Anniversary of The Shining

On May 23, 1980, the movie "The Shining" by Stanley Kubrick was released in the United States for limited release. After 3 weeks, the film was already shown throughout North America.

This film refers to those fairly common examples of adaptations of literary works, when the author of a literary source remains unsatisfied with how his work is embodied on the screen. Other, most notable examples of such a collision are Milos Forman's “One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest”, Andrei Tarkovsky's “Stalker”. A long list of such examples could be given, but this is not our task.

So, as you know, Stanley Kubrick after the production of the film "Barry Lyndon" based on the novel by the classic of English literature William Makepeace Thackeray for several years was looking for a literary source that would serve as the basis of the film, no less worthy than "Barry Lyndon". He read a lot of books, until, at last, Stephen King’s book fell into his hands. Kubrick decided to stop on this novel of the famous horror master. Naturally, the first decision of the director was to entrust the development of the script to Stephen King himself. However, the script written by King on his own novel did not suit Kubrick, because it was very close to the literary original, which was at variance with Kubrick's vision of his future film.

Kubrick decided to write the script himself, and co-invited the little-known writer at that time, Diana Johnson. The main place of work of Diane, 45, at that time, was the New York Book Review magazine, in which she reviewed literature novelties. In addition, by that time she had written 5 novels that did not earn much fame and popularity. But one of her novels, The Shadow Knows in 1974, enraptured Kubrick. Finally, Kubrick learned that Diana Johnson has a doctorate and is an expert in the field of Gothic culture.

Throughout the work of Kubrick on the film, King constantly criticized the director’s creative approaches to creating the picture. Most of all, King did not like the choice of actors for the main roles. In his opinion, the main character should have evolved from a normal, even cute, person to a monster. Jack Nicholson, in his opinion, initially produces some kind of obsession. However, eyewitnesses say that to get Jack Nicholson in the right agitated mood was worth quite a lot of work. In particular, knowing that Nicholson hates cheese, Kubrick ordered Nicholson to be fed exclusively with cheese sandwiches for two weeks. Get mad here!

The wife of main character, according to King, should be a blonde, a dummy cheerleader, without the slightest experience. Shelley Duvall, however, corresponded to a completely opposite image.

When the film was released, Stephen King naturally became his first critic. He noted that Kubrick has not idea how to make movies in the genre of horror (Kubrick, indeed, didn’t shoot films in the horror genre before "The Shining"), and as a result he got a film that can be compared to a luxurious Cadillac without a motor, the only advantage of which is the fact that you can smell leather upholstery in it. Stephen King was echoed by director Brian De Palma, who claimed that Kubrick was unable to make horror films because he did not like or do not understand people.

King's criticism of the film was joined by many other film critics. The film was left without a single prestigious film award. The highest festival achievement of the film can be considered the nomination of Stanley Kubrick for the Italian prize David di Donatello, moreover, not in the category of Best Foreign Director, but as Best Foreign Producer. But Kubrick lost this nomination.

There was another nomination, or rather, two nominations that the film “The Shining” was awarded with - for the Golden Raspberry Award in 1981, Stanley Kubrick was nominated as the worst director and Shelley Duvall as the worst actress. However, the list of nominees for this “award” included Brian De Palma, mentioned earlier, and other good filmmakers, for example, William Friedkin and some others. I dare to suggest that the organizers of this award, and this year the award was just instituted, acted on the principle of a Pug barking at an elephant: in order to attract more attention to themselves and their undertaking, they swung at the real “elephant” in the cinema - Stanley Kubrick . However, he lost this nomination.

Nevertheless, analyzing the chorus of negative attacks on the Stanley Kubrick film, one can come to the conclusion that basically their authors are real skanks. I do not mean Stephen King, with him is a special story. He, of course, was hurt by the decision of the director to replace him as a screenwriter with a little-known writer, moreover, who did not have experience in screenwriting. In addition, King did not like the fact that Kubrick, if he had not completely eliminated the script, then minimized the topics of the evil of alcoholism and the breakdown of the family unit, while for the writer at that time this topic was extremely important and painful, since he himself experienced great problems with alcohol and drug addiction and actively fought with it. And finally, Stephen King was absolutely not the first writer who considered the film adaptation of his work to be insufficiently adequate.

The most authoritative and respected film critics, on the contrary, praised the picture of Stanley Kubrick very highly. For example, The New York Times movie reviewer Janet Maslin wrote in her review:

"Kubrick brings a special dimension to "The Shining," a breadth and extravagance no recent film has rivaled. His film becomes as remarkable for its scale as for the suspense it generates, and all the more fascinating for setting grand aspirations beside petty errors."

And Roger Ebert rated the film 4 stars out of 4 possible and included it in his list of "Great Movies".

In the Soviet Union, the film “The Shining” was not shown in cinemas, but with the beginning of perestroika, and, most importantly, with the advent of the VHS era, the film became available to Soviet moviegoers.

The most respected Russian film critics also praised Stanley Kubrick's film. According to Yevgeny Nefyodov,

“The Shining” maintains a unique balance on the verge of real and fantastic, everyday and inexplicable .... “The Shining”, in addition to formal skill, delights the director’s super-task - to plunge into the abyss of Madness, only recording internal metamorphoses of Jack with scientific meticulousness in their connection with the outside world. And this connection is almost elusive, ghostly."

Sergey Kudryavtsev noted in his review:

“The unpretentious plot was comprehended by the director in the traditions of “Gothic novels”, the European romantic school, philosophical understanding of supernatural, paranormal phenomena that could not be unraveled in everyday life.”

And thus, as if hinted that Stephen King, in fact, should be grateful to the great director for the fact that his book, which would probably have remained in the memory of a relatively small circle of fans of horror novels, became known worldwide to an immense number of moviegoers . However, as practice shows, not every writer understands that their works, falling into the hands of great filmmakers, acquire a new hypostasis, turning from simply good stories, plays, novels, etc. the basis of film masterpieces. Examples include Ken Kesey, the Strugatsky brothers, and others.

Despite the very strict age restrictions - 18+ - the box office receipts of the picture were quite substantial - more than $ 46 million. And this amount is approximately 2.5 times higher than the budget of the picture (19 million dollars).

Viewers voted for the Kubrick's film, not only with dollar, but also with the exposed ratings. 76% of IMDB and Kinopoisk users around the world rated the film from 8 to 10.

Based on the foregoing, the rating of the film "The Shining" according to FilmGourmand version was 8.204, making it the 484th in the Golden Thousand.