The Shining was released on this day in 1980.
The New Yorker wrote this reminiscence in 2013:
If you recall, “The Shining” was released in 1980, following “Barry Lyndon” and preceding “Full Metal Jacket.” Kubrick did his customary years of research beforehand, and put his cast and crew though a typically gruelling eleven-month shoot in a U.K. studio. The actors were forced through scores of takes of demanding emotional and physical scenes. The movie is centered on a boy named Danny, who has an imaginary friend named Tony and, we later learn, a capacity for telepathic communication called “shining.” His parents are played by Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall. The family is hired as winter caretakers of a hotel, the Overlook, a juggernaut of a construct high in the Rockies. Once the family has been sealed off from society, strange things begin to happen. Egged on by phantoms of the hotel, Nicholson’s mental condition deteriorates. In the second half of the movie, his demons and those in the hotel run free, with horrific results.
“The Shining” opened to negative reviews but good business; since then, an influential demographic of mesmerized fans has helped the film, over the years, be appreciated as a nonpareil horror show. Today, we can see that “The Shining” ’s slow but inexorable pacing, crisp editing, sumptuous production design, over-the-top lead performances, technical innovations (notably, the most extravagant work to date with the then new Steadicam camera), and a handful of indelible scenes (Danny’s Big Wheel rides, a Steadicam tracking shot that leads Duvall up several flights of stairs, that elevator car full of blood) all combine to leave viewers shaken and unmistakably drained.
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