arm, dislocating his shoulder. This event gave Jack the impetus to give up alcohol.
The next day, the day on which the hotel will close for the winter, Jack, Wendy and Danny discuss the Donner party, who resorted to cannibalism after becoming snowbound, while driving their car through the forests up towards the Overlook. Wendy is a little distressed about the discussion of such a violent topic in front of Danny. Danny says that he saw it on the TV, to which Jack sarcastically replies, "See, it's okay. He saw it on the television".
Jack meets with the hotel staff, who invite him and his family to get an idea of the facilities in the hotel. They tour the inside of the Overlook hotel with its elaborate furnishings and picturesque rooms. Wendy is considerably impressed. Danny is in the games room, throwing darts at a board. He gets up to remove them from the board, and when he turns around, two girls are in the doorway, in blue dresses and white stockings, staring at him. Danny is frozen to the spot, and watches the two girls turn, arm in arm, walk out the door.
The family is introduced to the caretaker's quarters, the hotel's hedge maze, and the snowcat. However, as they are shown around the hotel, the manager tells them the hotel is built atop an "Indian burial ground, and I believe they actually had to repel a few Indian attacks as they were building it."
Dick suggests to Wendy that he and Danny get some ice cream. 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, and while he does not respond directly, he notes that some events leave a trace on the places they are at, "say like if someone burns toast". When Danny asks what is in Room 237, Dick replies urgently "There ain't nothing in Room 237, but you ain't got no business going in there anyway, so stay out! You understand, stay out!"
Overlook
About a month after their arrival, Jack awakens after having slept in till 11:30 a.m., and Wendy asks him whether he will do some writing today. Jack tells her he has lots of ideas, but no good ones yet, then tells her that he seems to have a feeling of déjà vu about the place, as if he "knew what was going to be around every corner". Wendy and Danny go outside to navigate the hedge maze.-->Later, Danny is on his tricycle, riding around some of the corridors of the hotel. When he comes across Room 237, he very slowly tries to open the door, but it is locked.
That night, Jack is typing in one end of a large lounge when Wendy comes in and happily mentions that the weather forecast said that it may snow that night. Jack looks unimpressed, and says "What do you want me to do about it?" Wendy thinks that Jack is being "grouchy", but Jack mentions he wants to get on with his work. Wendy says that she might come back later with sandwiches, but Jack tells her:
- "Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me, you're breaking my concentration. You're distracting me, and it will then take me time to get back to where I was, understand?...Now we're going to make a new rule. Whenever I am in here and you hear me typing, or whether you don't hear me typing, whatever the fuck you hear me doing in here, when I am in here that means that I am working - that means don't come in. Now do you think you can handle that?"
The next day, Wendy tries the phones, but they are down because of a snowstorm. She calls in by radio to the ranger to confirm this. The ranger advises her to leave her radio on all the time for safety. Elsewhere, Danny is pedaling again with his tricycle around the hotel corridors. Around one corner, he sees the twins again at the end of the corridor, and the audience hears them saying, "Come play with us... Come play with us, Danny", the shot cuts between them and a violent image of their bloody bodies, with an axe in one of the girls. "Come play with us, forever, and ever", they repeat. It is all too much for Danny, who covers his eyes. When he removes his hands, the girls are gone. Tony tells him "Remember what Mr. Hallorann said, it's just like pictures in a book..."
When Danny asks his mother if he can get his fire-engine from his room the next day, Wendy tells him that his father is sleeping in there, and he should not go. Danny pleads with her, saying he will not make a sound, and Wendy capitulates. However, when Danny goes up, Jack is sitting on the bed, looking off into the distance. He beckons Danny to sit with him, and Danny asks him whether he likes it here. Jack says that he loves it at the hotel, and wants Danny to have a good time. Danny asks whether he feels bad, to which he says no, and asks whether he will hurt him or his mother. Jack, visibly shaken, asks "Did your mother ever say that to you - that I would hurt you?" Danny says no, and Jack assures him that he loves him, and he would never do anything to hurt him.
Later, Danny is playing with his toys, and then notices the door to Room 237 standing open. Danny slowly approaches the door, then goes inside. Downstairs in the basement, Wendy hears a terrible scream. She drops her clipboard and 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. She comforts him. Danny then walks in, trembling and sucking his thumb. Wendy tells him to go to his room, but Danny does not do so. She goes to him, and finds his sweater is ripped and his neck is hurt. She wonders aloud how this happened, and then accuses Jack, "You did this to him, didn't you? You son of a bitch!" Jack looks startled and confused. Wendy takes Danny to his room.
