Shining (1980)

Movie
German title	Shining
Original title	The Shining
Country of production	United Kingdom United States
original language	English
Publishing year	1980
length	EU version: 119 minutes US version: 143 minutes
Age rating	FSK 16
Rod
Director	Stanley Kubrick
script	Stanley Kubrick, Diane Johnson
production	Stanley Kubrick
music	Wendy Carlos , Rachel Elkind
camera	John Alcott
cut	Ray Lovejoy
occupation
Jack Nicholson : Jack Torrance Shelley Duvall : Wendy Torrance Danny Lloyd : Danny Torrance Scatman Crothers : Dick Hallorann Barry Nelson : Stuart Ullman Philip Stone : Delbert Grady Joe Turkel : Bartender Lloyd Lia Beldam : Young woman in the bathroom Billie Gibson : Old woman in the bathroom Lisa & Louise Burns : Grady Twins Barry Dennen : Watson, Stuart's assistant David Baxt : District Manager 1 Manning Redwood : District Manager 2
synchronization
chronology
Successor  → Doctor Sleeps Awakening

Shining (often also The Shining ) is a British - American horror film by the director Stanley Kubrick from 1980 based on Stephen King 's novel of the same name .

action

A VW Beetle drives through an autumnal mountain landscape on a lonely, seemingly endless country road.

Flashback: The Overlook Hotel in the Colorado mountains will be closed for the winter like every year. The hotel management is looking for a property manager for this period . Former teacher Jack Torrance applies for this job in order to be able to provide for his wife Wendy and young son Danny over the winter. While Jack is on his way to the interview, Wendy and Danny have breakfast. During what at first appeared innocent conversation, the boy reveals a strange peculiarity: "Tony", the "little man who lives in Danny's mouth", speaks through his mouth and moves his right index finger; he predicts impending events for Danny. For example, he correctly predicts that Jack will get the job of caretaker. Wendy thinks Tony is an imaginary fantasy friend of Danny and doesn't think much of it. But when Danny tells disturbing things about Jack, Wendy has the boy examined by a pediatrician. However, the results of the investigation are not very revealing. Overlook's hotel manager, Stuart Ullman, tells Jack that a property manager named Delbert Grady killed his wife, two young daughters, and himself the previous winter, presumably in a trap of trapper fever . Meanwhile, Danny has disturbing visions from the Overlook, but he cannot assign them.

Upon arrival at the hotel, the Torrances are shown the premises and the final details are explained. Meanwhile, Danny is playing darts in a lounge and sees two girls who could pass for twins because of their hairstyles and dresses (which they are not, Mr. Ullman had mentioned that they are of different ages). These are the ghosts of Grady's daughters. The hotel chef Dick Hallorann shows Wendy and Danny the kitchen and the hotel's supplies. He recognizes Danny's ability to perceive the supernatural , since he also has this ability. When he is alone with Danny, he talks to him about it and calls this rare skill the "Shining". Danny then tells him about Tony and mentions room number 237 on his own initiative. Danny asks about events that have taken place in this room. Hallorann does not answer and forbids Danny to enter that room. At the end of the day, Wendy and Danny explore the huge maze in front of the building together.

A month later the oddities pile up. It begins with Jack repeatedly pissing off Wendy from the large hotel lobby, which he uses as a kind of study, because he doesn't want to be disturbed while writing his work. While playing, Danny discovers the forbidden room 237 and has further visions: The Grady girls stand in front of him and ask him to play with them, for "always and always and always". In between he sees her lying dead and covered in blood next to an ax. In addition, Danny has a disturbing vision of a woman bathing in room 237, who is beginning to rot in front of his eyes and chasing after him with a scornful laugh.

