For the second featured film in the Sundays with Stephen series we have The Shining, directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Jack Nicholson, Shelly Duvall and one perpetually terror-stricken Danny Lloyd. More after the jump.

After the underwhelming Carrie last week, I was looking forward to a palate-cleanser, something I knew I was going to enjoy, and fortunately history conspired to bring us The Shining. (If we had been watching TV stuff as well we would have had to dig up a copy of the old Salem’s Lot TV movie)

First though, a quick word about the various releases of this movie. The DVD I rented from Netflix was the standard edition, so imagine by surprise when I put it in the drive and got a full frame version on my monitor. I thought that Netflix only gave you the real version of movies, the widescreen, at least by default, but when I looked at the site it listed it as Full. Confusing me further, the disc itself said it was Widescreen format.

Upon some digging with the Google I figured out what was going on. When Kubrick shot The Shining, he shot it full-screen (technically 1:37:1, aka Academy Standard) and intended to crop it for various theatrical releases. When they put out the first edition of the DVD a few years ago, they just slapped this full-screen version onto the disc, slightly cutting it to make the movie 1:33:1, aka regular TV resolution. That way, they could make one disc for both full-screen and widescreen viewers, I guess. A later DVD version not carried by Netflix was recut and remastered to widescreen dimensions… though the wrong widescreen dimension, as it happens. The Shining was supposedly intended for 1.85:1, and it was cut to 1.78:1 in the special edition DVD, to precisely match modern widescreen tvs. So, with the original DVD, you’re losing a tiny bit on the sides (though getting a ton of stuff never intended to be in the shot at the top and bottom), and with the modern remaster, you’re apparently also losing a tiny bit on the left and right edges, along with the extraneous stuff at the top and bottom of the frame that Kubrick never intended to be seen in theatres.

So, on the whole, you get the bulk of the movie either way, plus a lot of extra stuff intended to be outside the shots in the fullscreen edition. (Which you can really see in the intro sequence, as the helicopter shooting the Torrance family car on its way to the hotel casts a visible shadow at the bottom of the frame, and a less visible blur from its rotors at one point when they reach the hotel at the very top of the frame. Ooopsie. Sort of like a boom mike hanging down.)

I figured that, since if anything we were getting a bit *more* movie, especially after I’d seen the helicopter goof, that it was ok to proceed with the show.

With that out of the way, just let me say: The Shining is an amazing film. Tense, deliberate, it gradually ratchets up the tension toward an almost inevitable cataclysm that you know is coming from virtually the very first scene, like a slow-motion train wreck that you can’t help but watch. Nicholson is absolutely amazing, and Jack Torrence’s descent into madness and murder is firmly rooted in his dissatisfaction with his role as the family patriarch and his feelings of personal inadequacy. Duvall does a good job as an incomplete doormat, a woman suffering from years of strain and emotional abuse who has all but fallen into herself, and even the kid, Danny Lloyd (what is with this movie and actors sharing their character’s names?) does a great job, well, being a five year old kid wrapped up in this awful mess. I’ve seen people criticizing the job he did on various web sites, and I don’t get it; the kid was five! Cut some slack, though I’m not sure it’s needed.

The cinematography is amazing as well. Unlike Carrie, where you are bludgeoned over the head with cheap camera tricks, gothy melodramatic lighting, and sets so over the top you’d think it was a Halloween party, The Shining, perhaps because it was based on a real place, has a great sense of location. You feel as if you could actually walk into this movie, and in some ways you can, at least, into the hotel it was based upon (though according to the Wikipedia, the entire movie was shot on a giant soundstage, a fake quasi-copy of the real hotel! Again, amazing). There is also one very famous steadicam sequence involving a staircase (if you’ve watched it, you know which staircase scene I refer to) that, if you watch the whole thing closely, seems like a ballet done between the cameraman, Duvall and Nicholson. I was stunned at how well they pulled it off (though from what I read on some fan sites, it took a *lot* of takes).

The music is sparse but menacing, though I think it might have gone a bit over the top, a couple of times, in a couple of small places. No big deal, and generally speaking it really adds to the mood. In particular I noticed that, in some of the most disturbing scenes, the soundtrack goes quiet, the sound is muffled, so that it is as if you see these things, often Danny’s awful visions, inside your own head. The movie simulates a bad dream impeccably.

By the end, even though I’ve seen it several times and know how it’s all going to end, I was literally on the edge of my seat. That almost *never* happens. The number of movies I watch more than once with any great attention is very, very small; I’m a bit of a junkie for new experiences. This time I was fully involved the whole way… The Shining is simply a masterpiece, and one of the best horror movies ever made.

PS: This is another one of the King movies whose book I haven’t read (I promise I have read many of his novels, so I have some feel for his style), but I think people perhaps make too much of the changes, and from what I’ve read, King’s more optimistic ending wouldn’t work as well. My roommate dislikes that the movie is somewhat less ambiguous on whether there are in fact ghosts at the hotel, as evidenced by the manner in which Jack escapes the dry goods room. I admit, I would have skipped that particular choice. Still, these are nitpicks in a masterpiece.

Next Week: EC Comics on the Big Screen (Almost). It’s Creepshow!
Last Week: Sundays With Stephen starts right here, with Carrie!