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FAQ for
The Shining (1980)

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There's a scene toward the end of the movie, from Wendy's POV, of two men, one in a tuxedo and another dressed up in a bear costume, that is arguably the most bizarre scene in the whole movie, even topping the lady in the bathroom scene. The man in the tuxedo is lying down on the bed, with only his legs visible initially, while the man in the bear suit is kneeling down on the floor at the foot of the bed, his face hovering over the tuxedoed man's crotch. As Wendy looks on in horror and confusion, the costumed man straightens and stares at her, and the tuxedoed man - sensing an audience - sits up and leans into view, and both men stare intently back at her. Now, they aren't naked (although the bear suit is missing its backside, exposing the kneeling man's buttocks), but we can reasonably assume they're doing something sexual. What makes this scene so bizarre is that it's an incredibly short (no more than five seconds), isolated bit of business (we've never seen these men before, nor do they help, hinder, or interact with Wendy in any way) that has no explanation. To understand what's going on, you have to have read the book.

At a point about three quarters of the way through the novel, when "the hotel was running things," as Jack is about to be served his first drink by the Overlook, Danny walks out of the Torrences' apartment within the hotel and attempts to go to Jack and stop the Bad Thing from happening. Blocking his way, however, is a man "dressed in some sort of silvery, spangled costume. A dog costume...." Danny asks to be let by, but the costumed man begins barking and howling and threatening to "eat [Danny] up," starting with his "plump, little cock." The man then makes references to "blowing down" Harry Derwent, and continues to menace Danny until the boy goes back inside the Torrences' living quarters. Later, during one of those time-bending sequences when the hotel brings its past back to life, the mystery man's identity is explained. One of the Overlook's former owners was a man named Horace Derwent, an eccentric Howard Hughes type who poured over three million into restoring the Overlook after WWII, hoping to make it "the Showplace of the World." At one of his lavish masques thrown for the benefit of the rich and famous, Horace played mockingly with one of the guests - Roger - who was dressed up like a dog. During the hotel's "re-enactment" of the party for Jack, a gorgeous woman explains to him that Derwent is bisexual ("AC/DC...although he never goes for repeats on his DC side"), and Roger is a former lover. According to the woman, Horace told Roger "if he came to the masked ball as a doggy, a cute little doggy, he might reconsider (having sex with Roger)." Although no actual sex scene between Roger, the costumed man, and Derwent is described in the book, Kubrick's vision is a logical extension of their relationship.

It's difficult to say why this scene remains in the film, as it's somewhat confounding without all of the setup that King provides in the book. Perhaps its jarring incongruity is reason enough for its inclusion, illustrating as it does Wendy's extreme disorientation at that point in the film. Another explanation is that the background on Derwent may have been scripted and filmed, but excised in the final cut.

He can therefore he does. He must have had total control over the story line in making the movie. I feel the movie is much better but if Stephen King was disappointed with the changes I can see why, as there are so many. What he changed and how he did it is the most important clue to understanding the mystery of the film. After reading the book I've discovered something in the movie that's very well hidden, something that Stephen King has never said anything about even though he must have noticed it right away; Stanley Kubrick didn't just randomly alter things from the novel (as many viewers think), he's reversed them. Its like looking in a mirror where images are the reverse of whats real. It's been noted how important mirrors are and parts of the movie are not just changed from the novel but are inverted mirror images (opposites) of what happens in the novel. I realized this with the colors of the two main vehicles in the story. In the novel they're brought to The Overlook in a red VW and saved on a yellow snowmobile. In the movie they're brought to The Overlook in a yellow VW and saved in a red Sno-cat. These color changes were meant to be noticed and this inversion can't be ignored, he's even done it with the plot. Stanley Kubrick has taken Stephen Kings novel and held it up to a mirror and what we're seeing in the movie is that reflection. A reflection where, in typical Kubrick fashion, just enough obvious changes are puzzlingly noticeable (The Hedge Maze and colors) and just enough is left alone (names and places), not being so obvious as to give it all away; Exactly like the numbers he wants us to notice.

If you would like to see some of what was altered in the movie go to http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/12/differences-between-novel-and-movie.html and see.


The date on the screen, 7/4/1921, is meaningless unless you add up its component numbers. Its put at the very end of the movie as a clue to another date he has in mind, an ancient Indian prediction of the end of the world just a few years from now. Stanly Kubrick may have wanted us to wonder about this fictitious date while giving us numerical clues throughout the movie to the real date he believes to be an Indian prediction of the Apocalypse. In The End, The End is The End.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Thedate.jpg



Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and read more.


Everything in his movies means something, and the time codes of the four shots filmed entirely in the reflection of a mirror are part of a code that Stanley Kubrick wants us to notice throughout the movie. Just as we would never know Redrum is murder if we didnt see it in the reflection of a mirror, we would never know of the number 11s significance(a mirror image of itself) if we didnt look at the time codes of the four mirror shots. Mirrors are the key clue that leads to the explanation of what the puzzling date at the end of the movie, July 4th 1921, actually means.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Mirrorshots.jpg

Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and read more.


One of the most puzzling questions in The Shining has always been; what happened to Jack at the end of the movie? In Stephen Kings novel he dies in the boiler explosion, but nothing that simple happens here. We see him frozen solid but what was also included in the first directors cut, and later removed, is that his body couldn't be found by the police. This is very important. He just disappears and to answer the question we should look at something else first; was Jack ever in the hotel before?

What would lead us to believe Jacks been to The Overlook before? Early on he says to Wendy, It was as though I had been here before but that doesn't prove anything. Gradys famous line, I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You have always been the caretaker, I should know, sir. I've always been here cannot be used as proof that Jacks returned because his visions of Grady may just be a product of his imagination combined with his growing madness and his ability to Shine. If The Overlook is saying this it to him it cant be believed because as Danny states in Stephen Kings novel, The house always lies. Then we see it! Jack appears standing in The Overlook in the last picture of the movie dated 7/4/1921. Ask anybody whos seen The Shining if Jack Torrance has ever been there before and theyll all use this picture as the one irrefutable example.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/741921.jpg

Of course he was, Ive seen a picture of him with a date under it from 1921, Im absolutely sure of it; Are you fing crazy?. Its just too easy and as Ill show you Stanly Kubricks put specific suggestions in our heads throughout the movie; Jack may have never been in the hotel before.

Any serious discussion of this film must address what happens in the last scene and cant be considered complete without it. Weve seen throughout the movie that whenever someone Shines something moves, changes color or disappears whether inside or outside of The Overlook. Just about everything in the last shot except the ceiling and floor has changed, and this alters everything. Are we seeing the vision this time with the song "Midnight, The Stars and You" playing in our ears?

