Shining
I have a wife, three children, three dogs, and seven cats. I'm not Franz Kafka, sitting alone and suffering.
Stanley Kubrick wrote in 1972. In fact, Kafka and Kubrick don't seem to have much in common. Kafka was Czech and Kubrick was American. But after reading this article, if you look at The Shining, you may find Kafka's traces.
Kubrick was an avid reader of Kafka's novels and listed him as one of his favorite writers. Kubrick's ancestors came from parts of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, so it is likely that they shared a common trait.
Kubrick
Even before he made The Shining, Kafka's influence was reflected in Kubrick's films, including Lolita (1962), Dr. Strange (1964), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Barry Linden (1975). But it was in The Shining that Kubrick really showed his Kafka-esque influence.
In The Shining, Kafka is in many ways a ghostly presence. A traveling salesman named Gregor woke up one morning to find himself transformed into a giant insect-like creature, possibly a beetle. Ironically, this transformation from man to beast liberated Gregor from life in modern society and liberated his family to be happy without him.
Like Gregor, Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson) wakes up from a troubled dream. His family was terrified, but still recognized him as their own Jack, even though he had changed. Eventually, however, as in The Metamorphosis, they realize that he is no longer the original Jack and that his disappearance is not a bad thing. Reinforcing this connection is jack's volkswagen beetle in the film's three-minute opening scene, and Jack's later imitation of the wolf-sex commercial traveler.
Kubrick borrowed from Kafka's own obsessions. Paternity and intergenerational conflict run through Kafka's entire work. The hostility or fear of this god-like father was particularly pervasive in his writing—in his own words: "to write myself almost as hatred for my father"—which is immortal in his letters to him.
Unforgettable.
In a 1980 interview, Kubrick made it clear that Kafka's work was a template for the film. He singled out Kafka's "realist approach," in which fantasy and allegory were rendered as ordinary, everyday, and even news. Kubrick felt this in the film by creating a bright, modern hotel (which itself is a synthesis of real-life venues) rather than the dark, creepy castles or haunted houses typical of the horror genre of the past.
There are more examples, but more ghostly. For example, Shelley Duval's previous role was a cameo in Woody Allen's Anne Hall (1977). While playing Pam, one of Alvesinger's lovers, she told him: "Having sex with you is really a Kafka-esque experience. Three years later, Duval himself will suffer a Kafka-esque experience at the hands of another New York Jewish director, this time by Stanley Kubrick suspected of abusing her.
By using a hotel or a sanatorium as a metaphor for Central Europe, another connection with Kafka is provided. Kafka's American (1927) "The Hotel of the West," published a year before Kubrick's birth, is suspected to be in the Central European style.
In July 1916, Kafka wrote: "Those who are troubled by the company of many ghosts are also lonely."
Kafka's diary certainly provides a fitting ending to The Shining. It could almost be the slogan for this movie.