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1. Andrew Boardman
Film Studies Assessment
Scene Analysis
In the “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy” scene
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_rAVtcGpypM) , the camera work has been
used to show just how vast and lonely the area is which Jack has been writing in,
and how that could have been a factor in how he turned insane. One way that it
does this is from the start of the scene to the 37 second mark, it follows Wendy
through the big open hall with a long tracking shot, almost looking as if she is
being followed by something. And then after that shot it cuts to a shot with
Wendy in the middle showing the hall in the background. Showing how empty
and lonely the area that Jack is working in it is no wonder that he went insane,
trapping himself in that huge room with no one about but him and his thoughts.
The camera work has also been used to build tension in the scene. As at the 2:24
mark the camera tracks in from behind the wall at the back of the room, with
Jack then emerging into the corner of the shot. This has been done to make it
look as if something is creeping up behind Wendy and starts making the
audience ask questions about Jack. I.E why is he standing behind her all quiet like
that and creeping up on her.
A way that I think the mise-en-scene in this scene has portrayed Jack slowly
getting more insane is what he has been writing. Obviously just writing “All work
and no play makes Jack a dull boy” makes the audience think there is not
something quite right about him. But it is the way that it changes slowly as she
flicks through the page that tells a story about how he may have been feeling as
he wrote it. As the further she goes through the pages the more spelling errors
and things like that you being to see. Its things like this that could suggest Jack
getting more and more angry and psychopathic, as wring like that could show he
was getting careless and possibly hitting the keys a bit harder than he would
have been at the start.
There are theory’s about the shining which suggest that the film has an
underlying theme about the genocide of the Native Americans. And the mise-en-
scene in this scene does support that kind of theory. As when you look around
the hall you can see a lot of things that have Native American designs on them
such as the mats on the floor. The fact that these mats are on the floor with seats
on top of them which people sit on and walk all over, could be a way of Stanley
Kubrick displaying the disrespect and disregard for the Native Americans, just
like the had been disrespected and disregarded in the past during the genocides.
Sound has been used in this clip very well in this clip to reinforce the point that
the hotel is very isolated and lonely and to also build a lot of tension. As Wendy is
walking through the hall there is absolutely no sound whatsoever apparat from
her footsteps this shows that there is nothing else about and gives the room
quite a scary feel to it. Then when Wendy gets to the typewriter, some quite high
pitched non-diagetic sound comes on. This sound is used to build tension and to
let the audience know that something is not right and that something might

2. Andrew Boardman
happen to Wendy. The sound could also be used to represent the mental state of
Jack as he is writing, as you would tend to associate this sort of sound with
something bad. When I hear that sound I think of the Joker from Batman the
Dark Knight, as when the Joker is on screen you hear this sort of music and the
music has been used to represent his insanity and scariness. If you look at other
horror films this music is quite cliché, as it tends to always be used to build
tension when something is about to happen, but I do feel like it has been used
very well in this scene.
The cutting rate at the start of this scene is very slow, with only 3 cuts up to the 1
minute mark. And then slowly throughout the rest of the scene the cutting rate
gets faster. The reason I feel Kubrick decided to use very long shots at the start of
this scene is again to give it quite an eerie feel, letting shots linger that little bit
too long to make the audience feel uneasy and take them out of their comfort
zone. The cutting rate then gets faster, almost following along getting faster as
the pitch of the music gets higher. I think that this has been done to build tension
in the scene and give it a faster tempo and build to a climax. This again is often
done in horror films to build tension and warn the audience of something to
come.
Theme Analysis
The Shining explores a multitude of themes, themes such as family, the
supernatural, real vs unreal, isolation and insanity, genocide, violence and
murder.
Throughout the whole of The Shining there are always little hints towards there
being an underlying theme of the genocide of Native Americans when the
Europeans came over and wanted their land. Stanley Kubrick has done this by
making a lot of references to Native American culture throughout The Shining.
For instance, the designs of the hotel, there are a lot of patterns on the walls, rugs
and in stain glass windows, which are stated to actually be Native American
designs by Ullman. There are also a lot of pictures of Native Americans on the
walls and in the food cupboard which Jack gets locked in there are tins of baking
soda which is called “Callumet” which is means peace pipe in Native American.
Near the very start of the film when Ullman is taking the Torrance family for a
tour around the Overlook he states “the site is supposed to be located on an
Indian burial ground”. This is one key point that could explain a lot of the goings
on in the Overlook hotel, as building on a Native American burial ground is said
to bring a lot of bad spirits into whatever you have built. And throughout the
Shining there is a lot of paranormal activity, which could be a direct result of
building on the burial ground.
The theme of real vs unreal is huge in The Shining as throughout the whole film
you are trying to work out what in the hotel is actually real and what is possibly
going on in Jacks head, this is where the theme of insanity also comes into things.
During the film there are things that happen that are impossible, for instance the
ball in The Gold room, out of nowhere there are suddenly hundreds of people
dressed in clothes from the 1920’s having a party. When Jack has drinks spilt on