Wendy hears Jack moaning and screaming and hurries into the foyer , she finds her husband asleep and wakes him up. Jack tells Wendy, disturbed, that he dreamed he murdered and dismembered her and Danny. Danny enters the foyer with strangle marks on his neck, suggesting that Jack was responsible for it. However, he denies everything and withdraws to the "Gold Room", the abandoned hotel bar. At first there are neither drinks nor company, but suddenly a bartender named Lloyd appears and pours Jack a drink. The men seem familiar and are talking to each other, with Jack mentioning that he accidentally injured Danny years ago. The man behind the counter and all the drinks have suddenly disappeared - it seems as if Jack was dreaming again. Wendy enters the bar, armed with a baseball bat . She asks him to go to room 237 to see if Danny's testimony is that a woman had choked the boy there. Once in the room, Jack sees a young, pretty and naked woman sitting in the bathtub. She gets out of the tub, walks slowly towards him and they both hug and kiss deeply. However, when Jack looks in the bathroom mirror, he is holding the rotting corpse of an old woman in his arms. She comes up to him laughing and Jack escapes from the room in a panic. He hides the experience from Wendy and claims that Danny must have made the gag marks on himself. When Wendy says that Danny has to leave the hotel, he loudly accuses her of just wanting to screw up his one-off chance of this job.

Meanwhile, Hallorann, who is becoming increasingly restless because of a heavy snow storm in the Colorado mountains and his premonitions, is on his way to the hotel after a failed phone call. Jack is furious and returns to the "Gold Room", which is suddenly filled with people dressed in the style of the 1920s. Here he meets a waiter in whom he recognizes Grady, the former caretaker. However, he denies having killed his family and himself. He points out to Jack that Danny is trying to bring Hallorann into the matter, and that his son has dangerous, supernatural abilities. He then instigates Jack to also teach his family a "lesson". His own daughters were also naughty, one even stole matches and wanted to set the hotel on fire, which is why he “called her to order” and also gave a “lesson” to his wife, who tried to keep him from his “duty”. Jack assures him that he knows what to do.

Meanwhile, the nearest police station tries to establish radio contact with the hotel, whereupon Jack sabotages the facility. Wendy discovers Jack's manuscript and is shocked to find that all pages are filled with the endlessly repeating sentence: "What you can get today, don't postpone it until tomorrow." Jack surprises Wendy, who is armed with a baseball bat. They argue again about what should happen to Danny and Jack accuses her again of not thinking about him and his duties as a property manager. Danny experiences his parents' argument in a vision and sees a room door with the word "Redrum" written in red. Jack finally threatens Wendy to kill her. When he tries to take the baseball bat from her, she hits his head with it; he falls backwards down the stairs and remains unconscious. As he gradually comes to, he is being dragged into the pantry by Wendy, where she manages to lock him up. Wendy wants to go to the doctor with Danny, but finds out that Jack not only sabotaged the radio, but also the snowmobile . Grady speaks to Jack through the locked door of the pantry, Jack should "approach the matter with more heart and sharpness", Wendy's ingenuity is greater than his. Jack then gives his word and the door, locked from the outside, opens.

Wendy has now gone to sleep and is woken up by Danny. The boy only speaks in Tony's rough voice and keeps repeating the word “Redrum”, which he writes on the bathroom door with red lipstick, just like in his vision. Startled recognizes Wendy by looking in the mirror, that this word read backwards Murder (dt. "Murder") results. Jack enters the apartment armed with an ax, Wendy and Danny lock themselves in the bathroom. Danny crawls out of the half-snow-covered window, through the narrow gap Wendy cannot climb out. Jack hits the bathroom door with his ax. He pushes his face through the breach in the door and calls: "Here's Jacky!". When Jack tries to hit the door again, Hallorann arrives on a snowcat and enters the foyer.

Distracted by this, Jack first turns to Hallorann, which gives Wendy an opportunity to escape. While looking for Danny in the hotel, she herself sees weird things herself for the first time, such as blood pouring out of the elevator and the "waiter" Grady, who has a head wound and whispers: "Great party, isn't it?" Jack, who has hobbled since the fall, murders Hallorann with an ax. Then he pursues Danny, who flees into the snowy maze, where he lures his father on the wrong track by walking backwards in his own footsteps. Danny escapes from the maze, meets his mother and both flee from the hotel complex with Hallorann's snowcat. Jack freezes to death in the maze.

