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· Year: 1980
· Also known as: Shining, Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining"
· Director: Stanley Kubrick
· Writers: Diane Johnson, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen King (novel)
· Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall
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· An adaptation of the 1977 book by Stephen King.
· The making of this film was detailed in Making "The Shining," available on recent DVD and VHS releases of the film.
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· King never liked Kubrick's adaptation, and became increasingly vocal about his feelings over the years. Part of the deal to regain the filming rights to make the 1997 Shining miniseries was that King no longer express his opinions about Kubrick's version.
· One of the sets burned down during production and had to be rebuilt.
· The exterior of the Overlook is actually the Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood in Oregon. The interiors were all sets.
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Amazon.com
· DVD: Remastered Kubrick Collection · VHS: Remastered Kubrick Collection Amazon.de
· DVD: Remastered Kubrick Collection |
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| Synopsis |
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Jack Torrance is a writer and recovering alcoholic who takes a job as a winter caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a secluded resort deep in the Colorado Rockies. Not long after he and his family, wife Wendy and psychic son Danny, move into the Overlook, the seclusion starts to work on Jack's increasingly feverish mind. Whether as a result of cabin fever or an actual haunting, he begins to see it as his mission to murder his family.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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87
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| COLD ANALYSIS |
| 4.0 -ATMOSPHERE |
| 1.5 -GORE |
| 0.75 -HUMOR |
| 2.0 -SCARES |
| 4.0 -TENSION |
Stanley Kubrick made his Shining a directorial masterpiece. Resulting in a work that is sometimes frightening, many times fearlessly inventive, and always intense, Kubrick's directing in this movie stands alone. The Overlook Hotel, with its large rooms and airy atmosphere, would seem to be nothing, if not open. However, Kubrick still manages to infuse the film with an omnipresent claustrophobia. So The Shining is a work of genius, directorally speaking. Unfortunately, as a story, it falls flat. When Kubrick set out to make a symbolic movie, he forgot to include real characters. All of the characters are one dimensional, and the acting doesn't help either (Jack Nicholson's performance is famous, but it's not deep, and Shelley Duvall is just really, really annoying). It's a film about duality that gained a dual nature itself . . . but the damn thing is just so hypnotic that I ignore the characters and marvel at the sights and sounds.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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10
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| COLD ANALYSIS |
| 0.25 -ATMOSPHERE |
| 0.0 -GORE |
| 0.0 -HUMOR |
| 0.25 -SCARES |
| 0.25 -TENSION |
I am continually amazed by the superlative reviews this awful, stupidly contrived movie continues to get from otherwise tasteful, intelligent people. I myself absolutely hated it, perhaps because I expected so much and it delivered so little. After having had my socks knocked off by the novel, I was overjoyed at the news that the movie version would be directed by Stanley Kubrick--who had knocked 'em off himself with 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dr. Strangelove, and so many other films--and would star Jack Nicholson, who had knocked 'em off in almost every movie of his I'd seen to that date. I can recall standing in line at the theatre, rubbing my hands in anticipation, while my sister and I gloated over the treat we had in store.
Well, then the film started, and we both sat there in appalled disbelief as the whole brilliant concept of the novel was dismantled and then ineptly glued back together as "STANLEY KUBRICK'S . . . the-shining-based-on-an-idea-by-stephen-king."
Kubrick "fixed" things in the story that were not only not broken, but were absolutely vital to the plot. He inserted "humor" where none was appropriate, and was so intent on his own skewed vision of the story that he exerted no apparent control over Jack Nicholson's dreadful scenery-chewing performance, and gave no guidance to the rest of the cast, who floundered woefully (Shelley Duvall seemed utterly lost, and Scatman Crothers apparently thought he was in Abbot and Costello Meet the Haunted Hotel).
There were only two scenes which gave me the agreeable chills I'd expected: the scene in the corridor, in which the two ghost children invite Doc to "come play with us -- forever and ever . . . " and the scene in which the ghostly bartender, with a hellish light in his eyes, tempts Nicholson to surrender to his alcoholism again. The rest was sheer hokum, for which I think Kubrick should have spent his remaining years in a maximum-security home for burnt-out directors.
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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This film is, without a doubt, the best book-to-screen translation. Stanley Kubrick is a genius! I also highly recommend Eyes Wide Shut!
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RATING
Out of 100 |
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All work and no play makes Jake a dull boy.
The most crucial point in a horror film is the build-up of the story: The creation of the atosphere, the construction of the necessary surroundings. The horror has to be made plausible, made real, made accessible - it must go right into the heart of the audience.
Kubrick's The Shining does just that in quite a perfect way; the opening already somehow precipitating key elements of the film's story. It starts with a shot of a montaneous scenery, accompanied by the tunes of the fifth movement of Hector Berlioz's 'Symphonie Fantastique' called 'Witches' Sabbath' - which to an extent could be a motto for this movie.
The performance Jack Nicholson delivers here is just stunning, he is as demonic as he can be. The visuals, especially the shots inside the hotel, running down the floors, showing the kid driving through them, showing empty floors - all those portrayals of the vastness and emptiness of this very spacious but virtually uninhabited hotel, inhabited just by this family of three, creating an atmosphere of horror which is a very disturbing one. Apart from nevertheless existing portrayals of violence and some spooky apparitions, the horror in this movie rather comes from within, from the deepest depths of the human soul. It leaves the audience puzzled, with a feeling of uneasyness and numbness even. Kubrick created an almost Lynchian nightmare here.
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