Perfectionism in everything: how Stanley Kubrick shot Shining

Forty years ago, on May 23, 1980, the premiere of Stanley Kubrick’s cult horror film The Shining, based on Stephen King’s novel of the same name, premiered in the United States. The roles in the film were played by Jack Nicholson, Shelley Duval and Danny Lloyd.

The main character of the film, Jack Torrens, is an aspiring writer struggling with alcohol addiction. In the off-season, he gets a job as a caretaker in the old Overlook Hotel, which is located in the mountains of Colorado. Together with Torrens his wife and little son go there.

The boy has extrasensory abilities (for them, King uses the term "radiance"), which allows him to look into the terrible past of the hotel: the previous caretaker went crazy, killed his family and then committed suicide.

The hotel is snowing, now the building is almost cut off from the outside world. Jack's condition is getting worse, he gets acquainted with the supernatural forces inhabiting the hotel, and his family is in great danger.

Challenging Scenario and Yearly Filming

The novelist Diane Johnson and Kubrick himself were involved in translating King's novel into a script. But the director in the script always didn’t like something, and the text was rewritten many times even after the filming began. For this reason, Jack Nicholson at some point refused to read his next version: the actor said that he would only look at the new pages that were given to him before the start of each shift.

The novel “The Shining” was sent to Kubrick by producer John Callie, and, according to the director, King’s book at that time was the best work he ever received from producers. In particular, Kubrick liked the idea and plot of the novel.

“When I shoot a movie, I don’t have a desire to shoot another - I never found two stories at the same time. The only thing I think about when I read the book is that I wouldn’t want to shoot a film similar to another that I’ve already shot, ”Kubrick explained.

He noted that, despite all the advantages of the novel, before the film adaptation, the book needed serious revision.

“It is the reduction stage that usually destroys great novels, because many of their virtues are associated with grace of presentation, author’s vision and often with plot density. But with The Shining, it was different. The advantages of the book were almost entirely in the plot, and adapting it to the script was not difficult. Diane (Johnson. - RT ) and I discussed the book a lot, and then sketched out scenes that we thought were necessary for inclusion in the film. We interfered and mixed them before we found, in our opinion, the correct order, and then began to write, ”the director said.

• © Shot from the film "Radiance" (1980)

Filming was conducted mainly at Elstree Studios in Hertfordshire, where the hotel was built. Roy Walker, art director of the painting, traveled around the United States for a month, taking photographs of hotels, apartments, and things that could be used to decorate Overluk's premises. Walker shot hundreds of different places, and based on photos that his colleagues liked, the artists drew sketches of future decorations.

“I think that in order for people to find the story believable, you need to shoot it in an environment that looks completely real and set the light almost like in a documentary - with natural light from light sources, rather than with dramatic fake lighting, which you can usually see in a horror movie, ”said Stanley Kubrick.

Outside, Overlook has "played" Timberline Lodge, located in northern Oregon. However, there is no labyrinth next to it: it was built specifically for filming at MGM Studios, also in Hertfordshire. 900 tons of salt and ground polystyrene were replaced with snow in the maze.

Throughout the work on the picture, Kubrick behaved like a real perfectionist. Scenes were repeatedly shot to achieve the ideal, according to the director, result. The filming period took almost a year.

In particular, for about a year the team worked on a cult scene in which a stream of blood pours out of the open doors of the elevator into the corridor. In fact, this scene was shot in three takes, but it took several months to work out the nuances. In addition, the preparation of a clean corridor and full “blood” of the elevator for the next take took nine days each. The director found the shots received after the first two takes to be insufficiently convincing.

For another recognizable scene in which Jack is trying to break into the bathroom, the props built an easily breaking door. Alas, for Nicholson, a former volunteer of the fire service, this task turned out to be too simple: the actor split the decoration into several parts in two counts. The door had to be redone.

According to Shelley Duvall, it took three days and sixty doors to the short scene in which Nicholson breaks the door, looks into the bathroom and says the phrase “Here comes Johnny!” Well, in order to shoot how a tennis ball rolls into Danny's toys, it took fifty takes.

• © Shot from the film "Radiance" (1980)

It is also known about the director’s specific approach to working with actors. For example, to make Nicholson's character look the most emotional and agitated, Kubrick forced the artist to eat cheese sandwiches every day that he could not stand.

Kubrick was particularly strict on Shelley Duvall. He constantly criticized her and even once declared that the actress wastes the time of the film crew. According to Duval herself, the director probably did it on purpose: the actress was constantly in a state of despair and was nervously exhausted, which had the necessary effect on the appearance and behavior of her heroine. 

According to the actors, filming in The Shining was the most difficult in their entire life. At the same time, Nicholson admitted that after those events he was in a good relationship with the director. And Duval agreed (but not right away): all these measures were justified and made it possible to get the best game from her. Kubrick also noted that he was pleased with the way artists performed their tasks.

Nicholson and Duval considered unfair the ratings of critics who noted only Kubrick's talent and ignored the merits of the rest of the crew.

The fanaticism of Kubrick bypassed only Danny Lloyd, who at the time of filming was about five years old. The director guarded the child and did not involve him in some of the most terrible scenes: instead of Lloyd, a doll loomed in the frame. The horror effect in such episodes was achieved mainly through editing, and the boy was sure that he was acting in a drama. He learned the truth only a few years later, and saw the full version of the film at the age of 17.