The chairs are now covered indicating to me that The Caretaker is gone. The Gold Room sign moves across the floor from left to right but hasnt changed with the same 2 artists pictures on it, indicating to me that were still in the present time frame and not in the past.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Lobby.jpg

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/LobbyUpClose.jpg

The mirrors on the sides of the 21 pictures are gone, replaced by Indian artwork, and the red couch has now disappeared.

Lastly theres the most important alteration in the whole movie, the 21 pictures on the wall. Theyre entirely different from what was in this spot when weve seen it several other times throughout the movie and the most puzzling image dead center, Overlook Hotel July 4th Ball 1921, just wasnt there before this last shot of the movie.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/MirrorsandCouch.jpg

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/NoMirrorsorCouch.jpg

Its obvious someone Shined that picture onto the wall at the end of the movie, but everyone with this power is either dead or has left the building; Who did it this time?

Stanley Kubrick has added yet another brilliant twist to this movie (maybe one of the greatest hidden twists in movie history); In the end as the camera zooms in on the center picture we, the audience, are the only ones there in the lobby. Jack was never there in 1921 but we, never realizing that its us doing it, Shine him to the spot on the wall where we believe he was and now belongs; back into the Overlooks past. In the end he doesnt exist anymore. Nothing more, nothing less. Weve turned him into just a picture on a wall. Frozen for all time. Throughout this entire movie weve been guided by the art of Stanley Kubricks simple suggestions and are positive in our belief that Jack Torrance was in a past life, Grady, The Overlooks caretaker. In the end, again, were seeing a reflection of what we thought was real. Whats red is yellow and whats yellow, red. Unbelievable!





Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and see.


Something very odd moves around in "The Shining". It was one of the first things I ever noticed and I just knew it was the most common of continuity errors seen hundreds of times in other movies. Than I read Stephen King's novel and everything changed. Tony is Danny's imaginary friend and can be seen in the novel. As I noted before Stanley Kubrick is showing us an inverted image of Stephen King's novel, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/12/differences-between-novel-and-movie.html and now Tony is invisible; but he is still there if you know where to look. In the movie Tony is not only a voice inside Danny, but he's an actual invisible entity. In fact anyone else who "Shines" in this movie also has an invisible entity around them. This may be a little hard to comprehend but the proof of what I'm saying is in the pictures. Every time one of these invisible entities makes an appearance in the movie they do the exact same thing. I'll show you the pictures first and see if you can find where they are in each one.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Chairs1-1.jpg http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Chairs2-1.jpg http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Chairs3-1.jpg http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Chairs4-1.jpg

Did you notice the chairs Stanley Kubrick moved between shots? This is not a mistake, it's deliberate and he did it 5 separate times. The invisible entities are present and sit in a chair making themselves comfortable, hanging around their host. There should be no confusion as to whether The Overlook itself is causing this because it happens twice in the hotel and twice outside of it. Therefore the moving chairs are happening as a result of "Shining" and not any other popular phenomena like ghosts.

As I've already stated it's pretty obvious that all these people have the same ability. I've shown this many times in pictures throughout my blog but now just look at the 6 chairs to the right of Mr. Ullman that move between shots in this scene. 6 people who arguably have varying degrees of the "Shine" are present and no one went near any of these 6 chairs.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Chairs5-1.jpg

I'm sure that these invisible entities are the power behind what's causing everything to move around, disappear, and change colors and the person who "Shines" or their invisible entity is present in the scene when they do. The actual characters have no idea what's going on. It's their subconscious that is doing it and Danny is the only one who may have the slightest clue. It's obvious that Dick Hallorann and Wendy have imaginary friends; but what about Jack, his are a little different because we can actually see them. We know that Charles Grady was an actual person who worked in The Overlook, murdered his family then killed himself. The other one, Delbert Grady, never actually exists and is Jack's subconscious version of Danny's imaginary friend Tony. That's why he's able to let him out of the storeroom without Jack's conscious mind (or the audience's) knowing it. Grady and Tony probably communicate without Jack or Danny ever knowing it. I'm sure this is how Danny was beat up during Jack's nightmare. There never was and old woman in room 237 while they were The Overlook, just a vision of one who was there in the past. It's true that Jack is talking to himself when he speaks to Grady with the mirror in front of him. Don't forget about Lloyd the bartender he's part of Jack's subconscious also as he speaks to himself again with a mirror in front of him. As the movie progresses the madder Jack gets the more stuff happens, it's his subconscious that's doing everything. It's amazing how much mystery there is in this movie and all the answers are right there in front of us.

Someone else also had an invisible friend sitting next to him when he did his dirty work.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Gradyschair1.jpg

First of all the axe is the same one that Jack uses later in the movie, but the important thing is the overturned chair. The chairs we see throughout The Overlook are not the same style as this one but I knew that if I looked through the movie I would find this particular chair somewhere in there. We see it a total of four times but the thing that's really important is that every time we see it it's upside down. It's right outside of Wendy and Jacks apartment.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Gradyschair2.jpg http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Gradyschair3.jpg http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Gradyschair4.jpg

Charles Grady was also able to "Shine" and his invisible entity was sitting in that very chair before he killed his family and himself. The reason the chair is now overturned is because there's nothing sitting there any more.



Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and see.


He wants the audience to notice them. Room 237 adds up to 12, the 21 pictures on the wall in the final shots, the numbers of the date 7/4/1921 added together equal 24, and Danny wearing the number 42 on his sweatshirt in their bathroom.

Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and read more.


Does The Overlook Shine?

At first I thought that the hotel was behind everything out of the ordinary that happened in the movie, and thats what were supposed to think, until you look deeper. In the movie were seeing a mirror image (reversal) of many major plot points from the novel, whats red is yellow and whats yellow is red. But in typical Kubrick fashion he doesnt make this obvious. In the novel Jacks possessed by The Overlook, and in the movie were led to believe, that its possessing him again. Whats actually happening may be a complete reversal of this. I believe the cast members who Shine are controlling everything that happens in the movie. The visions and ghosts are all in their own minds (at least up to the last scene)! Jacks ability to Shine coupled with his decent into insanity is whats causing many of the spooky goings on in the movie and not The Overlook itself. In fact I believe Stanley Kubrick put an almost unbelievable twist to his version of The Shining; Hes totally reversed what was in Steven Kings novel and The Overlook isnt possessed or even haunted, and doesnt have the special ability to Shine like its visitors. I cant think of one other director that could (or would even try to) pull something like this off, and the proof is this. If The Overlook were able to Shine Dick Hallorann would have immediately picked it up when he was working there, just like he immediately picked up Dannys ability when they first met and he warned him not to go into room 237. If you find this a little hard to believe just think about this; everything were told about Shining comes from one source, the lips of Dick Hallorann. Whether were reading the novel or looking at the movie, hes the only one that knows anything or says anything about it. Hes a board certified expert on the subject, and when he says the Overlook Hotel here has somethin' almost like 'shining'." we have to take this as coming from someone that knows exactly what theyre talking about. Somethin' almost like 'shining is not the same thing as Shining, its almost like it. If you look at what he and Danny are talking about over ice cream youll see hes trying to convince him not to go into room 237. The reason is not that hell find anyone in there or that its even dangerous (which he would have told him if it was) but because Danny, with his very special ability, will see the echo of something that was there in the past, exactly like what he knew the maid in the novel saw. All these years everyones thought that The Overlook was in control, and now it may be that the exact opposite is true.

Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and see.


If you look closely at the movie, people who Shine may have the ability to move things and change the color of surroundings and personal items. Stanley Kubrick masterfully hides this, along with the fact that Jack has this very same ability. Its quite obvious if you look closely and I believe Jack Shines and rolls his yellow ball toward Danny, luring him to room 237. And the proof is in the pictures.

http://i266.photobucket.com/albums/ii273/photojonny2007/Extras/Shining.jpg

Its obvious, they're both "Shining" and the Red Indian moves each time. We know that Dick Hallorann has this ability and a red Calumet can appears out of nowhere right next to his head when he telepathically talks to Danny, and disappears in the very next shot when he stops. When Jack Shines and unlatches the storeroom door there are now six (even more unseen) red Calumet cans near his head, and they werent there when Wendy dragged him in. The increase in the number of cans may indicate how much more of this power he has over that of Dick Hallorann. I believe Jack not only rolls the ball to Danny luring him to room 237 but is the cause of the other items that move in The Overlook.

Not only is this obvious to anyone that looks, but the proof of this statement can be found if you read Stephen Kings novel. In the movie theres not one aspect of the novel that has been left out, some things just have to be searched for. Then youll say I never noticed that when theyre pointed out to you. For me one of the best parts of the novel was when The Overlook animates certain objects for its guests. Its absurd to think that Stanley Kubrick would leave out such a great plot point from the novel, and if you look closely; he doesnt. Even though its impossible to prove which movements in the movie are deliberate and which arent, the proof that there are deliberate movements, is in the novel itself. The three items Im referring to from the novel were all out in the open and obvious. The Hedge Animals, the fire hose, and the elevators all moved on their own, but what Stanley Kubrick did to these three items in the movie just cannot be ignored and should be explained by anyone who thinks theres no such thing as a deliberate continiuity error. Stanley Kubrick has totally reversed what happens in Steven Kings novel again, and no one can dispute that these three items that were animated by The Overlook in the novel, glaringly, remain motionless throughout the entire movie.

None of them budges an inch and not only do they not move but the elevators dont even change floors. It appears that what The Overlook moves in the novel doesnt move in the movie, its obvious and its been reversed. Whats not so obvious is that reversing this leaves it open for Stanley Kubrick to move any other object thats not one of the three from the novel; and as unbelievable as this sounds, its precisely what he did. The power that moves the objects has also been reversed and The Overlook does none of it in the movie. Just like the numbers Stanley Kubrick wants us to notice, the movements Im speaking about are pretty obvious when someone points them out.



Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html and see more.


Even though he never stated this, Stanley Kubrick may be using color to indicate when certain characters are Shining as surroundings and possessions which are entirely yellow or red are numerous as well as obvious. In the novel oranges are what Dick Hallorann smelled as he Shined and being that smell cant be adequately brought across to theater audiences, Stanley Kubrick just happens to makes a brilliant decision (or maybe this just appears by accident) to use the two pigments that painters add together to make orange. Red and yellow equals orange, Shining. Its also interesting to note that important red items in the novel are yellow in the movie, and important yellow items are red.

Go to my blog with almost 400 interesting pictures from the movie, http://jonnys53.blogspot.com/2007/06/what-you-may-or-may-not-have-seen.html to see more.


Like other aspects in the story, this is explained in the book but not in the movie.

In the book, the woman's name is Mrs. Massey. She came to the Overlook hotel and had an affair with a much younger man, and every night, she would get very drunk at the bar, and the two would go back to their room to do their business. After a few days, the young man came down while Mrs. Massey was passed out and took off in the Porsche they came in and didn't come back. In the evening the next day, Mrs. Massey went into the bathtub of her room (room 217) and killed herself by taking thirty sleeping pills washed down with liquor. Her husband flew in from New York and threatened to sue Mr. Ullman, the hotel operator, over his wife's death. However, after realizing what scandal it would cause the both of them, Ullman and Mr. Massey covered up the death by getting the coroner to change the cause of death to a heart attack. Afterward, anyone with the Shining was able to see Mrs. Massey in the bathtub of room 217.

In the movie, this whole subplot is excluded, yet the old woman in the bathtub (in room 237) is kept in. The easy explanation then is that room 237 is merely a haunted room where the old lady died. When Danny entered the room, the old lady tried to strangle him.

However, when Jack enters the room, instead there is a naked young woman in the tub. She gets out of the tub and she and Jack begin kissing. Only after he opens his eyes while kissing her does she turn into the old woman, who laughs at him and chases him out of the room.

There is still room for interpretation of the role of the old woman in the movie, even without the storyline explanation. Throughout the story, the hotel is trying to lead Jack away from his family by different methods, mainly by alcohol. He becomes dedicated to his caretaking job and to the hotel (one reason why he doesn't let Wendy leave the hotel when Danny falls ill). Thus, when he learns that someone else is in the hotel, he has, in a way, failed his duty as the caretaker. He goes into room 237 to investigate the appearance of the old woman, who is an part of the hotel. If he had gone into the room to confront the old woman, he would be confronting part of the hotel. The hotel, trying to lure Jack to its side, would not want this confrontation. Instead, it lures him closer to it by changing the old woman into a pretty young woman. Jack falls for the trap and begins kissing her. She then changes back to the old woman, laughing at him, mocking him for his infidelity to his wife. Jack leaves in terror, locks the room, and then lies to Wendy to cover up the whole ordeal.

Alternately, while differing from the novel's explanation, going on nothing but what information is given in the film itself, it's possible that she is meant to be Grady's wife, murdered along with his two daughters. This is the only instance of murder mentioned in the film, and does correspond to the only ghosts seen for most of the movie: an adult woman and two little girls. The bodies were left stacked in an unspecified room, which could easily have been room 237, the one room both Danny and Halloran sense as being threatening.


There can be many interpretations, however. This is just one popular theory.

