This swooping camera, however, disappears once we enter the Overlook Hotel, where the camera will adopt the opposite approach by becoming anchored to characters like Danny, moving through the hotel as he moves. This lends the opening sequence a sense of supernatural surveillance, since the camera seems to shoot from an eagle-eye perspective, and to move as an autonomous creature would move. Kubrick's aerial shots here do not follow the car in a linear, naturalistic way, but rather as if it were fastened to a bird the camera swoops back and forth, in turns following and diverging from the road. Jack Torrance's car appears always on the brink of careening off the treacherous mountain roads, but it is the camera movement especially that contributes to a sense of looming danger. Cruising through the mountain passes towards the gargantuan Overlook Hotel, Jack resembles the protagonist of a fairy tale approaching the infamous monster's castle. The lengthy credit sequence at the opening of The Shining is renowned for its power to build dread and suspense around the isolated, dangerous setting of the film. After this incident, however, Jack became sober and told Wendy that if he ever touched alcohol again, she could leave him. Wendy explains bashfully that Jack once came home late from work and pulled Danny's arm in a fit of rage. She also mentions that Danny was injured once, and the doctor presses her about it. The doctor asks when Tony arrived, and Wendy explains that Danny began talking to him when he started nursery school, where he had trouble adjusting. In the living room, Wendy talks privately with the doctor, who says that there is nothing physically wrong with Danny and that his episode was like autohypnosis. The doctor asks who Tony is, and Danny answers that Tony is "the little boy that lives in mouth." The doctor asks if Tony ever tells Danny to do things, and Danny goes silent. She asks him what he remembers about the episode, and Danny explains that the last thing he remembers is talking to Tony. Finally, he sees an image of himself screaming in a different setting.ĭanny faints, and a doctor arrives. He enters a kind of trance in which he sees images of blood rushing out from an elevator bank, followed by an image of two twin girls in blue dresses. Sure enough, Wendy receives a call from Jack explaining that he got the job and will be home late because he has to fill out some paperwork.ĭanny asks Tony to explain why Tony doesn't want to go live in the hotel, and Danny's eyes widen. He asks Tony if he thinks Jack will get the job, and Tony replies that he already did, and that Jack is going to call Wendy in a few minutes to tell her the good news. Ullman says that the story "gives some people second thoughts about the job." Jack is not shaken by the story but says that his wife, a "confirmed ghost story and horror film addict" will be fascinated by it.īack in Boulder, Danny is talking to Tony and gazing into his bathroom mirror. Ullman presses further, explaining that he is obligated to tell Jack that in 1970, the caretaker, Charles Grady, suffered a mental breakdown and killed his family with an axe. Ullman warns can be "mentally isolating." Jack responds that he is looking for five months of peace to write, and that he expects his family will love it. For that reason, the caretaker has to remain in the hotel all winter, an experience that Mr. Ullman explains that the hotel closes in the winter because the road leading there becomes impassible in all the snow. Wendy then addresses Danny's imaginary friend, Tony, if he wants to go to the hotel, to which Tony replies that he does not.ĭuring the course of Jack's interview, we learn that he used to be a schoolteacher and now calls himself a writer. Danny seems ambivalent and says that he doesn't have many friends to play with in Boulder anyway. Wendy responds that she thinks it will be a lot of fun. Danny asks his mother if they are really going to live in a hotel for the winter. Jack is interviewing for a job as the hotel's caretaker during its closure for the winter season.īack at Jack's home in Boulder, Colorado, his wife, Wendy, and son, Danny, eat lunch and watch cartoons. The car turns out to be owned by Jack Torrance, who has driven for three and a half hours to arrive at the hotel for a job interview with its manager, Stuart Ullman. The film opens on several aerial shots of a car driving through twisting Colorado mountain peaks, followed by an aerial view of the looming Overlook Hotel.
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