Kubrick's The Shining has so far dominated the world's horror films and is a film work of art with immortal vitality.
However, there are also many people who say that "The Shining" is not a horror film, and some people say that "The Shining" is a bad film, or they can't understand or understand it at all.
It can be seen that the artistic value of "The Shining" is not to define whether it is a horror film or not, or simply evaluate its good or bad, but in that it is constantly seen, accepted, interpreted, analyzed, and evaluated, and there are even various diametrically opposed views on its evaluation and interpretation.
The continuous acceptance and re-creation of "The Shining" gives it eternal artistic vitality, and each interpretation will have new discoveries.
In 2012, American director Rodney Ascher, who is also a die-hard fan of Kubrick, made a documentary about "The Shining" called "Room 237."
Documentary Room 237
The documentary combs through the hidden clues in the film discovered by the director himself and several other "The Shining" experts, giving us a new understanding of the labyrinthine brain holes of "The Shining" and Kubrick.
One of the important images in The Shining, the Labyrinth
Some discussion of the details of The Shining in the documentary
The Indian genocide metaphors in "The Shining", the Holocaust metaphors of the Jews in World War II, the american Apollo moon landing program metaphors, the sexual metaphors, the patriarchal metaphors, the eagle metaphors, the 237 number metaphors, the metaphors of various gang shots, etc., are all displayed in great detail in the documentary "Room 237".
This article mainly provides a new analytical perspective from the perspective of "female roles" that have been overlooked by everyone.
In addition, Kubrick did not make the film exactly according to Stephen King's original book, with many changes and a lot of blank space.
Take the character of Wendy, for example, her image is still relatively strong in Stephen King's original book, not as weak and stupid as it is shown in the movie.
This article only analyzes the text of the film, does not involve the original work, and the original party does not spray.
Previous interpretations of "The Shining" have mainly focused on Jack Nicholson's acting skills, Danny's "Shining" skills, and the various detailed metaphors mentioned in the documentary "Room 237", Kubrick's use of film audiovisual language, as well as various aspects from semiotics, psychology, sociology, anthropology and so on.
However, in many interpretations, only two other major characters in the film are overlooked:
1. One is Wendy, played by Shelly Duvall, who represents women;
2. The other is Mr. Harroland, the head chef representing the black ethnicity. Hallorann）；
These two characters are the most dramatic in the film except jack and Danny, and their ranking is Jack > Danny > Wendy > black chef.
Wendy and the black head chef, one from a gender perspective and the other from an ethnic point of view, together underpinned the horror world of The Shining.
Especially Wendy, the female character of wife and mother, if Jack is the "Adam" who built the horror world of "The Shining", then Wendy is the "Eve" who is equal to him.
For example, the famous scene of the axe splitting the bathroom at the end of "The Shining", although its horror is inseparable from Nicholson's performance, but at the same time, we can't ignore Wendy's reaction.
Shelly Duval's horrified expression in The Shining is no less than Janet Leigh's famous scream in Horror.
And the expressions of both are very similar to the expressionist painter Munch's famous painting "Scream", conveying a feeling of extreme fear.
Psycho (1960)
The Scream
If there is only Jack and the axe in this shot, and there is no Wendy who is forced into a corner, and there is no extreme fear expression like the famous painting "Scream", it is just Jack slamming the door, and the sense of horror cannot be discussed.
For an abuser, the abusive behavior must be implemented on an object in order for the audience to accept the fear of the abusive behavior.
Wendy plays a good role as a masochist in the film.
So how did Kubrick handle Wendy's role?
In short, the first half of the film constantly weakens and alienates Wendy, while the second half constantly abuses Wendy mentally and physically.
This "half" dividing line is the classic dialogue scene between Jack and the bartender Lloyd.
The alcoholic Jack arrives alone in the Far View Hotel ballroom, where he sits at the bar and wants to drink, when a lot of drinkers and bartender Lloyd suddenly appear at the empty bar.
Jack's conversation with the bartender was informative, the moment he formally made a devil's pact with the evil spirits of the hotel.
When Wendy is mentioned in the dialogue, Jack uses an extremely derogatory female word, "sperm bank," while Lloyd replies with the phrase "Women. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them.” (Provisional translation: women, with them uncomfortable, without them also uncomfortable)
This information shows that the first half of the film is extremely derogatory to Wendy (the female represented), and the evil spirits in the haunted shop are also knocking on the side to remind Jack to remove the obstacle of Wendy (female) as soon as possible.