"I want to try and put at rest the interminable [helicopter shadow] debate re. an apparent mistake in The Shining. I cut the title sequence, so I speak with some authority. I've said quite a lot about this before, so I hope this really is the last time! While I did the first cut, it is just possible that Ray Lovejoy made some alterations to the picture when he was finalising the front titles and credits - I have a distinct recollection of him asking me for the trims - but I think not. But I do have a recollection that at one stage in the movie some of those cuts were going to be dissolves. It is just possible that when we changed that mix to a straight cut we went back slightly beyond the centre point of the dissolve to get the absolute maximum length out of the shot. Musically and emotionally I remember we needed absolutely every usable frame of that first long shot with the titles.

OK, some key facts:

Although The Shining was shot with the full academy aperture, it was designed and composed entirely for the 1.85:1 ratio, and that is the only way it should be projected in the theatre.

All the Steenbecks in the cutting rooms accordingly had their screens marked, or even masked off, with the 1.85:1 ratio. The 6-plate Steenbeck in Stanley and Ray's main cutting room was masked off with black masking tape, because you cannot cut a movie properly unless you can see the frame exactly as it will appear in the cinema.

However the helicopter shadow IS almost certainly visible for about 4 or 5 frames at the edge of the 1.85:1 masking. But it was NOT visible on any of the correctly marked-up Steenbecks, or in the main viewing theatre at Elstree, at least, not as the first version of the film left Elstree in 1980. I think now that this mistake may have crept in very late during the editing of the movie when the first caption-title 'The Interview' was shortened by 8 frames on 23 April 1980 and the Main Title/credit sequence was lengthened accordingly by 8 frames, since the music could not be shortened. (This information is based on my original cutting room notes)

Every one of the show prints of the first 6 interpositives for the American release of The Shining was personally checked in the viewing theatre at Elstree by Stanley himself. IF the helicopter shadow was fleetingly visible, either Stanley did not notice it, or it was so trivial that it did not bother him.

Unfortunately the masking and racking in many theatres is incredibly inaccurate. [...] I therefore suspect that people who have seen this "awful" shadow for any length of time on the cinema screen must have seen it projected at completely the wrong ratio (probably 1.66/1!), or incredibly badly racked, or both. Or of course they've seen it on the video, where it's visible for just over a second!

Incidentally (or not so incidentally!), Stanley was NOT at all bothered by the vague shadow of the rotors at the top of the frame in the last shot of th main titles."-Gordon Stainforth, assistant editor for The Shining.

http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/index.html#slot1

Why are there two Gradys?

In Jack's interview, Ullman refers to a crazy caretaker named Charles Grady, who chopped up his family. Later Jack meets a butler called "Delbert" Grady and Jack infers that he was the same caretaker. The deliberacy of the names and their prominence in each of these is crashingly obvious - and would have been all the more so in the case of a film like The Shining, where the shooting and editing processes were particularly painstaking. So, surely it's not a continuity error, and the discrepancy was done on purpose. Why?

The answer to this question is a litmus test of how much thought you want to credit the Kubrick and Johnson for having put into the film. To this contributor, the "inconsistency" is in fact one of those moments (like the more celebrated moment when Grady releases Jack from the storeroom, or to look at another Kubrick film, where in the final "hotel room" we see Dave Bowman and an older "future self" seeing each other in the same shot) where, instead of being inconsistent or "wrong" the scene is instead an explicit sign about what is really happening in the story.

Many people have written about the importance "maze" imagery has in The Shining. Indeed, the labyrinth is the primary metaphor of the entire film, influencing both the literal story and its thematic structure. One of the more disturbing developments of this film's labyrinth is that the further we (and the Torrances) think we have penetrated into The Overlook, the more complicated and confusing our discoveries become. The sum of what we learn refuses to add up neatly - instead, incongruities pile up with the film's insistent mirrorings, duplicity and a general lack of acknowledgment. More specifically, the more we try to make sense of what's happening in the present, the more we're faced with what happened - to the same people perhaps - in the past. This lends credence to the supposition that there is another element of time at work here and another sense of reality in action (again, both literally in terms of the references to reincarnation and repetition in the ghost story, and thematically in terms of many references connecting the family dynamics of the Torrances [or the Gradys] to American history), to a timezone where our notions of "history" and "the present" are somehow (willfully) intermingled.

It's this sense that lends general support to the kind of interpretation - if perhaps not the literal interpretation - found in Bill Blakemore's essay. The Shining does equate choices made by the Torrances - and the impulses those choices serve - with the values of the people who built The Overlook ... "all the best people".

The duality of Delbert/Charles Grady deliberately mirrors Jack Torrance being both the husband of Wendy/father of Danny and the mysterious man in the July 4th photo. It is to say he is two people: the man with choice in a perilous situation and the man who has "always" been at the Overlook. It's a mistake to see the final photo as evidence that the events of the film are predetermined: Jack has any number of moments where he can act other than the way he does, and that his (poor) choices are fueled by weakness and fear perhaps merely speaks all the more to the questions about the personal and the political that The Shining brings up. in the same way Charles had a chance - once more, perhaps - to not take on "Delbert's" legacy, so Jack may have had a chance to escape his role as "caretaker" to the interests of the powerful. It's the tragic course of this story that he chooses not to.-Gordon Dahlquist

Gordon Stainforth (assistant editor) adds: I don't think we'll ever quite unravel this. Was his full name Charles Delbert Grady? Perhaps Charles was a sort of nickname? Perhaps Ullman got the name wrong? But I also think that Stanley did NOT want the whole story to fit together too neatly, so you are absolutely correct I think to say that 'the sum of what we learn refuses to add up neatly'.

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Kubrick told Michel Ciment: "As the supernatural events occurred you searched for an explanation, and the most likely one seemed to be that the strange things that were happening would finally be explained as the products of Jack's imagination. It's not until Grady, the ghost of the former caretaker who axed to death his family, slides open the bolt of the larder door, allowing Jack to escape, that you are left with no other explanation but the supernatural. [...]Stephen Crane wrote a story called "The Blue Hotel." In it you quickly learn that the central character is a paranoid. He gets involved in a poker game, decides someone is cheating him, makes an accusation, starts a fight and gets killed. You think the point of the story is that his death was inevitable because a paranoid poker player would ultimately get involved in a fatal gunfight. But, in the end, you find out that the man he accused was actually cheating him. I think The Shining uses a similar kind of psychological misdirection to forestall the realisation that the supernatural events are actually happening.."

Gordon Stainforth disagrees: he says, "Stanley was very careful here NOT to make this rely on a supernatural explanation. All we hear is the SOUND of Grady's voice and the bolt being released, which could easily be Jack's imagination. We never see how Jack gets out of the larder. The supernatural explanation is only one of several possibilities. It is possible that Jack broke his way out in some way i.e. in a rage managed to lever the door open, or that Wendy had not locked the door properly (even though she appears to earlier) BUT we don't see her padlock it properly. I think Kubrick wants the supernatural explanation, but he does NOT want the audience to see the door being opened on film."