The final picture shows a photograph of a festive party from 1921, exhibited in the “Gold Room”, in which Jack is placed at the very front.

production

Apart from a few exterior shots, such as the helicopter flight through Glacier National Park in Montana (Going to the sun road) at the beginning of the film and shots at the Timberline Lodge in Oregon , which Kubrick had filmed by an outside team, the entire film was filmed at Elstree Studios in Shot near London. The largest continuous studio film set in film history at that time was built for this purpose.

With Shining breakthrough began Steadicam , which since then has increasingly found use in film productions. Until then, recordings with a handheld camera were not very convincing and longer movements were difficult to achieve. The extensive camera movements of Shining were only made possible with the invention of a system with which the camera can be strapped around the cameraman and the cameraman can move while a sophisticated system absorbs any vibrations . The Steadicam was operated in Shining by its inventor, Garrett Brown .

In a key scene, Wendy discovers that her husband, allegedly a play (Engl. Play wanted to write for months typed only one set on the machine and hundreds have filled sheets): "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy ”(Analogous to“ work alone doesn't make you happy ”). This scene was shot in several languages ​​by Kubrick for the theatrical version, namely also in German, "What you can get today, don't postpone it until tomorrow", in Italian ( Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca , "Morning hour has gold in your mouth") , in French ( Un "Tiens" vaut mieux que deux "Tu l'auras" , meaning "The sparrow in the hand is better than the pigeon on the roof") and in Spanish ( No por mucho madrugar amanece más temprano , "Also if you get up earlier, the sun won't rise earlier ”). Although the DVD format technically supports different cut versions for each selected language, only the sequence with the English sentence is included on the DVD version for German-speaking countries.

The original version of the film contained a final scene in which the hotel manager visits Wendy in a hospital. Kubrick had the scene cut from all versions. He thought it was unnecessary.

effect

The opening sequence filmed from a helicopter, which follows the drive of a VW Beetle through the sublime autumnal mountains of Glacier National Park in Montana and is accompanied by the synthesized hymn Dies irae , is both impressive and threatening. Material from this sequence was also used for the final scene of Blade Runner in its 1982 theatrical version, which was added at short notice at the studio's request .

The film is the object of numerous different attempts at interpretation, which on the one hand have the plot itself on the topic and try to clarify what was actually going on in the Overlook Hotel , or the film in political and historical terms as an expression of opinion on topics such as the Holocaust or the expulsion of the Indians interpret by European settlers. The documentary Room 237 by Rodney Ascher is dedicated to these various theories, which underlines the influence of the film that continues to this day.

Others

• Kubrick sets different priorities than the literary model. The history of Jack's tantrums is largely ignored, the loss of his previous professional position and his alcoholism are only hinted at. The hedge figures, trimmed to animal figures and coming to life, became the labyrinth in which Jack freezes to death while in the book he lets the boiler overheat and blows himself and the hotel up in the air.

• Originally, Kubrick had considered the film adaptation of another literary original, the novel The Shadow knows by Diane Johnson . After choosing The Shining but rejecting a first draft of the script by Stephen King, Kubrick instead involved Johnson, with whose work he was impressed, the scripting of his film.

• Kubrick said in a cinema interview: “In my film there are no [...] creaking doors, no skeletons, [...] long shadows or other melodramatic horror effects. The film simply tells the story of a family that is slowly driving us crazy. "

• The role of the haunted figure Lorraine Massey in the bathroom was the only appearance in a film for both Lia Beldam and Billie Gibson. The Swiss Lia Beldam was a successful model at the time and Billie Gibson was a friend of the Kubrick family who participated for fun. Beldam was first booked for a party scene in the lounge, but since her portfolio featured a lot of nude shots, Kubrick decided to give her the scene in the bathroom. She described the week-long filming, despite her inexperience as an actress, as very professional and Kubrick also allowed her to bring her own ideas into the plot - so came the gesture of sliding your hands up Nicholson's body first until she touches his face and she touches kiss, from her.

