The Shining (1980)
Country: GB
Technical: col 115/146m
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Synopsis:
A writer is employed to caretake the Overlook Hotel, high up in the Rockies, during the winter months, but the building seems to exert a malign influence over him; an influence to which his young son bears unsettling witness due to his peculiar powers of clairvoyance, known as 'shining'.
Review:
Kubrick films Stephen King's book and in the process deconstructs the haunted house film (cf. The Amityville Horror). His approach at the time seemed too detached and unfeeling for so personally traumatic an experience for the protagonists, but the film has worn well. The formalistic elements in performance and mise en scène actually underline the sense of uncanny, and the mock-portentous intertitles provide queasily ironic relief. It has to be said that the fictional location is the perfect foil here (though interiors were all constructed at Elstree), a wonderful emblem of the director's yen for cloistering his cast and crew for months on end on his quixotic endeavours. Music, production design, and Nicholson's magnificently over the top performance set the seal on a horror classic. (Technical note: the film can be seen in two versions - the shorter, or 'European' version, being the director's second cut - and two formats: a masked 1.78:1, and an unmasked, 'protected', 4:3. On this last, even the DVD cover can be misleading about which it is.)
Country: GB
Technical: col 115/146m
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Synopsis:
A writer is employed to caretake the Overlook Hotel, high up in the Rockies, during the winter months, but the building seems to exert a malign influence over him; an influence to which his young son bears unsettling witness due to his peculiar powers of clairvoyance, known as 'shining'.
Review:
Kubrick films Stephen King's book and in the process deconstructs the haunted house film (cf. The Amityville Horror). His approach at the time seemed too detached and unfeeling for so personally traumatic an experience for the protagonists, but the film has worn well. The formalistic elements in performance and mise en scène actually underline the sense of uncanny, and the mock-portentous intertitles provide queasily ironic relief. It has to be said that the fictional location is the perfect foil here (though interiors were all constructed at Elstree), a wonderful emblem of the director's yen for cloistering his cast and crew for months on end on his quixotic endeavours. Music, production design, and Nicholson's magnificently over the top performance set the seal on a horror classic. (Technical note: the film can be seen in two versions - the shorter, or 'European' version, being the director's second cut - and two formats: a masked 1.78:1, and an unmasked, 'protected', 4:3. On this last, even the DVD cover can be misleading about which it is.)
Country: GB
Technical: col 115/146m
Director: Stanley Kubrick
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duvall, Danny Lloyd
Synopsis:
A writer is employed to caretake the Overlook Hotel, high up in the Rockies, during the winter months, but the building seems to exert a malign influence over him; an influence to which his young son bears unsettling witness due to his peculiar powers of clairvoyance, known as 'shining'.
Review:
Kubrick films Stephen King's book and in the process deconstructs the haunted house film (cf. The Amityville Horror). His approach at the time seemed too detached and unfeeling for so personally traumatic an experience for the protagonists, but the film has worn well. The formalistic elements in performance and mise en scène actually underline the sense of uncanny, and the mock-portentous intertitles provide queasily ironic relief. It has to be said that the fictional location is the perfect foil here (though interiors were all constructed at Elstree), a wonderful emblem of the director's yen for cloistering his cast and crew for months on end on his quixotic endeavours. Music, production design, and Nicholson's magnificently over the top performance set the seal on a horror classic. (Technical note: the film can be seen in two versions - the shorter, or 'European' version, being the director's second cut - and two formats: a masked 1.78:1, and an unmasked, 'protected', 4:3. On this last, even the DVD cover can be misleading about which it is.)