Thread by @nessuno2001

[Thread] I’ve noticed something odd happening in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. True, there’s plenty of odd things going on in The Shining, but this is really weird.

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I don’t think anyone has ever noticed it before, because I cannot find anything about it. No article, no video, nothing.

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Well, it *has* been noticed before, but only once. I mean, one instance. This one.

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While in fact there are many, many more, as you see.

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Yes, I am talking about Jack Nicholson looking right into the camera.

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I am not talking about when he looks at the camera because he is talking to someone else. This type of shot is called subjective camera – a technique that places the audience in the shoes of a character.

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I am talking about all the times in which Jack Torrance looks at the camera but there’s no one to look at.

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This thing happens throughout the entire film. This is the first time.

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And this is the last.

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They are all very brief moments, captured by a few frames of film. It’s basically just a glance.

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It can happen while the eyes move from one point in space to another.

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But usually it’s as if Jack is casting a brief look at something, as if he’s peeking.

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Most of the times it’s so quick you can easily miss it. This for example lasts just one frame.

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While others are unabashedly blatant.

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And it only happens with Jack Nicholson – or Jack Torrance, that is. No other actor, and no other character in the film, does that. Only Jack.

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Though I am no believer that everything in a Stanley Kubrick film happens for a reason, that everything is intentional, it is difficult to dismiss this detail as a mistake. There are just too many, it cannot be accidental.

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In fact, we know it is intentional. In this scene from the documentary Making the Shining, Kubrick explicitly asks Nicholson to find a way to look down, right where the camera is.

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So, why is that?

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When actors look directly in the camera it is said they break the fourth wall. The phrase comes from the theatre: it means the actors break the imaginary wall that separates them from the audience, thus breaking the illusion of the play’s reality.

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In films it works in the same way. It breaks the viewer’s so-called suspension of disbelief: we look at the fiction as if we are observing real events, until the actor breaks such illusion by looking directly at us.

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It’s been done countless times in the history of cinema.

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Often to startling effect.

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It is a powerful device. It makes us realise the story is being told to *us*. In a split second, we are no longer watching a story, we become part of it.

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Invariably, it is a very noticeable effect, and it always feels deliberate. We notice it. We recognise immediately and without any doubt that we are being addressed by the character. That’s the whole point.

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What Nicholson does in The Shining is instead completely different. It does not feel deliberate, and it may well escape our perception. In fact, as I said, I’m not aware of anybody noticing it so far.

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Moreover, breaking the fourth wall is usually a one-off device. It is used once per play/film, or very sparingly, and in very specific moments, often at the end. It must have a meaning for it to work.

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Again, what happens in The Shining is different. Jack Nicholson’s glances at the camera are everywhere in the film, and they don’t seem to mean much.

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In regard to this look, some say it’s a Brechtian effect to expose the artifice of the mise en scène and have the audience reflect on the film medium.But Kubrick’s films are not intellectual. “The truth of a thing” he said “is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.”

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If this look at the camera means anything, for me it means that *we* are not safe from Jack’s fury. He knows where we are. He may come for us next.

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But what about all the others? Why on Earth is Jack Torrance constantly glancing at us, breaking the fourth wall over and over,

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and over,

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and over,

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and over.

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As with anything happening in a work of art, I don’t have a definite interpretation. Nor I think there should be one. I can offer mine, but I’d be more than happy to hear yours.

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In fact, the reason why I am writing this visual essay is to see whether somebody has a better explanation, because it bugs me every time I watch the film. Why is that?!? – I keep wondering.

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I have some ideas to throw around. Here’s the first. It is often said that with The Shining Kubrick did not simply make a genre picture, but a film that played with the conventions of the genre. I agree.

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Perhaps the clearest way to show this would be to say that, contrary to most horror films, and especially haunted houses horror films, The Shining is very bright – the Overlook Hotel is awash with light.

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That there’s is an intentional subversion of the scary dark corners trope of horror films is clear if we consider how Hallorann is about to die under the only lit chandelier.

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So my idea is that perhaps Kubrick used this unusually constant and imperceptible breaking of the fourth wall as another way of challenging movie conventions. What he has done here is formally wrong – it goes against dramaturgical norms and film grammar.

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Moreover, I think The Shining is an extreme film in many ways. It’s so over the top that it places itself between the scary and the ridiculous. So maybe this is another over-the-top idea that Kubrick had. Like, why don’t we break the 4th wall, but we do it all the time?

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This too has a startling effect. It’s odd. It’s not supposed to happen. Why does Jack do that?!? Is he talking to *me*? It looks like he does… It’s unsettling, it is – as Freud would put it – uncanny.

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Of course, by the end of the film, it’s become madness.

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Does it mean he is after *me*?!?

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Does he want to hurt *me*? 🪓
This could be a way to subtly perturb the audience – one of the many ways that The Shining actually employs to do that.

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Or – here’s another theory – let’s flip the perspective: who is looking at Jack? Ghosts… the ghosts of the Overlook Hotel. It’s them who are watching.

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Jack felt their presence from the very beginning.
So, the camera in The Shining is… well, a ghost itself. 👻

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But, wait a minute. If the subjective cameras in The Shining are the ghosts’ point of view… does it mean that *I* am a ghost, too? 😱

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Now I am scared!

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And wonderstruck once more by Kubrick’s cinematic tricks.

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Credits:
“Overlooked!” – a visual essay by Filippo Ulivieri. Many thanks to Michele Pavan Deana for his unfailing feedback.
Video version of the essay is on YouTube: Take a look!

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If you liked this thread please ❤️ and RT the first tweet. Thanks!

Wow, this has received lots of attention! Totally unexpected! *blushing*🙏🏻Perhaps you may consider my book 2001 between Kubrick & Clarke which chronicles the making of 2001: A Space Odyssey with original research into the Kubrick & Clarke archives? a.co/d/hZN9BS9 Thanks!

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