\"You've always been the caretaker\"
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 asks Lloyd, "A little slow tonight?". In a nod to the underlying subtext of the film, Jack refers to the "white man's burden", addressing the fact that the Overlook was built on a tribal burial ground. Jack unloads his problems to the bartender, explaining the accident he had with Danny before, calling it a mere "momentary loss of muscular coordination. I mean... a little extra foot pounds of energy, per second... per second." He also refers to his wife as "the ol' sperm bank upstairs." 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.
Dick, in Florida, hears about the snow drifts in the Rocky Mountains. Suddenly, his eyes widen as he lies on the bed. He clearly sees something that the audience does not see. His head shakes uncontrollably. We may assume he is receiving telepathic images and calls for help from Danny. This scene is intercut with shots of Danny sitting on a bed, trembling and drooling in silent terror.
Back in the hotel, Jack walks into Room 237. He walks slowly up the stairs in the sunken living room, towards the bathroom. A very pretty young naked woman, her hair wet and slicked back, draws back the curtain of the bath and walks towards him. Jack moves towards her and they embrace in a kiss. Jack opens his eyes, and in the mirror, he sees the woman's back is covered with rotting skin. He pulls back, and sees the woman is suddenly a walking corpse, and Jack is disgusted and horrified, staggering backwards. The woman cackles and follows him as Jack gurgles in disgust and terror, slamming the door on his way out. The scene is intercut with images of the same woman lying in the bathtub, presumably having drowned herself, and obviously dead for some time.
When he comes out, Jack lies to Wendy, saying there was nothing there. When she protests, 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.
Meanwhile, Dick sensing that something is wrong, tries to phone the hotel but cannot because the lines are down. He contacts the ranger, asking them to radio the family. In the meantime, 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 (Philip Stone) with 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, Mr. Grady. He asks him whether he murdered his wife and kids, but the butler denies this. Jack says he remembers seeing him in the newspaper, but Grady says he has no recollection of it ever happening. Jack says "Mr. Grady, you were the caretaker here," but the caretaker rebukes him, "I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker. I should know, sir. I've always been here."
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." Jack blames it on his mother, and then Grady tells him about his daughters and wife:
- "One of them actually stole a packet of matches and tried to burn it down. But I corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I corrected her."
Ideas of escape
In the meantime, Wendy is upset. She wonders about the snowcat, and how they can get away in the storm in that. Danny has started repeating the word "Redrum, redrum" in Tony's voice, in his room. Wendy hears him and attempts to wake him, thinking he's had a bad dream. She calls his name, but it is Tony that replies: "Danny's not here, Mrs. Torrance."The ranger gets no response when he tries to contact the hotel. Jack ruins the radio by ripping it open and yanking parts of it out. After learning there was no response, 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 sees the sheet in place. Written on it are endless repetitions of the single sentence "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy." She looks through the stack of papers neatly placed to the side with increasing horror; the book Jack was working on consists of only the repetitions and permutations of layout of that same sentence.
Jack approaches behind her, and asks her "How do you like it?" She is frightened and turns around. Jack asks her what she is doing here. She says she wanted to talk, that maybe they should leave and take Danny to a doctor. Jack mocks her frightened, stammering voice, and asks whether she has ever thought about him, and his responsibilities to his employers. As Jack talks, Wendy walks backwards, increasingly frightened, and starts swinging the bat. Jack asks her to put the bat down: "Darling, light of my life, I'm not going to hurt you. You didn't let me finish my sentence. I said 'I'm not going to hurt you... I'm just going to bash your brains in!' I'm going to bash them right the fuck in." She gets more frightened, and she manages to hit him on the head. Jack falls backwards down the stairs.
Redrum
Wendy drags Jack's unconscious body to the pantry, and locks him in. Jack wakes and pleads with her to open the door, but Wendy refuses, telling him she is going to take Danny to a doctor and bring someone back to see to Jack. Jack, greatly amused, tells her to "go check out the snowcat and the radio". Jack has sabotaged the snowcat and the radio, 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, telling him "I see you can hardly have taken care of the... business we discussed... that you haven't the belly for it...that you will have to deal with this matter in the harshest possible way." Jack is defiant, and assures Grady that "There's nothing I look forward to with greater pleasure." and gives his word to "resolve" the issue. Grady opens the door.