Jack's conversation with the bartender Lloyd is interrupted by a sharp shout from Wendy, which predates Wendy's appearance and leads to a very abrupt transition.
This deliberate out-of-sync is a complete opposite of Kubrick's dubbing/scoring principle of the film, "When you see a dog coming, you hear a dog barking."
The reason for this is that Wendy can't see the ghost at this time, and Kubrick does not use surreal means to represent the ghost throughout the film.
Wendy can't bump into Jack and the bartender at the bar, so she can only use a sudden transition to end the conversation. (In The Shining, Kubrick has many operations that are contrary to the traditional film audiovisual language, which will be mentioned later))
The picture shows Jack's voice just falling, but the background sound is Wendy's scream
The scream ended before Wendy ran
Wendy ran to Jack in a panic, saying that Danny had told her that there was another "crazy woman" in the hotel who wanted to strangle him, right in room 237.
This is Wendy's 4th time in the hotel to find Jack, and the first time Wendy has intervened in the main plot of the movie, and everything she has done and said before that has nothing to do with this haunted hotel.
Before this dividing line, Wendy's characterization summed up as "a good wife and mother, a short parent".
Wendy's first scene in the film is when she and her son Danny eat breakfast at home.
This shot is a home scene, not scary at all, even very warm.
Kubrick uses parallel narration at the beginning of the film (which is basically throughout the film), alternating Jack's interview with the winter caretaker at the Hotel and Wendy's home with the children.
On one side is Jack interviewing the winter administrator at the hotel
On one side, Wendy asks the pediatrician to see the so-called "Tony"
Wendy's scenes of taking children at home, on the one hand, explained to the audience that Danny has the ability to "shine", but he himself does not understand this ability, so he imagined a friend who lived in his mouth, "Tony". On the other hand, it shows that the whole family depends on her father Jack to support the family, and Wendy is a gentle housewife.
After Jack gets a job at the hotel, the hotel staff introduces jack to the family, during which time is left to the black head chef.
He tells Wendy how plentiful the food stored in the hotel is, and continues to reinforce Wendy's role in taking care of her husband and son's lives.
When the black head chef introduced the hotel's food inventory, the most important clue to the Interpretation of the Shining metaphor appeared, namely the can with the Indian's head.
After the scene of the first hotel, the movie appears with a black screen subtitle "A month later".
After this time mark, Wendy reappears, pushing the hotel's dining car to bring breakfast to her husband, which is the first time Wendy has come to see Jack at the hotel.
Wendy's behavior followed her visit to the food warehouse earlier, and continued her "housewife" setup.
Wendy was in a relaxed mood doing housework, and what she said to Jack was also such as what time it was now, what I made for you to eat, the scenery outside was good, whether to accompany me for a walk, and so on.
As Wendy delivers breakfast to Jack's room, Kubrick's shot of Jack is always Jack in the mirror, not the real Jack.
Jack is always in the mirror in this little section
This mirror reflection clearly implies that Jack has begun to be possessed by the evil spirits in the hotel at this time, and he is not exactly himself.
Wearing a T-shirt with an eagle motif, Jack is interpreted in the documentary Room 237 as a symbol of the Nazi genocide of Jews and the American genocide of Indians, as the symbol of Nazi Germany and the U.S. national emblem are both eagles.
In the conversation between the two at the end of the scene, Jack said that he particularly liked the hotel, felt very comfortable, and even felt that he had been here when he came to the interview.
The mirror, the clothes, the lines, all indicate that Jack has begun to ghost at this time, and Wendy simply thinks that Jack just likes it here.
Next, Kubrick continued to portray Wendy as a good wife and mother, while slowly putting pressure on Wendy's mother and son.
Wendy wants Jack to go out for a walk with her, but Jack refuses on the grounds of writing, and she has to go with her son to the huge and eerie labyrinth.
At this time, Kubrick gave Wendy mother and son in the center of the maze a super super overhead panorama, the character shrunk into a small dot like an ant, and combined with Jack was looking at the sand table of the maze in the hotel, as if looking at the mother and son in the middle of the maze, creating a brief sense of surreality.
