Brilliant cinematography and production design

Rating: 8/10 (7 April 2011)

American exile in England Stanley Kubrick shot all of his films in England from LOLITA in 1962 to EYES WIDE SHUT in 1998. Here was a man who created New York on a Pinewood back-lot (EYES WIDE SHUT), 1970 Vietnam on the Isle of Dogs (FULL METAL JACKET), the Pentagon War Room at Shepperton Studios (DR STRANGELOVE) and prehistoric Earth and the solar system at MGM Borehamwood (2001).
The Overlook Hotel exists nowhere other than on the sound stages of Elstree between 1978 and 1979, where Kubrick filmed the whole movie. It's to this remote and very large American hotel that husband and wife Jack Nicholson and Shelly Duvall (and son) arrive to caretake for the winter shutdown. Jack goes mad, sees ghosts and eventually tries to murder his wife and child - only to end up frozen in the snow covered outdoor maze.
Whilst everyone eulogises Kubrick's fine direction, the real strengths of the film are Roy Walker's production design and John Alcott's remarkable cinematography. All of the sets are huge and empty - the corridors, the lounge, the ballroom suggesting a hotel in winter hibernation. They're all brightly lit by Alcott, forgoing the cliché that horror best works in darkness.
Nicholson's overacting in the later scenes and the lack of much humanity in Kubrick's screenplay are perhaps the two flaws in a film which still stands up well 31 years after its release. Two scenes stand out: the haunting image of Nicholson striding across the ballroom floor and it's full of the ghosts of 1921; and the final chase through the eerie and beautiful snow-covered floodlit maze.
David Thomson, in his Biographical Dictionary of Film, calls THE SHINING "Kubrick's one great film". Nowadays regarded as a classic of its kind, back in 1980 it failed to receive a single Oscar or BAFTA nomination.