“Radiance” is also distinguished by non-standard technical solutions for the late 1970s. Horror Stanley Kubrick was one of the first films shot with the help of the Steadicam stabilization system. The director came to the conclusion that the technologies widely used at that time were outdated and would not allow you to shoot some scenes as he imagined them.

Steadicam was also used in scenes when Danny rides a bicycle through the corridors of the hotel and Jack chases the boy through the maze.

• © Shot from the film "Radiance" (1980)

The director with ingenuity approached the episode in which Wendy and Danny walk through the maze. First, filmmakers shot a miniature model of the labyrinth from above, then they built part of the full-size scenery next to the tall house, which allowed to capture the heroes' walk from its roof. Later, all this was mounted together.

The Shining: Pros and Cons

The film premiered on May 23, 1980. Then the tape raised $ 44 million, exceeding its budget by more than double. The picture went on re-rental in different countries in 2001, 2012, 2017 and 2019. Also in 2019, the remounted tape was shown at the Cannes Film Festival in the Cannes Classic section.

However, the initial reaction of viewers and critics to The Shining was mixed. The film received nominations for several important awards, but only supporting actor Scatman Crozers received Saturn. Organizers of the Oscars and Golden Globes ignored the tape. 

But "Radiance" was among the first contenders for "Golden Raspberry" - the antipremy could go to Kubrick as the worst director and Duvall as the worst actress.

Not the least role was played by the overestimated expectations of critics: Kubrick was already a cult director, and the book version of The Shining was a bestseller. However, Kubrick's new work in a sense disappointed the audience.

So, a wave of indignation caused the discrepancy between the film and the novel. Claims in this regard were put forward by Stephen King himself. The writer stated that Kubrick omitted a number of fundamentally important points: the autobiographical component disappeared from the script, and in the modified ending there was no trace of Jack’s attempt to save his family.

King also upset the cast: Jack Nicholson from the very beginning looked crazy, while his hero Jack Torrens had to go from a mentally stable person to a monster (the writer in the title role expected to see John Voight or Michael Moriarty). Shelley Duval King also considered the game unconvincing.

Critic Gary Arnold of The Washington Post called the film adaptation of "the boring, dull squeeze of Stephen King's best-selling novel." He also criticized the acting and concluded that the director was not able to use all the possibilities offered by the book. Arnold drew attention to the fact that they spent an unreasonably large amount on the film and five long years (if you count the time of preparation for the shooting and post-production).

New Yorker employee Pauline Cale found The Shining to be disappointing in principle: “The film again and again tunes in to expect something - it almost promises us - and does not keep the promise,” is her verdict.

However, later the perception of the picture changed radically. One of the most influential American critics, Roger Ebert at first made an ambiguous impression of the film, but in 2006 included the tape in its own list of great tapes with the highest rating.

King Tony Magistralé, an English professor and creative specialist, wrote about the adaptation of The Shining as a complex, multi-layer work - and even forgave Kubrick for the discrepancy with the original.

“Only in attempts to express the meaning of these scenes in words, it becomes possible to fully appreciate the interwoven matrix of images and metaphors of the film ... Whatever sacrifices Kubrick makes in terms of physical or psychological horror, he fully compensates for this with the memorable splendor of the visual component,” he noted he.

• © Shot from the film "Radiance" (1980)

As for the multi-layered narrative, the critics really saw a number of additional meanings in the film. So, someone considered the tragedy of the Torrens family an allegory of the destructive action of capitalism. The problem of gender equality was also reflected in the film: according to some experts, Jack Torrens suffered from the idea that a man must be successful.

For the film's re-roll in 2012, The Guardian critic Peter Bradshaw has published an enthusiastic review. He praised the play of the actors and all sorts of artistic decisions by Kubrick, including the suspenseful, unhurried nature of the shooting.

"Shine" can not be called a genre movie. This is a movie in the spirit of Kubrick, which has the same relation to the horror genre as “Eyes Wide Shut” - to eroticism. The frames of the elevator with blood, which can be seen only in a bad presentiment, visions and dreams, were a material and technical miracle. They are really scary and strange, ”concluded Bradshaw.

In 2018, Shine entered the list of the hundred best horror films in history according to IndieWire. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film's rating is 85% and 93% according to professional and audience ratings, respectively. In the ranking of the IMDb website, the film takes 61 positions from the top 250. The tape also entered the list of the scariest films according to the American Film Institute, and Jack Torrens was awarded 25th place in the ranking of the best movie villains.

The influence of “Radiance” on popular culture is measured by many references and parodies. So, Nicholson’s famous phrase “And here is Johnny” (which, by the way, led the top 100 of the scariest moments in the movie according to the British Channel 4 version), was spoiled in advertisements, the series “Better Call Saul”, “Clairvoyant” and others .

One of the three short stories of the Simpsons special issue for Halloween 1994, Theehouse of Horror V, is called The Shining; Kubrick’s tape motifs are also guessed in other episodes of the animated series. In addition, the tape served as a source of inspiration for the creation of songs and clips of such musical groups as Ice Nine Kills and Slipknot. And in Steven Spielberg’s picture “To the First Player to Get Ready”, the Overlook Hotel becomes one of the treasure hunt locations. 

With the development of the Internet, “Radiance” has spread into memes: frames where Jack Nicholson appears in a broken door, as well as the final scene in which his character freezes, are especially popular.