After the maze play, Kubrick gives Wendy a solo section.
The clip shows Wendy cooking alone in the hotel's huge kitchen with news on the TV.
The content of the news is the focus of this bridge, very suggestive, conveying two important messages: one is that Susan, a 24-year-old woman, disappeared while going hunting with her husband, and the other is that a snowstorm is about to sweep through the state.
The hints of these two news stories are very clear, on the one hand, alluding to Wendy's next danger, and on the other hand, hinting at the Blizzard scene later in the movie.
After this little foreshadowing, Wendy goes to Jack for the second time in the movie. But this time Wendy's appearance is completely different from the first time she walks head-on to the camera shot.
We can see that Kubrick used a vista, Wendy from the far corner of the hotel lobby, looking very small, at first did not even see Wendy appear, while Jack, like the owner of the hotel, lived in the middle of the hotel, controlling the whole place.
Looking back at the first time Wendy went to jack, she walked almost straight to the camera, and the characters conveyed by this camera position were mostly confident and relaxed.
Looking at Wendy's appearance again, it seems to be coming out of a bloody mouth in the hotel, and Jack seems to be integrated with the hotel, which together brings Wendy a great sense of oppression.
The hotel, along with Jack, brought a great sense of oppression to Wendy
As she approached, Wendy smiled and said something innocuous, such as mentioning that it was going to snow in the news just now, and she would bring him a sandwich later.
But this time Jack's attitude was not as good as the first time, and he felt that Wendy had come to him and interrupted his work, making it impossible for him to concentrate on writing.
Once again, he gave his knees to Nicholson's acting skills
This time, Jack's attitude towards Wendy is extremely bad, and the footage of Wendy's appearance also suggests that Jack's relationship with the hotel is getting closer and closer, while he is becoming more and more distant and oppressive to his wife.
However, this time the dialogue between the two still did not touch the root of the hotel's haunting, and still stayed at the level of quarrels that the husband and wife did not understand each other (at least Wendy has not found an abnormality at present), but Kubrick began to pressure Wendy through the audiovisual language of the film.
After Wendy touched Jack's nails for the second time, Kubrick arranged two more one-man shows for Wendy.
One of them was when Wendy continued to do the logistics. She found that the hotel's telephone line had been cut off by bad weather and could only contact the forest management department by radio.
In addition to the "cut off all contact with the outside world" routine necessary for horror movies, wendy's appearance also has a suggestive significance.
Notice that the clothes Wendy wears in this scene are a coat that has a rather Decorative Style of the Indian Nation.
Combined with the biggest metaphor of "White Americans Slaughtering Indians" throughout The Shining, Wendy seems to be incarnated as those Indians, targeted by the white American male represented by Jack.
As Jack gradually blackens the abuser, Wendy also gradually becomes a symbol of the abused.
Wendy's next one-man show is very short, she is debugging the boiler in the boiler room, still doing the work of taking care of the family's life.
"DANGER HIGH VOLTAGE" appears on the screen At the time of this pun, the background sound is exactly Jack's nightmare screams, and the audience follows Wendy to Jack for the third time.
Wendy's contact with Jack this time was a change of mood and attitude.
Although Jack says that he has nightmares in which he kills Wendy and Danny and cuts them into pieces, the gentle Wendy is still comforted by her husband.
But when her son Danny was injured, Wendy, who was a mother, finally couldn't stand it and immediately turned her face to Jack.
She believes that the injury to Danny's neck was caused by Jack again, because Jack had hurt his son once before at home.
These are all of Wendy's main scenes before Jack and the bartender talk (formally make a pact) to the dividing line.
In these scenes, Wendy is doing the work of a typical housewife, wandering outside the main storyline, and the relationship with Jack is becoming more and more tense and estranged, and at the same time, she feels more and more oppressed from Jack.
After Jack makes a pact with the evil spirit, the climax of the film is the classic scene of the axe cutting the door at the end.
In this scene, not only Nicholson's acting skills reached his personal peak, but Wendy's performance of Shelly Duval was equally impressive.
Kubrick didn't use any supernatural "ghost" images in The Shining to scare people, so the masochist Wendy's reaction is the key to arousing the audience's fear.
The scene of the axe cutting the door has been analyzed by countless people.