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"I've always been interested in ESP and the paranormal. In addition to the scientific experiments which have been conducted suggesting that we are just short of conclusive proof of its existence, I'm sure we've all had the experience of opening a book at the exact page we're looking for, or thinking of a friend a moment before they ring on the telephone. But The Shining didn't originate from any particular desire to do a film about this. The manuscript of the novel was sent to me by John Calley, of Warner Bros. I thought it was one of the most ingenious and exciting stories of the genre I had read. It seemed to strike an extraordinary balance between the psychological and the supernatural in such a way as to lead you to think that the supernatural would eventually be explained by the psychological: "Jack must be imagining these things because he's crazy". This allowed you to suspend your doubt of the supernatural until you were so thoroughly into the story that you could accept it almost without noticing.

I think, in some ways, the conventions of realistic fiction and drama may impose serious limitations on a story. For one thing, if you play by the rules and respect the preparation and pace required to establish realism, it takes a lot longer to make a point than it does, say, in fantasy. At the same time, it is possible that this very work that contributes to a story's realism may weaken its grip on the unconscious. Realism is probably the best way to dramatize argument and ideas. Fantasy may deal best with themes which lie primarily in the unconscious. I think the unconscious appeal of a ghost story, for instance, lies in its promise of immortality. If you can be frightened by a ghost story, then you must accept the possibility that supernatural beings exist. If they do, then there is more than just oblivion waiting beyond the grave."

Interview with Michel Ciment

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David Kirkpatrick writes: I'm as guilty as anyone in the newsgroup of plumbing the depths of The Shining in search and exploit missions of sub-texts, bypassing the obvious horror story on the surface (but what a guilty pleasure it is!). This time, though, I'd like to look at some of the stuff on the surface of what Newsweek called "the first epic horror film", if I'm not mistaken.

Well, one characteristic of epics is an encyclopedic scope. Let's look at way in which The Shining is an "encyclopedia" of horror themes.

(1) Ghost / Haunted House. That The Shining is a ghost story is self-evident, so I'll save my detailed remarks for items below.

(2) Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde. Besides being a story about a haunted house, The Shining is also the story of Jack's descent into insanity. Here, alcohol is the magic drug paralleling Dr. Jeckyl's experimental potion. And as Mr. Hyde reflects a side of Dr. Jeckyl that was already there, but stripped of its impediments, so does Jack's ultimate descent reflect character flaws implied at the start. A related horror sub-genre would be the "doppleganger" (or "doubles") theme.

(3) Werewolf. Jack descends not merely into madness, but into something subhuman - his speech deteriorates into grunting at the end. Consider these potential "werewolf" references: "Hair of the dog that bit me." "Little pigs, little pigs" - followed by what is to my ear an imitation of Richard Nixon: "not by the hair of your chinny-chin-chin?" Interestingly, Nixon had possibly the most famous five-o'clock shadow in history (in his debate with Kennedy) and Jack's five-o'clock shadow seems to deepen throughout the film. I can't pinpoint one, but there is probably an image in the film that might connect Jack with 2001's Moonwatcher.

(4) Frankenstein. The most overt connection between The Shining and Frankenstein might be the fact that both end in ice. An interesting behind-the-scenes connection is that The Shining co-stars a Shelley and Frankstein was written by Mary Shelley. (Interestingly, Mary Shelley was the daughter of an important early feminist or proto-feminist, whereas Shelley Duvall, by this stage of her career seemed to be always playing women who were pre-feminist in their awareness. However, a more profound Frankenstein connection can be found via the McLuhanistic interpretation of The Shining , according to which the Gutenberg Printing Press technology is the horror personified by Jack (he is the one who types "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy") and the "shining" represents the disturbing telepathic powers unleashed by the next major technological epic, the electric age. The connection between McLuhan and Shelley's Frankenstein myth becomes more obvious when you consider that McLuhan's first book was entitled The Mechanical Bride, after a Fritz Leiber SF story of the same name. Fritz Leiber's most famous novel is probably "Conjure, Wife", which brings us to point (5).

(5) Witchcraft. In The Shining, it seems to be males who have the power to "shine", a supernatural ability which could be likened to witchcraft. Witch stories, of course, can go either way - they can be sympathetic to the victims of evil witches or to the unfair victims of witchhunts - pagans and various unpopular eccentrics. Arguably, The Shining plays it both ways - Jack persecutes Danny because Danny "shines", but Jack's hallucinations or communication with the spirit world also designates him as evil sorcerer. The fate of North America's first "pagans" hangs over the film's proceedings providing an important context, if not a subtext.

(6). Vampires. Well, I don't mean to judge a book by its cover, but take a look at Lloyd the bartender! Here the reversal is that it is the vampire doling out fluids. When Delbert Grady tries to recruit Jack as his successor, this strikes me as akin to the epidemic dynamic that seems to be central to vampire stories. If ghost stories find horror in death, werewolf stories in our animal nature, Frankenstein stories in technology and witchcraft in other religions (i.e. magic, secret knowledge, unfamiliar science), then vampire stories find horror in disease. The remoteness of the Overlook Hotel echoes that of Dracula's castle, with the reversal that it has the sense of being in to the west, not the east.

(7) The Devil. "I'd sell my goddamn soul for a glass of beer." Jack makes a Faustian bargain with the Hotel.

(8) Oedipus. The horror associated with the conflict between father and son. Danny messes up Jack's papers (Gutenberg complex?), Jack breaks Danny's arm, Danny's emotional problems incriminate Jack, Jack tries to kill Danny, Danny in effect engineers his father's death by escaping.

(9) The Psychopath. A more modern theme: Stephen King complained that Kubrick changed Jack Torrance from a good man destroyed by alcoholism into someone who was bad from the start. But the other side of this is there is one more layer to the onion. To find that one's spouse or parent is hollow - there is a basic kind of horror associated with that.

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After rejecting King's own efforts at turning his novel into a screenplay Kubrick turned to Diane Johnson, an American novelist and critic who published a number of novels which Kubrick admired, including "The Shadow Knows" which he considered making into a film.

As Johnson tells it: "Kubrick was thinking of making either the Stephen King or my novel, "The Shadow Knows." And, you know, he ultimately decided on the King. "The Shadow Knows" had some problems like being a first person narrative, the only other one that I've done actually . . . well, almost . . . and, but anyway, he and I, in talking about it got along better than he and Stephen King, I guess. (Laughs). So, he just . . . he would call me up for about a week or two. It's very much a story that other of his writers tell. You know, you get these calls from Kubrick and then he proposes a meeting, and then he proposes you come in and write a script. And, so I did. And I spent, oh, I don't know, a couple of months . . . I guess eleven weeks all together, so almost three months in London, working everyday with him."