3. Andrew Boardman
him he goes to the toilet with the butler to wash it off and he is told that he’s the
caretaker and has always been the caretaker. This confuses the audience of the
film and it leads you to believe that it could be all in Jack’s head. Something that
backs this up is whenever there are the apparitions there are always mirrors
about too, this could be to show that Jack is talking to himself in the mirror and
imagining these things and it makes you think that it is all in Jack’s head, making
you think he is insane. But then when Jack is trapped in the food cupboard
talking through the door to Grady, somehow he is let out, this conflicts with the
fact that Jack may be insane and leads you to think that it may not actually be in
Jack’s head but in fact these figures are real and it is actually paranormal activity
that is going on in the Overlook rather than Jack’s imagination. All of this is done
to confuse the audience as you never know what is real or unreal. This explicitly
links to the theme of the supernatural.
Auteur Analysis
Stanley Kubrick is in no doubt an auteur, you can tell that a film is made by him
before you even know that he directed the film. One of the ways that you can tell
this is in the way that the film is shot. For instance, if you were to watch The
Shining, A Clockwork Orange and 2001 A Space Odyssey, you can see that a huge
amount of the shots in the film have a one point perspective and have a very
central point of focus as you can see in the pictures below from these films. As
you can see there is a great deal of symmetry in these shots, it looks like
symmetry is something that Kubrick liked, as it does give the films a very stylised
and well thought out look. If you look at a lot of these shots in the films there is
often very little or no movement in the shot, and if there is movement in these
types of shot it is usually just backwards or forwards quite slowly, as to keep the
symmetry. I feel like the reason that Kubrick has set a lot of the shots up like this
is to make the scenes look like paintings that have been carefully crafted and
framed.
Something else that is notable as to why Stanley Kubrick is an auteur is the
colours that he uses in his films, often the colours are very natural, and have not
been overly colour corrected like films today. This in turn can sometimes make
points of the film look quite bleak and give them quite a cold atmosphere on
comparison to more modern film generally.

4. Andrew Boardman
Another thing is that in most of Kubrick’s films, the shots are quite long and
drawn out, some go on just that little bit long enough to make the audience
realise that the shot is lingering, this in a lot of cases has been done to make the
audience feel a little uneasy to fit with the genre of a lot of his films, like in The
Shining, it gives it quite an eerie feel. An example of this from The Shining is the
hallway scene, where Danny sees the two girls.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMbI7DmLCNI . Right off the bat in these
scene as soon as Danny turns the first corner in the first hallway with the green
walls, you would expect the shot to end pretty much as soon as Danny turns the
corner, but the shot lingers after. I think this has been done to try and give the
audience an idea of just how empty the hotel is, like you are standing there alone
in that hallway. I also feel like this could have been done to make it look as if
Danny is being followed by something when he is riding on his trike. All of this is
to add to the horror elements of this film and make you just feel that little bit
uncomfortable.
Genre Analysis
I think that The Shining fits into the horror genre quite well, but not in the
stereotypical sense of a horror film. What I mean by this is when you hear that a
film is in the horror genre you expect it to be very scary, have things in it that
make you jump or cringe a lot, have monsters/scary ghosts etc. But in The
Shining these things are not really too prevalent, it is quite subtle horror where
unexplained things happen or you hear about things but don’t really see them
outright.
One of the ways that I think The Shining fits into the horror genre the scene
where Danny sees the twin girls in the corridor.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CMbI7DmLCNI . One of the reasons that I
think this is because of the tense music that the scene starts off with, the jarring
high pitched noise that instantly makes the audience think that something is not
right and unsettles the audience, you would expect things like this in horror films
to build tension. For instance if you look at this scene from Scream
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tclSvo5x63g , just before the woman is
about to die and things start to get real, there is high pitched music come on to
build the tension and you start to realise it is not going to end well for her.
Although in the Shining Danny does not die when this music starts to play, but he
is exposed to some gruesome imagery and it lets the audience know that there is
probably going to be something not nice come at the end of the scene.
Something else about the corridor scene that makes The Shining fit in with the
horror genre is the twins themselves and just how creepy they are. If you look at
other Horror films such as The Ring, the scariest character in that film is a child.
Horror films have a tendency to take innocence and cuteness away from children
and turn them into quite creepy characters. I think the reason that this is done is
to further unsettle the audience because in real life children are never really
anything to be afraid of, but changing this up and having the children be things

5. Andrew Boardman
which they would not be in real life, creepy figures and killers etc could really hit
home with the audience and make the film that bit scarier.
Context
The Shining was released in cinemas in the 1980s, the 23rd of May in the US and
the 7th of November in the UK. In the years prior to this Stanley Kubrick was
making another film called Barry Lindon, this was a historical costume drama set
in 18th century England. This film was not a box office success un the US as
people saw it to be quite slow and being too long. After Stanley had received this
news from the critics, he realised that he would need to make a film that would
be commercially successful and also fulfil his artistic needs. This is what drove
Stanley Kubrick to make The Shining as would have noticed that horror films
were quite successful, such as the likes of Alien, so decided to make a horror fim
but in his particular stlye.
The 1970s in Hollywood was a big year for films, seeing the release of films such
as The Godfather, Jaws, Star Wars: A New Hope, Rocky, Alien and the list goes on.
Stanley Kubrick had a lot of tough competition in the years coming up to the
release of The Shining and I feel like this is one of the reasons as to why it is such
a good film, he may have wanted his film to outshine the rest and be seen as the
one that people remember, the competition may have acted as a creative drive
for Kubrick.
An event which took place just before The Shining was released that may have
influenced one of the underlying themes of Genocide could have been the
Jonestown massacre which took place in 1978. This was when a deluded priest
ordered a group of his followers to kill themselves or he ordered people to kill
them when the US tried to help the people of Jonestown, killing 918 people.
There is said to be an underlying theme of the Genocide of the Native Americans
in The Shining. I think that this act in Jonestown could have influenced Kubrick
to want to include this theme in his work and bring it to light.