Before that, Wendy found that all the manuscript paper had a paragraph written "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy", and everyone only paid attention to this strange repetition and ignored the heroine's performance.
Shelly Duval's acting skills in this scene are even more wonderful than the shouting of the door behind, but she also paid an almost lifelong price to shoot this scene.
At the same time, the scene is also a master example of Kubrick's use of film language.
Wendy is terrified when she discovers that something is wrong with the hotel and Jack, so she takes a baseball bat as a self-defense weapon and comes to Jack again.
Curious about what Jack wrote every day, which was already wrong, she went to the writing desk and typewriter to check it out.
At this point Kubrick used a back-up camera position with a little typewriter at the same time, and Wendy's face was exposed a little bit and was stuck between the two horizontal lines in the back.
This is a very typical closed composition, and the closed is Wendy.
The main purpose of this shot is to convey what the typewriter is typing, but Kubrick does not show us the strange words full of manuscript paper at once, but arouses the curiosity of the audience through Wendy, who discovers the matter.
Wendy's expression was numb and shocked when she saw the words, and as she found that the words were written on every page, her expression began to distort.
This delicate and gradual change of expression is very substitutionary, and the whole emotional process is actually the emotional projection of the audience seeing these manuscript papers.
After Wendy is intimidated by these weird manuscript papers, Jack suddenly appears and begins to confront her.
By this time, Wendy was 100% sure that her husband had a problem and could kill herself at any time.
Actress Shelly Duval must complete both positions and lines in horror, despair, helplessness, and the collapse and cry of finding the truth.
This is the highlight of Wendy's role, Shelly Duval
At this point, Jack is the dominant actor in the atmosphere, and he has been facing the camera, oppressing the camera, that is, Wendy and the audience.
Retreating, Wendy came to the stairs in the hall, and she could only continue to retreat up the stairs.
Wendy retreats up the stairs, jack still dominates the atmosphere, threatening Wendy and audiences off-screen, but Kubrick uses a reverse manipulation of the conventional cinematic language of the plot.
In general, things in the lower part of the film scene scheduling space are in a weak or subordinate position.
Suppose we want to shoot a person who is in the world, generally we will put this subject in the middle and upper part of the picture, which will produce a sense of dominance from top to bottom.
But when we look at Kubrick's handling, Jack is extremely oppressive from the bottom up.
Jack is in the lower middle of the scene schedule, but threatens the viewpoint above, while the light on the character's face is a gradually reddish blood light, while Wendy's little physical relationship is retained, extremely compressed on the edge of the frame.
This creates the magical effect of Jack, who is in the lower part of the frame, bringing a sense of oppression upwards.
Therefore, we understand the artistic charm of "The Shining", in addition to constantly decomposing its ambiguity and complexity, but also pay attention to his extraordinary shooting methods.
The above analysis of the importance of Wendy's neglected female character in the whole film, the second question also arises:
All the great directors who can make a name for themselves in film history are detail-controlled, and they will strive for every small detail in the film, not to mention the core elements such as the heroine.
Wendy' role as the heroine, and representing a kind of female universal role that Kubrick wants to convey, is naturally the top priority in the film.
Shelley Duvall
The picture above is a comparison photo of the heroine circulating on the Internet, and the picture on the right is the appearance of Shelly when she was interviewed in 2016, and it can be seen that the appearance value has long collapsed with age.
Even 40 years ago, the fanghua Shirley was controversial.
Some people think she's ugly, or the movie deliberately makes her ugly, or she's different from the beauty we think of as a Hollywood actress.
"The Shining" deliberately filmed a lot of Shelly's ugliness
So why did Kubrick end up casting Shelley Duvall for the role? How did he train the actress?
Born in Fort Worth, Texas in 1949, Shelly Duval's family settled in Houston, where her family had nothing to do with show business, and her father worked on cattle auctions and law.
Animal husbandry is one of the pillar industries of Texas' earliest development, and now it is also the most important livestock base in the United States, of which Fort Worth, also known as "Cow City", has a strong cowboy culture.
Although Shelly loves art and is also very talented, she did not aspire to be an actress during her schooling, but dreamed of becoming a scientist. It wasn't until 1970 that she married an artist named Bernard Sampson that she completely changed the trajectory of her life.
Shelly with her first husband
After marrying the artist Sampson, Shelly met Robert Ultraman, the director of the Texas film "Brewster McCloud," at a party.
