THE SHINING (1980) MOVIE NEWS & REVIEW

the shining (1980) movie

Genre              |   Horror

Classification   |   M

Running time   |   146 minutes

Released         |   23 May 1980 

cast

Jack Nicholson ... Jack Torrance
Shelley Duvall ... Wendy Torrance
Danny Lloyd ... Danny
Scatman Crothers ... Hallorann
Barry Nelson ... Ullman
Philip Stone ... Grady
Joe Turkel ... Lloyd
Anne Jackson ... Doctor

director

Stanley Kubrick

writer

​Stephen King ... (novel)
 
Stanley Kubrick ... (screenplay) &
Diane Johnson ... (screenplay)

cinematographer

​John Alcott ... (photographed by)

music

​Wendy Carlos
Rachel Elkind

film editor

​Ray Lovejoy

---

box office result

Worldwide             $​​​​​​ ​​44,781,695

Australia                 $​​​​​ not available

North America       $​​​​​​​​​44,781,695

---

movie minutiae

Jack Nicholson suggested Scatman Crothers for the film. Crothers had a tough time on this movie, with Stanley Kubrick making him do over one hundred takes for one scene. Crothers' next film was BRONCO BILLY (1980), directed by Clint Eastwood, who was famous for generally only going with one take. Crothers broke down in tears of gratitude on his first scene in the film when he realized he wouldn't have to do endless take after take again.

​Stanley Kubrick, known for his compulsiveness and numerous retakes, got the difficult shot of blood pouring from the elevators in only three takes. This would be remarkable if it weren't for the fact that the shot took nine days to set up. Every time the doors opened and the blood poured out, Kubrick would say, "It doesn't look like blood." In the end, the shot took approximately a year to get right.

​Jack Nicholson claimed that the scene where Jack snaps at Wendy for interrupting his writing was the most difficult for him, as he was a writer himself and had gotten into similar arguments with his girlfriend. Being a method actor, he drew on his memories of those arguments and added the line "Or if you come in here and you DON'T hear me typing, if I'm in here that means I'm working!"

---

related movies

FULL METAL JACKET ​(1983)

THE SHINING (1980) MOVIE IMAGES

Images

Posters

Images

Posters

THE SHINING (1980) STORY SYNOPSIS

​​Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) becomes winter caretaker at the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, hoping to cure his writer's block. He settles in along with his wife, Wendy (Shelley Duvall), and his son, Danny (Danny Lloyd), who is plagued by psychic premonitions. As Jack's writing goes nowhere and Danny's visions become more disturbing, Jack discovers the hotel's dark secrets and begins to unravel into a homicidal maniac hell-bent on terrorizing his family.

THE SHINING (1980) MOVIE REVIEW

Reviewed by Mark Geraghty   |   Review date 23 May 2014

​​Pop Movee Rating

Like all other Stanley Kubrick films, THE SHINING is, first and foremost, an exploration into the power of images and the impact they have upon an individual's experience of a film. Kubrick, never noted for his adherence to either traditional cinematic  plot or dialogue conventions, takes the bones of Stephen King’s novel of the same name and meticulously captures the slow, but inevitable, descent of Jack Nicholson’s character Jack Torrance into complete madness. There’s much debate as to whether THE SHINING is actually a horror film. Stephen King has been critical over the years, maintaining that the book is his and that Kubrick’s film is an adaptation in name only; selectively using characters and events but eschewing ideas and themes.

The film version of THE SHINING uses the main characters from the novel; Jack Torrance, Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) and Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd). In a bid to escape the events of their unhappy existence, Jack, an aspiring but frustrated writer, decides to apply for a job as the Winter Caretaker at The Overlook Hotel. He explains to Wendy that the isolation will give him the time he needs to concentrate on the novel he's been working on. Wendy, who is quite pathetic at the beginning of the film, meekly agrees, but it's clear she has an underlying sense of dread about her husband’s new job and is genuinely concerned for her son.

Early in the film, Kubrick establishes that Danny has an extra-sensory perception that gives him foresight into events; the “Shining”, as described later in the film by Scatman Crothers character Dick Halloran. Packing his family and their belongings into a beat-up VW Beetle, the Torrance family make the long trek into the Mountains to The Overlook Hotel.

En route, the audience get an early insight into what is to come, as Kubrick allows Nicholson to play Jack too upbeat for his own good; forcing enthusiasm upon his family to make himself feel better about what he's doing. It becomes clear that there is nothing authentic about Jack. He is a malleable being with an inability to curb indulgent behaviour. Whatever it is about the The Overlook Hotel that exercises an unhealthy influence upon its inhabitants, Jack Torrance is the perfect cypher for its supernatural insinuations.

Jack Nicholson was perfect for the role of Jack Torrance....