Locked in their quarters, Danny, speaking in Tony's voice, continually repeats the word "redrum". He takes Wendy's lipstick and writes "REDЯUM" on the bathroom door. As his voice gets louder, Wendy awakens and takes Danny in her arms. She notices the mirror, which reveals the writing on the door reversed - it says "MURDEЯ."
Jack is outside, swinging an axe, trying to break into the locked door. He breaks open a panel and opens the door. "Wendy, I'm home." he says. Wendy and Danny are meanwhile trying to escape out the tiny bathroom window, which is covered in snow that has managed to build up as far as the window. Danny manages to escape out the window, but Wendy cannot get through. She falls back inside, and locks the door. Jack starts to hack through the bathroom door, smashes through the final piece of wood remaining, sticks his head through the door and says "Here's Johnny!", one the film's most memorable lines. As Jack tries to open the door, Wendy slashes at him with a knife. Jack howls back in pain. He hears a vehicle outside, turns around and stalks out.
Dick, meanwhile, has made it up to the hotel in another snowcat. He gets inside and calls out in the empty hotel. Jack rushes up to him and immediately swings the axe into his chest. Wendy, upstairs, runs out, calling for Danny, but not loud enough so Jack will hear. Danny has run back inside and hid inside a steel cabinet. Wendy walks upstairs, and sees a couple in one of the rooms. Two people, a man in a bear costume and a man in evening dress are on a bed (apparently in an act of oral sex). The man in the bear costume moves down and looks at her, followed by the other. Danny tries to escape downstairs, and Jack follows him, leading outside into the maze.
Wendy, still inside, makes her way to the lobby. She is frightened by a horribly scarred man, who toasts his glass to her, saying "Great party, isn't it?" In other rooms, she sees skeletons and cobwebs, arranged in various party scenes. She comes towards the lifts, which open to release the torrents of blood Danny foresaw in his visions.
Meanwhile, Danny is in the snow-covered maze. Jack is behind him, tracking his footprints and calling out to him. Danny gets far ahead, and steps backwards in the snow, an old Native American trick, and hides away to a side branch of the maze. Jack falls for it and runs past him. Startled when the footprints suddenly end, Jack keeps going forward, confused, looking for him. Meanwhile, Danny follows their own footprints back to the start of the maze and escapes, leaving Jack still stumbling around in the maze.
Wendy makes her way out of the hotel and joins up with Danny, who get in the abandoned snowcat and make their escape. Jack hears the snowcat drive off, but he is hopelessly lost, and fails to find his way out of the maze in time. He falls down and is frozen in the snow.
As a coda, the audience sees a photograph on the hotel wall, with various partygoers at a ball. We see in particular a young man who looks exactly like Jack. A sign says "Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921."
Quotes
- Heeere's Johnny!
Jack, after knocking the door to the quarters with the axe:
- Wendy! I'm home!
- REDRUM, REDRUM, REDRUM!
- Dick: "Some places are just like people; some shine, some don't. I guess you could say the Overlook Hotel has a bit of a shine to it."
- Danny: "Are you afraid of this place?"
- Dick: "...no, I ain't scared of this place. But sometimes, when something happens, it can leave a trace of itself behind. I think a lot of things have happened here, over the years. And not all of em's good."
- I'm not gonna hurt ya, I'm just gonna bash your brains in!
- Hi, Lloyd. Little slow tonight, isn't it? [Laughs maniacally]
Trivia
- The door that Jack breaks down with the ax near the end of the movie was a real door. Kubrick had originally used a fake door, made of a weaker wood, but Jack Nicholson, who worked as a volunteer fire marshall, was so strong that he tore it down rather quickly with extreme ease.
- 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 ominous, ambient horror score for the movie was created by Wendy Carlos, the same woman who composed the score for A Clockwork Orange. While Carlos did compose a full score for most of the movie, Kubrick only used certain parts of it, such as the Dies Irae from the opening sequence. Most of the music in the film comes from orchestral works by Krzysztof Penderecki, Béla Bartók, and György Ligeti.
- Kubrick's daughter Vivian had an uncredited guest role as a smoking guest on a ballroom couch.