"Stranger in the Air" is Ultraman's fifth feature film, after he became famous for his work M*A*S*H.
Some of the crew from the "Stranger in the Air" crew at the party chatted with Shelly and were attracted to her unique charm and suggested that she could try to join the film.
By chance, Shelly, who had never left her hometown in Texas before, was neither an actor nor an acting family, stepped into the door of Hollywood.
In "Stranger in the Air", Shelly played Suzanne as a supporting actress
After Freak in the Air, Shelly became Robert Ultraman's queen actress.
In several of Ultraman's subsequent major works, "Flower Village", "The Man Without Tomorrow", "Nashville", "Three Women" and so on, Shelly has starred.
These works are representative of director Ultraman's establishment of his unique style and status.
Shelly rose to the top of show business with Ultraman's "good wind", and some people even said that Ultraman and Shelly could define American movies in the seventies.
Shelly, Sissy Spicer and director Robert Ultraman
In particular, in "3 Women" (3 Women), released in 1977, Shelly not only forced Sissy Spicer as the first female lead, but also won the best actress in the main competition unit of the 30th Cannes Film Festival for this film.
The best actress of the three major European film festivals can be said to be the supreme honor for an actress.
And Shelly has been an actress since 1970, and only cooperated with one director, and in only 7 years from a simple person who has never been out of her hometown in Texas to a Cannes film, she has to lament the fate of the odd coincidence.
Roberto Rossellini, President of the Jury at the 30th Cannes Film Festival, presented Shelly with an award
Shelly presented her Best Actress award to reporters and audiences
After winning the best actress in Cannes, Shelly was invited by more films and directors.
In the same year that she won the award, Shelly starred in Woody Allen's film Anne Hall, playing the role of Pam.
This is her first appearance in a non-Ultraman-directed film.
Shelly and Woody Allen in Anne Hall
After Annie Hall, Shelly was recognized by another film master, Kubrick.
She became the heroine of Kubrick's only horror film, The Shining.
According to the documentary Room 237, Kubrick grew tired of making movies while making Barry Linden, the film before "The Shining."
What he was tired of was not the work of the director itself, but the tiredness of mastering the shooting techniques and not being able to break through.
So Kubrick's filming of Barry Linden is extremely delicate but extremely slow and boring, reflecting his inner struggle at the time, and of course, "Barry Linden" was not good at the box office.
Deciding to make "The Shining" is Kubrick's first time driving a horror film, and he still pursues "not surprising and endless", no matter which type of film to shoot, he must have a breakthrough.
Kubrick's "The Shining" work photo
There is a famous saying in the field of Hollywood casting: "Choose the right actors, and the film will complete 90% of the work." ”
When Kubrick was casting, the fastest decision was made for Jack Nicholson to play Jack Torrance.
Nicholson was almost an actor who Automatically jumped into Kubrick's brain after watching the original.
Nicholson's crazy, changeable and delicate acting skills are restrained with a bit of horror, and many of the states in "The Shining" seem to flow naturally, just like Stephen King's Jack himself.
It took a lot of time to choose Danny's little actor.
Kubrick's team spent half a year in Chicago, Denver, Cincinnati and other cities, and it took more than 5,000 children to audition before finally deciding to play Danny Lloyd to play Danny in the film (Lloyd's surname was given to the ghost bartender in the movie).
Danny's comparison with The Shining in 2018
The only missing information about the Casting of The Shining is why Kubrick finally chose Shelly Duval to play Wendy.
First of all, Shelly has just won the Cannes film not long after, and the coffee position and performance ability are definitely enough.
And her figure is very thin and long, and her face shape is relatively long, which meets the requirements of the heroine of the horror movie who is weak and masochistic. More importantly, she is very close to the image depicted in Stephen King's original book.
Another, deeper reason for speculation may have something to do with the symbolism of Shelly's place of origin.
As mentioned above, Shelly is a native of Fort Worth, Texas, and grew up in Houston.
Fort Worth was a testament to america's westward expansion, built after the Mexican-American War, and was one of many military fortress cities on the new U.S.-Mexico border. It is still known as the "where the West begins" in the United States, and it is very symbolic.
The relative position of the city of Fort Worth on the U.S. map
After defeating Mexico, the United States gained Texas and used it as a bridgehead to continue its advance to the farther western Pacific coast.