• The US version is a good half an hour longer than the European version, which was cut by Kubrick himself. She focuses on the prehistory, the visions of the Torrance son. The time divisions are also finer. Among other things, a scene in which Tony Burton lends a snow vehicle to Burton in the role of Larry Durkin and a scene with Anne Jackson as Danny's doctor have been cut.

A replica of the door from the movie as part of Stanley Kubrick: The Exhibit at the Toronto International Film Festival

• Shining contains the most repetitive take in film history: the scene in which Wendy and Danny flee to the bathroom, Jack smashes the door with the ax and Wendy screams for her life in a panic. According to Kubrick's information, this shot was shot 127 times and is now in the Guinness Book of Records . Kubrick may have been inspired by similar sequences from the films Der Fuhrmann des Todes (1921) by Victor Sjöström and Broken Blossoms (1919) by DW Griffith . The most famous quote in the film also comes from this scene, Jack Nicholson's "Here is Johnny" (in German dubbing: "Here is Jacky"), when he smashed the door with an ax (in the book it is a Roque bat ). Nicholson improvised this quote while shooting, alluding to Johnny Carson .

• At the end of the film you can see that Jack can be seen in a photo from 1921. In an interview with Michel Ciment, Kubrick stated that Jack was a reincarnation of a previous hotel employee.

• Danny Lloyd was only six years old when it was filming and for years did not know he had starred in a horror film as the team consistently kept him away from the subject of the film. At the age of 17 he saw the uncut version for the first time.

Aftermath

The Simpsons episode The Shinning (season 6, episode 6) parodies the film in the Halloween series Treehouse of Horror .

The special episode Hotel Luxury End from the radio play series DiE DR3i makes reference to the film or the novel as well as to the director and actors of the film. In the radio play the car master “Mr. Overlook ”, the receptionist“ Mr. Stanley ”, the lift boy“ Jack ”and the bartender“ Lloyd ”. Furthermore, the characters locked up in the story of the radio play in the hotel are named "Torrance", "Stuart" and "Danny".

In Steven Spielberg's 2018 movie Ready Player One , a scene takes place in a digital replica of the Overlook Hotel. In addition to numerous allusions to the horror characters appearing in the film, Spielberg even took over the camera angles of the original film, but instead of Jack Torrance and his family let his protagonists Parzival, Art3mis, Aech, Zhou and Daito wander through the corridors of the hotel.

In the video game Life Is Strange , published in 2015, multiple allusions are made to Shining. So you can find in the game z. B. the word REDRUM written on a blackboard.

publication

Shining opened in US cinemas on May 23, 1980, and in Germany on October 16, 1980. 10 days later, on October 26, 1980, the film also opened in Great Britain.

Stephen King's review and remake

In 1997, the novel was remade in the USA as the three-part television film The Shining . Stephen King wrote the script and was one of the producers. He had expressed himself very dissatisfied several times with the film adaptation by Kubrick. In King's opinion, Nicholson's game ousted the main character of the novel, the hotel. King continued: “I was deeply disappointed with the end result. [...] Kubrick just couldn't grasp the sheer, inhuman evil of the Overlook Hotel. Instead, he shot a domestic tragedy with only vague supernatural hints. "

continuation

Based on the literary sequel published by King in 2013, the sequel Doctor Sleep's Awakening was released in November 2019 . Ewan McGregor stars as the adult Danny. Mike Flanagan is responsible for the script and production .

synchronization

The synchronization was created by Berliner Synchron GmbH . Wolfgang Staudte was responsible for both the dialogue book and the dialogue direction . In the German versions of Kubrick's previous films Uhrwerk Orange and Barry Lyndon , the same voice actor, actor Jörg Pleva , lent his voice to the main male characters, played by Malcolm McDowell and Ryan O'Neal , and has now also been cast in Shining on Nicholson. The reason for this unusual line-up, which took no account of the regular line-up of O'Neal and Nicholson, is a letter from Kubrick to Staudte to Uhrwerk Orange , in which Kubrick expressed his enthusiasm for the German voice and explained that Pleva's voice was a lot fit better for the movie than McDowell's own voice.

