One of my favorite top three film directors of all time is Stanley Kubrick.. From the the masterpiece of 2001: A Space Odyssey to Clockwork Orange or the 18th century gambler and social climber who slowly insinuates himself into English high society, in in the film "Barry Lyndon". His pictures were moving paintings. Pure cinematopgraphy with wonderfully lit scenes. One of his classic trademarkss, was a facial close-up of a character unravelling in which the character's head is tilted down and his eyes tilted up. Kubrick also extensively employed wide angle shots, character tracking shots, zoom shots, and shots down tall parallel walls. All Stanley Kubrick movies have a scene in or just outside a bathroom. The Shinning is one of the best horror movies of all time.
THE SHINNING
The pace of Kubrick's work slowed considerably after Barry Lyndon, and he did not make another film for five years. The Shining, released in 1980, was adapted from the novel of the same name by bestselling horror writer Stephen King. The film starred Jack Nicholson as Jack Torrance, a failed writer who takes a job as an off-season caretaker of the Overlook Hotel, a high-class resort deep in the Colorado mountains. The job demands spending the winter in the isolated hotel with his wife Wendy, played by Shelley Duvall, and their young son, Danny, who is gifted with a form of telepathy--the "shining" of the film's title.
As winter takes hold, the family's isolation deepens, and the demons and ghosts of the Overlook Hotel's dark past begin to awake. The hotel displays increasingly horrible, phantasmagoric images to Danny. Meanwhile, Jack is slowly driven mad by the haunted surroundings until he finally collapses into homicidal psychosis.
The film was shot entirely on London soundstages, with the exception of second-unit exterior footage filmed in Colorado, Montana and Oregon. In order to convey the claustrophobic oppression of the haunted hotel, Kubrick made extensive use of the newly-invented Steadicam, a weight balanced camera support, which allowed for smooth camera movement in enclosed spaces.
More than any of his other films, The Shining gave rise to the legend of Kubrick as a megalomanic perfectionist. Reportedly, he demanded hundreds of takes of certain scenes (ca. 1.3 million film ft. were exposed). This process was particularly difficult for actress Shelley Duvall, who was used to the faster, improvisational style of director Robert Altman.
Stephen King disliked the movie, calling Kubrick "a man who thinks too much and feels too little." In 1997, King collaborated with Mick Garris to create a television mini-series version of the novel more faithful to King's original.
The film opened to mostly negative reviews, but proved a commercial success. As with most Kubrick films, subsequent critical reaction has treated the film more favorably. Among horror movie fans, The Shining is a cult classic, often appearing at the top of best horror film lists alongside Psycho (1960), The Exorcist (1973) and Halloween (1978). Some of its images, such as an antique elevator disgorging a tidal wave of blood, are among the most recognizable and widely-known images from any Stanley Kubrick film. The financial success of The Shining renewed Warner Brothers faith in Kubrick's ability to make artistically satisfying and profitable films after the commercial failure of Barry Lyndon
The Shinning
