The Shining
Stanley Kubrick
© Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Writer Jack Torrance is taken on as the caretaker for the isolated Overlook Hotel in Colorado, where he hopes to overcome his writer's block He moves in for the winter with his wife Wendy and their son Danny, who has psychic powers. While Jack does not make progress on his book and Danny is increasingly haunted by terrifying visions, the hotel begins to reveal its terrible secrets pushing Jack further and further into madness…
With : Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd, Scatman Crothers, Barry Nelson, Philip Stone, Joe Turkel, Anne Jackson, Tony Burton
Screenplay : Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
Image : John Alcott
Editing : Ray Lovejoy
Music : Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind
Screenplay : Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
Image : John Alcott
Editing : Ray Lovejoy
Music : Wendy Carlos, Rachel Elkind
Production : Warner Bros., Hawk Films, Peregrine, Producers Circle
Distribution: Warner Bros
Distribution: Warner Bros
“I don't want to give a rationalising explanation of this story. I prefer to use musical terms and talk of motifs, variations and resonance” (Michel Ciment; Kubrick). This statement by Stanley Kubrick doesn't mean, of course, that meanings aren't given to one of his masterpieces. Although this adaptation of Stephen King's book evokes classic folk tales (The Three Little Pigs,Bluebeard) or mythology (Theseus and the Minotaur, Oedipus), it nevertheless remains a work of fantasy in the literary sense of the term, exploring the question of doubt. Does what we see emerge from the disturbed minds of its characters (is the father demented, does the son have psychic powers) or from reality? Whatever the case, we do get the impression of discovering the soul of the Overlook Hotel through its symmetrical decoration (the diamonds on the carpeting, the bedside table lamps, the corridor doors) extending the stifling involution of the character of Jack Torrance, a failed writer whose frustration gives him the energy of a monster. The motif of the double runs through the whole of this downward spiral into ancestral fears.