Five years earlier he had won the Best Actor Oscar for his role as the mentally-unbalanced Randall P. McMurphy in ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST (1975). THE SHINING required Nicholson to pace himself a little more in the first half of the film, but in its second half, he ramps up Jack’s descent and is at his leering, scenery-chewing best. It’s interesting, given Kubrick's relative lack of interest in requiring actors to actually act in his films, that he gave Nicholson the latitude he did. Certainly, by the time he signed on to THE SHINING, Nicholson was a bona fide cinema draw card.

Kubrick had worked with Kirk Douglas early in his career and had not had a happy experience. With the exception of Peter Sellers, the filmmaker had used actors who were happy to be positioned as one of many elements in Kubrick's pursuit of artistic concepts such as imagery, motif and visual purity. Nicholson was not and never has been that kind of actor. He’s a physical actor whose big personality is emphasised by actions and gestures that reinforce what he's saying.

When watching THE SHINING, Nicholson's performance, at times, feels at odds with the tone of the movie. The overall feeling is one of an unseen restrained menace, but Nicholson plays Torrance as an obvious threat. There’s nothing subtle about him. It may be Kubrick absolutely intended this to be the case. Given the level of planning he undertook with every film he made, there were never any happy accidents on his productions.

If the intention was to have Nicholson play Torrance as the physical manifestation of The Overlook’s supernatural influence, with all of its power amplified through one individual, then both Kubrick and his star well and truly succeed. If not, it surely rates as one of the strangest casting decisions in movie making history; albeit one that had definite box office potential.

Of the other actors in the film, Shelley Duvall, as the mentally fragile Wendy, appears to be out of her depth for most of the film; but this too is intentional. Jack Nicholson is well known for looking after fellow actors on films that he’s worked on, but it appears as though Stanley Kubrick was not as forgiving. Duvall’s nervousness is all too real and it's clear that the Director worked her to the point of exhaustion on this film, resulting in a stuttering performance that makes her look and sound like she’s emotionally fried.

Reports from the film's production suggested Kubrick demanded take-after-take from his actors and, only when they were at their absolute wits end, did he finally relent and call for a cut.

Duvall was not the only actor who found Kubrick's approach extremely demanding...

Scatman Crothers has gone on-the-record to say the Director’s work method punishing. Although he only appears at the beginning and the end of the movie, Crother’s character plays an important role in helping young Danny focus his supernatural skill and attune himself to the power of The Overlook Hotel.

Young Danny Lloyd, who has a lot of screen time on his own, is excellent. His young, innocent face is perfect for capturing the reactions to the hotel’s increasingly disturbing revelations. The question is whether or not what he sees is real or simply his own power being reflected off a place that had an unfortunate and proportionately high occurrence of unsavoury incidents. This is where Kubrick diverts from the King novel, leaving the reason for the events deliberately ambiguous...

It might be Danny.

It might be the hotel.

In the novel, the revelation that the hotel was built on an ancient Indian burial ground plays a significant role in explaining events. Not so in the movie. There is passing mention of it, but Kubrick’s focus is about the mental disintegration of the family unit and that’s where the story remains fixed. The revelation at the end of the film is not so much about the hotel’s power over Jack, as it is a statement about a bad man who is a bad father and a bad husband. Kubrick suggests that a bad man will always be a bad man no matter what. It’s a downbeat idea and, certainly, a downbeat ending.

From a technical standpoint, THE SHINING is a wonderfully constructed piece of cinema.

The production design is outstanding and Kubrick works incredibly hard to make The Overlook Hotel as much a character in the film as any of the actors. The incredibly long tracking scene with young Danny Lloyd tooling around the hotel corridors in his “Green Machine” is an outstanding technical achievement and but one example where the Director goes out of his way to make The Overlook as much a villain in the story as Jack Torrance and Delbert Grady (Phillip Stone), the former Caretaker who appears to Jack throughout the film.

Kubrick continues to explore his ongoing fascination with frame composition and many of the  film’s most memorable shots are almost still-life in their execution. This is where many Horror film fans have an issue with THE SHINING. The film’s shot composition and the staging of its action provide very little visceral impact; unlike other powerful Horror films of the era such as THE EXORCIST (1973) or THE TEXAS CHAINSAW MASSACRE (1974).

Genre fans and critics have argued the film is a cinematic experiment; reinforcing Stephen King’s opinion that the it lacks both the story and character depth of his novel. Stanley Kubrick, however, never much cared for what anyone else thought of his films.

​THE SHINING is a continuation of his own exploration to find meaning in and through cinema. He was more concerned with the holistic experience and, to that extent, succeeded in crafting a movie that had more to say about the his own aspirations for cinematic perfection than it did about successfully translating Stephen King’s novel or fulfilling any audience need to tick-off the checklist of genre tropes.

THE SHINING (1980) USEFUL LINKS

The Shining (film) - Wikipedia
​The Shining (1980) - IMDb
​The Shining (1980) - Rotten Tomatoes

digital updates delivered

facebook

instagram