The hotel director, played by Barry Nelson, is dubbed in the German version by Joachim Kerzel . Kerzel is usually used as the regular speaker for Nicholson. In the dialogue between the two characters this seems a bit strange today. However, at the time of Shining , Manfred Schott Nicholson was the standard German speaker; Only after Schott's fatal accident in 1982 did Kerzel take on his synchronous roles, including Dustin Hoffman's .

role	actor	Voice actor
Jack Torrance	Jack Nicholson	Jörg Pleva
Wendy Torrance	Shelley Duvall	Eva Kinsky
Danny Torrance	Danny Lloyd	Carlo Beddies
Dick Hallorann	Scatman Crothers	Edgar Ott
Delbert Grady	Philip Stone	Wolfgang Spier
Lloyd	Joe Turkel	Friedrich W. Building School
Stuart Ullman	Barry Nelson	Joachim Kerzel
District manager 1	David Baxt	Wilfried Friday
District manager 2	Manning Redwood	Friedrich Georg Beckhaus

music

The music used in the film consists of compositions by Rachel Elkind and Wendy Carlos , who already composed electronic music for Kubrick's film A Clockwork Orange (1971) , mainly from works from the 20th century that were not explicitly written for the film. In particular, the unusual tonal and harmonic means of the chosen compositions contribute to the atmosphere of the film. Already in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Kubrick consciously used pieces by composers of New Music in order to be able to condense the visual impression with their radicalism. The vinyl release of the film music, which was released in 1980, contains the following titles:

1. Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind: Main Title “The Shining” (adaptation of the Dies-Irae motif of the 5th movement Songe d'une nuit du Sabbat (Witches' Sabbath) of the Symphonie fantastique op. 14 by Hector Berlioz )
2. Wendy Carlos & Rachel Elkind: Rocky Mountains
3. György Ligeti : Lontano for large orchestra
4. Béla Bartók : Music for string instruments, percussion and celesta: Adagio
5. Krzysztof Penderecki : Utrenja (Entombment of Christ) for solos (soprano, alto, tenor, bass, basso profondo), two mixed choirs and orchestra
6. Krzysztof Penderecki: When Jacob woke up from sleep, he saw that God had been there. But he didn't notice it for orchestra
7. Krzysztof Penderecki: De natura sonoris No. 2 for orchestra
8. Henry Hall And The Gleneagles Hotel Band: Home

In addition, other works are used in the film:

1. Ray Noble : It's All Forgotten Now
2. Ray Noble: Midnight, the Stars and You
3. Jack Hylton : Masquerade
4. Krzysztof Penderecki: Canon for string orchestra
5. Krzysztof Penderecki: Polymorphia for 48 string instruments

criticism

This section consists only of a cunning collection of quotes from movie reviews. Instead, a summary of the reception of the film should be provided as continuous text, which can also include striking quotations, see also the explanations in the film format .

“An effective horror thriller only on the surface, the film is a masterfully staged study of the interaction between reality and appearance, reality and illusion, of the traumatic abysses that open up beyond common sense. The conventional fable is the occasion for a suggestive symphony of horror, which confirms the audience in their genre expectations and at the same time misleads their gaze. "

- Lexicon of international film

“ The Shining begins with a trip into the blue, into the sheer power of a mountain world that is surrounded by bright sun. A realistic and at the same time illusory world. Nicholson appears as a friendly, calm family man, as a budding writer who seeks peace with his family for half a year. Kubrick very quickly breaks through this illusion, which is also fragile for the viewer from the start. The clairvoyant abilities of Danny (excellently played by Danny Lloyd) are paired with the bloodlust that banishes life from the hotel. The maze in front of the hotel, constructed from a meticulously cut hedge, becomes a symbol of fear, horror, persecution and hopelessness. Danny's, Jack and Wendy's fantasies are mixed up with reality, the boundaries of trauma and insanity here, of what is believed to be only tangible and tangible, blur, the levels of time get completely mixed up. "