Kubrick was also interested in Johnson because he learnt that she was giving a course at the University of California at Berkeley on the Gothic novel and could bring a scholarly knowledge of literary horror to the script. He called her the ideal collaborator for The Shining.

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Initially King was flattered that Kubrick was going to do something of his. Later he expressed disappointment in the film. "There's a lot to like about it. But it's a great big beautiful Cadillac with no motor inside, you can sit in it and you can enjoy the smell of the leather upholstery - the only thing you can't do is drive it anywhere. So I would do everything different. The real problem is that Kubrick set out to make a horror picture with no apparent understanding of the genre. Everything about it screams that from beginning to end, from plot decisions to the final scene - which has been used before on the Twilight Zone"

King had the chance to "do everything different" with the 1997 TV movie adaptation of The Shining which he wrote and produced. However, the TV Shining was poorly received and generally considered to be vastly inferior to the Kubrick version. Friction between Kubrick and King was probably further exacerbated because Kubrick refused King the rights to release his version of The Shining on video.

Recently it has emerged that King used to be an alcoholic, and that parts of The Shining are, if not autobiographical, then very personal for the author. King was annoyed because Kubrick's adaptation, in his eyes, marginalised the book's most important theme: that a good father can be turned into a monster through alcohol abuse.

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"The Shining" took an estimated 200 days to shoot, according to production charts kept by Variety. However Gordon Stainforth, who joined the production just after the end of photography, says that he thought the shoot had taken the best part of a year.

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The two versions of The Shining are the US cut with has a running time of 144 minutes and the international version which is 20 minutes shorter. Both versions have the status of "director's cuts" as Kubrick made the cuts himself.

In November 1980 Monthly Film Bulletin ran a piece itemising the differences between versions. Here is a summary of that article:



Scene cut from the US version during 1st run:

(1) A two-minute sequence was deleted from the end of the film in the first weeks of its run. A coda to Wendy and Danny's escape (which followed the shot of Jack frozen in the maze). This showed Wendy being visited in hospital by Ullman, and his complimenting her on having survived.



After playing to what Movie Comment calls "generally bad reviews and erratic box-office in America," the film was preview-tested before its opening in London and a further twenty-five minutes were cut.

Scenes cut from the international version:

(1) Part of Jack's interview at the Overlook Hotel.

(2) Danny's examination by a doctor (Anne Jackson).

(3) Part of the tour of the Overlook with Ullman, Jack and Wendy, including the dialogue in the Colorado Lounge and the beginning of the scene where Ullman shows Jack and Wendy the hotel grounds and the scene leading up to Dick Hallorann's first appearance where Ullman shows off "The Gold Room."

(4) Part of Danny's conversation alone with Hallorann.

(5) The end of the Torrances' first scene in the hotel, when Wendy brings Jack his breakfast.

(6) Immediately after the scene in which Wendy and Danny explore the maze, a sequence has been cut in which Wendy is seen working in the kitchen while a TV announcer talks of a search in the mountains for a missing woman.

(7) THURSDAY title card.

(8) Wendy and Danny watching the Summer of '42 on television.

(9) Dialogue from the middle of the scene in which Jack first goes to the Gold Room.

(10) Wendy is seen crying and talking to herself about the possibility of getting down the mountain in the snowcat, and of calling the Forest Rangers.

(11) Dick Hallorann again tries to get through to the Overlook by calling the Ranger station.

(12) 8AM title card.

(13) Hallorann asks a stewardess what time they are due to land in Denver; she tells him 8:20 and he checks his watch. Jack is seen typing in the lounge of the Overlook. Hallorann's plane lands at the airport. Larry Durkin (Tony Burton), a garage owner, answers his phone and talks to Hallorann, who asks for a snowcat to get up to the Overlook.

(14) GS: "A whole scene where Danny is watching TV (a Roadrunner cartoon). After talking to Danny (I think telling him to stay there) Wendy picks up the baseball bat and exits (on her way into the Colorado lounge). I was particularly proud of the way I 'choreographed' the cartoon music on the TV with Wendy's movements. There was then a long dissolve, as the cartoon music faded, to Wendy entering the Colorado lounge. After a pause I then gently faded in the start of the Penderecki music as Wendy walks towards Jack's desk."

(15) The beginning of the scene in which Wendy finds Jack's type-written pages covered with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" (GS: This then is really cut (14), i.e. the second half of the dissolve plus a few more seconds of Wendy walking into the Colorado lounge).

(16) A tableau in which skeletons are sitting at a table with a champagne bottle and glasses.

Notes (1) You can read the whole article at on-line at Stanley Kubrick 1928-1999 (back).

(2) GS thinks Ullman's hospital visit was cut out after a preview in America, just before the film was released. (back)

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Well, according to the Guinness Book of Records it does. They claim it took Kubrick 125 takes to capture the scene were Shelley Duvall climbs the stairs near the end of the film. But Gordon Stainforth contests this: "I'm sure Shelley never had to repeat a scene 125 times (I think the most takes on one scene was Scatman in the kitchen which was something in the order of 75-85 takes). The scene of Shelley backing up the stairs with the baseball bat was NOT all about acting, it was a very technically difficult piece of Steadicam camera operating as well. Loads of things can and did go slightly wrong on that kind of take. (If my memory is correct it was something in the order of 45 takes.)"

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The establishing shots of the Overlook Hotel are of The Timberline Lodge located on the slopes of Mount Hood in Oregon.

The Overlook, as seen in the film, doesn't exist in real life, the interiors of the Timberline Lodge are different to Kubrick's sets, however it is true to say the Overlook is an amalgamation of bits of real hotels located in the USA. For example, the blood red men's room was modelled on a men's room in a hotel in Arizona designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and the Colorado lounge was modelled on the lounge of the Ahwanee Hotel in the Yosemite Valley. Kubrick conceived the hotel with designer Roy Walker. Walker travelled around the USA photographing hotels which might be suitable for the story. Then they spent weeks going through the photographs making selections for the different rooms. Using the details in the photographs, working drawings were prepared from which small models were built.

A mock up of a facade of the rear of the Timberline Lodge complete with hedge maze was constructed on a back lot in Elstree Studios, England. The real Timberline does not have a maze.