- The opening panorama shots (which were used by Ridley Scott for the closing moments of the film Blade Runner) and all scenes of the Volkswagen Beetle on the road to the hotel were filmed in Glacier National Park in Montana. These scenes were filmed out of a helicopter and its shadow is clearly visible. When the camera stops at the hotel, the spinning rotors of the helicopter can be seen faintly at the top of the screen.
- The set for the Overlook Hotel was then the largest ever built, and by viewers popularly and easily mistaken for a real location. It included a full recreation of the exterior of the hotel, as well as all of the interiors. A few exterior shots were done at Timberline Lodge on Mount Hood in Oregon. They are easy to notice because the hedge maze is missing. 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 interiors are based on those of the Ahwahnee hotel in Yosemite National Park. The massive set would be the site of Kubrick's first use of the Steadicam.
- 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.
- Though the film and novel center around death, only one person is actually killed in the novel, and two in the film itself. (Dick Halloran survives in the novel.)
- 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 and would increase the film's budget, so he decided to use a hedge maze instead.
- Although the story is set in Colorado, the only scenes filmed there are an exterior of the Flatirons above Boulder, and an interior at the now defunct Stapleton International Airport, where Hallorann is calling to make arrangements to get a vehicle to get him to the hotel. Scenes of the Torrance family watching the news on television included several actual Denver newscasters and weathermen of the time. Negotiations with the Stanley Hotel (the main inspiration for King's book) in Estes Park, Colorado, broke down over Kubrick's proposed uses of the facility. It would be used for the filming of the 1997 miniseries.
- The Grady twins' footage is unmistakably reminiscent of a photo by Diane Arbus, and much of the abstracted horror appears influenced by Arbus's strange photos of masked revellers and desexualized nudes.
- After Jack admonishes Wendy for interrupting him, if one listens to the typewriter carefully, one can deduce that Jack is in fact typing the phrase "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
- Neither Lia Beldam nor Billie Gibson (who played the younger and older women in the bathtub) ever appeared in another film.
- Kubrick was able to film all of Danny's parts without the young actor playing Danny realizing he was in a horror movie.
- 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 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?"
- Stephen King notoriously disliked Kubrick's vision. He thought that the novel's important themes, such as the disintegration of the family and the dangers of alcoholism, were ignored. He also felt that Kubrick viewed the source material as below him, and that the film was Kubrick's way of elevating the material to his level. 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.
- A [parody trailer] by Robert Ryang, using footage from the film and in which The Shining was marketed as a family based character film, swiftly became a much downloaded internet favourite on its wide distribution in October 2005. (Source: New York Times)
- An outtake from the opening sequence was used in the "happy ending" version of Blade Runner, but removed from the director's cut. Warner Bros. were the distributors of both films and, by chance, actor Joe Turkel appears in both.
- Despite King's apparent dislike of the movie, the character of Eddie Dean alludes to it now and again in the second Dark Tower book: The Drawing of the Three. Jack Nicholson's role in the movie is also mentioned in the King book The Tommyknockers.
- Slipknot's video for "Spit it Out" is based on The Shining
- 30 Seconds To Mars' music video for 'The Kill' is loosely based on 'The Shining'.
- In an episode of Rocko's Modern Life, Heffer takes a job as the corporate headquarters of Conglom-O and runs into many situations parallel to the movie's story.
- The Fear Before The March Of Flames' song 237 is about The Shining.
- As well as 'The Shinning', The Simpsons parodies the movie in another episode, where Marge begins work in real estate and believes she's murdered The Flanders family by selling them a crime-scene house. After finding the family well, Ned mentions that the red paint marge thought was blood is actually from his son's newly painted red room. Rod then replies to this: "(wagging his finger)Redroom...redroom...(pointing)", referencing the spooky murmurings of "redrum" by Danny.
Running times
There are several running times for The Shining. After its premiere (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 left the film at 143 minutes, and this is the version available in North America.The European version runs for 119 minutes. Kubrick authorized 24 minutes of cuts in the film.
See also
- In The Simpsons episode "Treehouse of Horror V", the segment entitled "The Shinning" (pronounced like shin) spoofs the film.
External links
- [Shining named perfect scary movie (BBC)]
- [Filming Location]
- [Writer In Residence: Stanley Kubrick's The Shining]
- [The Family of Man by Bill Blakemore]
- [New York Times article regarding satirical Shining trailer.]
- [The Shining in 30 seconds reenacted by bunnies - a spoof]
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