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| Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) in The Shining |
Today, Claire Fontaine has received the visit of Jordi Santanyí, who is a great fan of Stephen King's novels.
They have been talking about this genius of terror genre and about the next film based on one of the best novels of King, The Shining. Jordi has explained her lots of things about Stephen King, his novels and about the films based on them.
They have been talking about this genius of terror genre and about the next film based on one of the best novels of King, The Shining. Jordi has explained her lots of things about Stephen King, his novels and about the films based on them.
The Shining is a 1980 horror film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick and co-written with novelist Diane Johnson. The film is based on Stephen King's 1977 novel The Shining.
The Shining is about Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), an aspiring writer and recovering alcoholic, who accepts a position as the off-season caretaker of the isolated historic Overlook Hotel in the Colorado Rockies. Wintering over with Jack are his wife Wendy Torrance (Shelley Duvall) and young son Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd).
Danny possesses the shining, psychic abilities that enable him to see into the hotel's horrific past. The hotel's cook, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), also has this and is able to telepathically communicate with Danny.
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| Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in The Shining |
The hotel had a previous winter caretaker who went crazy and killed his family and himself. After a winter storm leaves the Torrances snowbound, Jack's sanity deteriorates due to the influence of the supernatural forces that inhabit the hotel, placing his wife and son in 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 was used in several scenes, giving the film an innovative and immersive look and feel. Because of inconsistencies, ambiguities, symbolism, and differences from the book, there has been much speculation into the meanings and actions in the film.
The film was released in the United States on May 23, 1980 and in the United Kingdom on October 2, 1980 by Warner Bros. There were several versions for theatrical releases, each being shorter than the prior, with about 27 minutes cut. Although contemporary responses from critics were mixed, assessment became more favorable in following decades, and it is now widely regarded as one of the greatest horror films ever made.
The Shining is widely acclaimed by today's critics, and has become a staple of pop culture.
More information: Stephen King-The Official Web Site
In 2018, 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.
Before making The Shining, Stanley Kubrick
had directed the 1975 film Barry Lyndon, a highly visual period film
about an Irish man 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.
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| Danny Torrance (Danny Lloyd) in The Shining |
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 The Shining.
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.
Nicholson was Kubrick's first choice for the role of Jack Torrance; other actors considered included Robert De Niro, who claims the film gave him nightmares for a month, Robin Williams, and Harrison Ford, all of whom met with Stephen King's disapproval.
In his search to find the right actor to play Danny, Kubrick
sent a husband and wife team, Leon 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 which fell in between Jack Nicholson's and Shelley Duvall's speech patterns.
More information: Mental Floss
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, Britain. 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 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. In February 1979, the set at
Elstree was badly damaged in a fire, causing a delay in the production.
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| Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) in The Shining |
While most of the interior shots, and even some of the Overlook exterior shots, were shot on studio sets, a few exterior shots were shot on location by a second-unit crew headed by Jan Harlan.
Saint Mary Lake and Wild Goose Island in Glacier National Park, Montana was the filming location for 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; notably absent in these shots is the hedge maze, something the Timberline Lodge does not have.
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).
More information: Cinephilia & Beyond
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 the attention to fine details and remarkably precise synchronization without excessive splicing.
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.
Stephen King has been quoted as saying that although Kubrick made a film with memorable imagery, it was poor as an adaptation and that it is the only adaptation of his novels that he could remember hating. However, in King's 1981 nonfiction book Danse Macabre, he listed Kubrick's film among those he considered to have contributed something of value to the horror genre and mentioned it as one of his personal favorites. Before the 1980 movie King often said he gave little attention to the film adaptations of his work.
More information: BBC
I recognize terror as the finest emotion
and so I will try to terrorize the reader.
But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify,
and if I find that I cannot horrify,
I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud.
Stephen King
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