Kubrick and Walker wanted their hotel set to look authentic rather than like a traditionally spooky movie hotel. Kubrick believed that the hotel's labyrinthine layout and huge rooms would provide an eerie enough atmosphere. A realistic approach was also followed in the lighting design, and in every aspect of the hotel's decor. Kubrick took his inspiration from Kafka's writing; his stories were "fantastic and allegorical," but his writing was "simple and straightforward, almost journalistic."

Adapted from Michel Ciment interview

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Yes they were, although Diane Johnson has said that Kubrick used an electric typewriter with a small built-in memory capacity to type the pages. The typewriter could be fed with a phrase and left to repeat it ad infinitum.

Gordon Stainforth adds: I am sorry to disagree with Diane Johnson, but I think this is a complete myth. I have clear memories of Margaret Adams, the production secretary, telling me how she and several other typists had to type all those pages out.

According to the internet movie database, several foreign language versions of Jack's novel were also typed out. Although Gordon Stainforth states this is incorrect too: "To my knowledge these different versions were simply used in the subtitles for the foreign versions." However Vincent Pappalardo writes: In the French version, there actually is the shot of pages typed in French (with a different sentence typed). I don't know about other versions, but I guess it wasn't just done for France. And Francis Catellier-Poulin adds: The translation for "All work and no play..." is "Un tiens vaut mieux que deux tu l'auras." In English it is the equivalent of the (UK?) proverb: "A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush."

Andrea Ronza writes: The phrase in Italian is "Il mattino ha l'oro in bocca", which literally translates as "The morning keeps gold in its mouth". The meaning is something like "You have to start your day in the right way, because the morning is the most propitious moment". This has resonances to the themes in the film; - gold: the golden room, - mouth: Tony lives in Danny's mouth; - morning: maybe 4 am & 8 am, or Jack trying to work every morning but is actually awake very late.

Another equivalence may be the English proverb: 'The early bird catches the worm.'

In the German version of the movie the words "Was du heute kannst besorgen, das verschiebe nicht auf morgen" are clearly seen in the context of the movie, not only as subtitles. The phrase means "Don't do tomorrow what you can do today". The pile of paper with those words are shown, as are Wendy's hands holding some of them. This part seems to have used a different camera, resolution and camera movement are different from the scenes before and after, if only very slightly. This may suggest a re-shot for German viewers.

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The entire negative was exposed, meaning that there was no in-camera hard matting so the film was effectively shot in Academy 1.37 but it wasn't intended to be shown in cinemas that way. The film was shot and conceived for 1:1.85 ratio screening (and the camera viewfinders had the 1.85 framelines marked on them) This is the standard ratio that widescreen films in the US are projected in. The 1:1.85 crop was achieved when the film was projected onto cinemas screens.

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In 1987 Bill Blakemore published an influential essay called "The Family of Man" in the San Francisco Chronicle. Blakemore argued The Shining wasn't really about the murders at the Overlook Hotel, but about the murder of the Native American race. He makes a number of interesting observations to support his case. You can read the entire essay on-line by visiting The Kubrick Site, but here are a few salient points:- (1) The profusion of Indian motifs that decorate the hotel, and serve as background in many of the key scenes represent the fate of the Indians in the USA, woven into the very fabric of the country although denied a voice. (2) The insertion of two lines, early in the film, describing how the hotel was built on an Indian burial ground. (3) The Calumet baking powder cans, in the food store, with their Indian chief logo that Kubrick placed carefully in the two food-locker scenes. (A calumet is a peace pipe.) (4) Blakemore calls these observations "confirmers" such as puzzle-makers often use to tell you you're on the right track. He goes onto say, "The Shining is also explicitly about America's general inability to admit to the gravity of the genocide of the Indians -- or, more exactly, its ability to "overlook" that genocide. Not only is the site called the Overlook Hotel with its Overlook Maze, but one of the key scenes takes place at the July 4th Ball. That date, too, has particular relevance to American Indians. That's why Kubrick made a movie in which the American audience sees signs of Indians in almost every frame, yet never really sees what the movie's about. The film's very relationship to its audience is thus part of the mirror that this movie full of mirrors holds up to the nature of its audience." *** Reaction to Blakemore's essay on amk had been mixed over the years. Some posters think he has some important insights, others that he is completely wrong, there are still others who take the view that he is partially right, but the film ends up being distorted through the lens of his prose. In addition to this, Blakemore also comments upon the significance of the scene immediately after Jack kills Halloran. It is a long shot showing the grinning maniacal Jack standing over Halloran's bleeding body across an Indian motif. This is a metaphor for violence by white people over black people in America (shown as Indian land as represented by the Indian motf on the floor). http://www.visual-memory.co.uk/faq/html/shining/shining.html#slot1114

When Jack is talking to Lloyd the barman he refers to white man's burden. In this case, Jack is referring to alcohol or alcoholism. Some people take the reference literally as evidence for an anti-imperialism subtext because "White Man's Burden" is also the title of a poem by Rudyard Kipling, written in 1889 at the height of the British Empire. The title became a well-known expression.

From the poem, "Take up the White Man's burden- Send forth the best ye breed- Go, bind your sons to exile- To serve your captives' need; To wait, in heavy harness, On fluttered folk and wild- Your new-caught sullen peoples, Half devil and half child."

The expression was the British equivalent of the American term "Manifest Destiny," a concept used by (mostly) European settlers to justify their occupation of what is now the United States of America. To define both concepts briefly: they assert the God given duty of the "civilised" Christian men of Europe to civilise and baptise the heathen aboriginal peoples of the world.

History has shown, however, that in the carrying out this 'sacred duty,' settlers invariably made a mockery of the supposed "Christian values" they were trying to teach.

Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the human cost of colonialism, anti-imperialists in the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a euphemism for imperialism, and Kipling was accused of justifying the policy as a noble enterprise.

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In his dictionary of symbols J. E. Cirlot writes, "Every case of duplication concerns duality" balanced symmetry and the active equipoise [equilibrium] of opposite forces. Double images the symmetrical duplication of forms of figures [...] symbolise precisely that." There are two sorts of doubling produced by reflection.

i. Horizontal doubling that occurs when something is reflected by the surface of a lake - as in the opening shot of The Shining.

ii. Vertical doubling that is produced by looking into a mirror where the image is reversed. An example of vertical doubling is when Jack is shown reflected in a mirror when Wendy brings him breakfast.

William Stewart observed that "a mirror reflects what is in front of it and is the only way we can see ourselves. It is the instrument of self contemplation [...] in some magical way looking though the door of the mirror [reveals] hidden truths." Mirrors also are discussed in Freud's essay "Das Unheimlich". identifying the original function of the 'double' as an insurance against the destruction of the ego, and energetic denial of the power of death' Freud quotes Otto Rank observation that "probably the immortal soul was the first double of the body. [..] but when the double reverses its aspect. From having been an assurance of immortality, it becomes a the uncanny harbinger of death."