- Ulrich Behrens : filmstarts.de

“Perfectionist Kubrick is said to have repeated individual scenes up to 148 times. It was worth it: Shining became a nerve-wracking masterpiece. Conclusion: horror with grandeur: a real milestone. "

- Cinema

Awards

Saturn Award

• Scatman Crothers for Best Supporting Actor

Nominated for:

• Best Director (Stanley Kubrick)
• Best horror film
• Best Music (Wendy Carlos / Rachel Elkind)

Golden raspberry nominated for:

• Stanley Kubrick in the Worst Director category
• Shelley Duvall in the Worst Actress category

The American Film Institute compiled a list of the 100 Thrills, and placed Shining at number 29.

In 2018 it was accepted into the National Film Registry .

literature

• Michael Gräper: Shining. In: Ursula Vossen (Hrsg.): Film genres horror film. Reclam Leipzig 2004.
• Stefan Preis: Signs of Violence. The media representation of the family, gender roles and ethnic conflicts in "The Shining" and "Candyman". Texts on the controversial film. Scientific publishing house Berlin 2015.

Web links

Commons : Shining (1980)  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Shining in the Internet Movie Database (English)
• Shining in the online film database
• Shining at rotten tomatoes (English)
• Shining at Metacritic (English)
• Review on filmzentrale.com
• Review In: Die Zeit online
• Shining on epilog.de
• It opens doors… - Essay about the door as a symbol in the horror film The Shining by Stefan Höltgen in F.LM - Texts on the film

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Certificate of Release for Shining . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry (PDF; test number: 51853 / V).
2. ↑ Info on imdb.com
3. ↑ Independent: Read the alternative phrases to 'All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy' Stanley Kubrick considered for The Shining
4. ↑ See kubrickfilms.warnerbros.com ( Memento of the original from May 11, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
5. ↑ Interview with 'The Shining's' Lia Beldam - Dennis Villelmi. February 7, 2018, accessed May 18, 2020 . 
6. ↑ "Completely re-shot", stolen film scenes 3/41 , report on einestages.de (accessed on September 15, 2011)
7. ↑ Greatest Unscripted Scenes See listal.com
8. ^ The Kubrick Site: Kubrick speaks in regard to 'The Shining'. In: visual-memory.co.uk. Retrieved December 21, 2013 . 
9. ↑ See Trivia on imdb.com
10. ↑ http://www.movietome.com/people/272972/danny-lloyd/bio.html ( Memento from February 20, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ Hotel Luxury End on: rocky-beach.com; Retrieved on: September 8, 2014.
12. ↑ Critique on dieterwunderlich.de
13. ↑ Shining. In: synchronkartei.de. German synchronous index , accessed on May 30, 2017 . 
14. ↑ Manfred Schott, former voice actor for Jack Nicholson on synchronkartei.de, December 13, 2010.
15. ↑ Wendy Carlos's Clockwork Orange (complete original score). Retrieved April 17, 2015 . 
16. ↑ Konrad Heiland: Soundtracks in the Snow. To the soundtrack for THE SHINING (USA 1980, Stanley Kubrick). In: Kiel contributions to film music research. Volume 10, 2013, p. 237ff. First published in: K. Heiland, C. Schöndube: Art - Love - Death / Essays. Claus Richter, Cologne 2011. pp. 149–153.
17. ↑ Discogs: The Shining (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack). Retrieved April 17, 2015 . 
18. ^ Savior, p. 238.
19. ^ What-song: The Shining (1980) soundtrack. Retrieved April 17, 2015 . 
20. ↑ Shining. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .  
21. ^ Criticism on filmstarts.de
22. ↑ film review on cinema.de