At the same time, the history of Westward Expansion of the United States is also the history of the extermination of Native American Indians and other ethnic groups by white American colonizers.
The underlying logic of the movie The Shining uses the Massacre of Indians as a metaphor.
Kubrick's choice of such an actress from a highly symbolic region may not be recognized by foreign audiences as anything special, but perhaps Americans are sensitive to her image and accent.
Because Kubrick's requirements for the work are extremely strict, the shooting cycle of "The Shining" lasts for about a year or so, during which there is gossip about Kubrick's discord with Shelly, and Kubrick's abuse of Shelly.
Kubrick and Shelly on set
Shelly herself has said that at first Kubrick got along very well with Nicholson and Shelly. Just like the first half of the movie, the overall situation is still very peaceful and relaxed.
But as the film begins to film the scenes that abuse Wendy, Kubrick seems to have really started abusing the actress on set.
According to Shelly's own account, she and Kubrick often quarreled on the set, and the process of cooperation was very difficult.
For example, there is gossip mentioned that during the filming of the scene where Wendy retreated to the stairs with a baseball bat that was analyzed above, Kubrick let himself shoot a total of 127 times, according to later statistics, he created the record for the most NG in film history at that time, and many of them were Kubrick deliberately let Shelly, but it was to really make the actor collapse.
The scene of the staircase rewinding brought great psychological trauma to the actor Shelly
Kubrick's daughter Vivian Kubrick also documented Shelly's collapse in the tidbit documentary Making 'The Shining', made> < the Shining.
The picture below is that Shelly, who was captured in the documentary "Making < Shining >", suddenly fainted while filming, and it took a long time to continue shooting.
Shelly said she began to lose her hair during the filming of the scene, crying non-stop for a whole month, crying for 12 hours a day, and her mental and physical health was seriously damaged.
Kubrick also joined forces with all the staff on set to isolate her, saying that she was wasting everyone's time and putting great psychological pressure on Shelly.
Wendy, whom we finally see in the second half of the film, is also in such a state, with dark circles, distorted expressions, and seemingly endless tears.
Many media, including Shelly herself, have said that when filming "The Shining", Kubrick and Nicholson worked very happily, and even protected the little boy who played Danny, and the crew and director did not tell the little boy that they were making a horror movie, just to protect the psychology of children.
But Kubrick was extremely harsh on the heroine, even abusive.
In fact, the main line of many horror films is to abuse the heroine, but kubrick is probably the only one who directly abuses the heroine into a neurosis like this.
On set, Kubrick and Nicholson have always been on good terms
We don't know whether Kubrick's treatment of Shelly in this way was deliberately forcing her for the effect of the film, right for the right thing, or right for people.
But this experience of "PUA" on the set caused irreversible trauma to Shelly's spirit.
Although Shelly got to be a cannes film queen, she became a TV producer after making "The Shining" and made some films, but there was no more influential work, and she was unable to find a job as an actor, retiring in 2002 (about 53 years old).
Kubrick made The Shining the world's number one horror film, but little is known about the sacrifice behind Shelly Duval.
In 2016, Shelly Duvall appeared on the American talk show Dr. Phil
In 2016, Shelly, who had faded from the public eye for more than a decade, participated in the well-known American talk show "Dr. Phil".
In the show, Shelly said: "I'm very sick, I need help" (I am very sick, I need help), she even felt that the famous actor Robin Williams who worked with her on "Popeye" did not die, and there was always someone to hurt her, and everyone learned that Shelly had been suffering from mental illness and was very miserable.
When we talk about the deep meaning behind The Shining, we see Jack as a symbol of "America, whiteness, patriarchy" and so on.
The symbol of "patriarchy" is derived from Jack's interaction with his son Danny.
But, before making these interpretations, we ignore that before Jack was a father, he was first and foremost a man, a husband.
If the white American represented by Jack in the film acts on indians, and the father he represents acts on Danny, then the man and husband he represents act completely on his wife Wendy.
Wendy is a female character who cannot be ignored, and she is also an immortal character in "The Shining".
And the actress who created this immortal role, Shelly Duval, has also stunned the world and paid a lifetime for it, which deserves to be remembered by more people.
Shelly Duval
as Wendy
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