French critic Michel Ciment pointed out in his book 'Kubrick' that Danny's response to Jack's violence against him was to invent Tony, "a little boy who lives in his mouth." (this may be a variation on the above observations by Freud and Rank). As Jack descends into madness Danny becomes entirely possessed by Tony and tries to warn Wendy through mirror writing, suggesting that Tony is the mirror of Danny. Other notable doublings of the protagonists in The Shining are Jack and Grady, the former caretaker whose fate Jack seems hopelessly destined to repeat, and the two Grady girls that at first seem identical but on closer inspection are not physically alike at all. Some things double twice, as in the two pairs of two girls that Ullman says goodbye to while showing the Torrences around. Other things double by changing, and changing again, as is the case with the woman in room 237, who changes from a young beauty into a diseased hag when reflected in the bathroom mirror and then into a much older woman floating in the bath tub.

Mark Ervin wrote, "The Shining is a film which penetrates our awareness with disembodied items of reality which clash with expectation. Doubling and mirroring symbolism serves a higher purpose of 'expectation shock.'

Expectation depends on processes by which the mind "normalizes" events into memory traces. The film is a non-stop parade of disintegrating memory traces. The doubling back of time in "The Killing" has been revised into a doubling back on reality. If the mind is unable to sort out what was incomplete or irregular then these traces are lost and forgotten. No surprise that Danny's escape is to retrace his steps and that Wendy talks of leaving a trail of breadcrumbs. Jack, as we are, is trapped in circle of evil he does not understand, a labyrinth created of memories which have proven unreliable and pathways that are then forgotten."

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The Timberline Lodge had a room 217 but no room 237, so the hotel management asked Kubrick to change the room number because they were afraid their guests might not want to stay in room 217 after seeing the film.

from Michel Ciment interview

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The critic Thomas Allen Nelson's in his book, "Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze," pointed out some number games in The Shining. Here are a few of his with a few others which I have added.

Danny wears a shirt numbered 42, and watches 'Summer of '42' with Wendy, the sum of the numbers of room 237 when multiplied together equals 42 (2 x 3 x 7 = 42).

42 is 21 doubled and 24 mirrored. The picture of Jack is dated July 4 1921 and is one of 21 pictures arranged in three horizontal lines on the gold corridor wall). The sum of adding the numbers in the date 4 July (7th month) 1921 adds up to 24 (4+7+1+9+2+1=24)

The number 12 is also a mirror image of 21, the Overlook's radio call number id KDK12, and the screen titles in part three (8am and 4pm) add up to 12. The sum of adding the numbers 237 together also adds up to 12 (2+3+7=12)

It should be noted, however, that such patterns, which don't actually give any additional information to the viewer, can easily be derived from random arrangements of such incredibly small numbers.

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The film was originally shown as part of the BBC's Arena arts programme (discontinued in the mid 1980s) Making The Shining is included on the DVD release of the film. The most recent DVD release also includes an optional commentary track (by Vivian) on the documentary.

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There are definitely a lot of continuity errors in The Shining (some of the major ones are listed below). Whether they are deliberate or accidental is an issue that sparks strong feelings on amk. Contributors to this debate have argued passionately on both sides, listing many plausible instances from the film to support their differing points of view.

Points against: The thrust of this argument is a distrust of reading too much into the film. Any number of accidental happenings could account for the continuity errors.

(1) The high number of takes Kubrick demanded in the film would make continuity errors more likely (cigarettes burning down too quickly, furniture moving etc.) leading to what Garret Brown referred to as the forces of entropy taking over. GS: A point which I have made several times on amk and The Shining forum is a simple one which is often overlooked. That is, that in the process of editing a long scene, when the action gets greatly compressed, so-called 'continuity errors' are almost bound to occur. A good examples of this is the piece of paper in Jack's typewriter in the early 'why don't you get the fuck out of here' scene. In the full version of the scene I am certain that Jack reloaded the typewriter just before continuing his typing.

(2) Part of the Overlook sets were destroyed and had to be rebuilt after a fire at the studio. The fire damaged one shooting stage, which contained the big lobby/Colorado lounge set. The fire destroyed many of the archive photographs on loan from Warner Brothers. Fortunately this happened just AFTER the all scenes which used them had been completed, according to GS rumours that Kubrick ordered the sets to be rebuilt are absolutely false. (1)

(3) Many other filmmakers choose not to adhere to the strict rules of "absolute" continuity, or a perfect, flawless, seamless flow of continuity. For instance Francis Coppola and Martin Scorsese, who is a master at making use of (and intentionally creating) continuity flaws to create an edgy sort of "hyper" rawness to a scene

Points for: (1) Kubrick's famed perfectionist tendencies and love of paradox makes us question the significance of mistakes in his work.

(2) Continuity errors create a temporal and spatial dislocation, giving rise to a sense of menace in the hotel.

(3) Objects disappearing, changing colors, or being moved fits in with Freud's definition of the Uncanny being something that was familiar but now alien, which Kubrick used as a starting point in the scripting of the film.

(4) Some of the errors fit in with the theme of doubling in The Shining, (see question 21 in this section); for instance there are two typewriters, two panels knocked out the door when Jack attacks Wendy with the axe, and two walk in freezers when Hallorann says to Wendy and Danny, "Now, right here is our walk-in freezers tour of the Kitchen."

****

Here is a list of the major continuity errors with theories to account for them in brackets:

* The amount of sandwich that Danny has eaten:

(doubling motif)

* The position of the freezer doors changes:

During the tour of the kitchen Hallorann says to Wendy and Danny: "Now, right here is our walk-in freezer" He turns his head away from the camera as he opens the freezer door on the left side of the frame. When we see him as the freezer door opens, he is holding the door with his other hand. The next cut after that shows them exiting a freezer on the opposite wall from where they entered.

Gordon Stainforth: Yes, this is fascinating. Ray (Lovejoy) and Stanley cut this before I was involved in anyway with the cutting of the picture so I cant help you on this. BUT it has nothing whatever to do with the fire. The kitchen scenes and the freezer were not shot in a normal sound stage at all, but in a nearby warehouse several hundred yards from the other stages ... this was the very warehouse which was used immediately after principle photography as the main Shining cutting room block. (see q. 20 editing The Shining )

(Doubling and mirroring - an attempt to disorient the viewer.)

* Danny's hands in relation to the ice cream bowl. Danny and Hallorann talk about "fantastic" things. Danny's hands appear in front of the ice cream bowl in some shots, and behind in other shots.

(Disorientation)

* Jack's typewriter changes colour:

There is a switch from a white typewriter (as seen in the slow zooming out from the typewriter to the