The Shining

Kubrick’s dizzyingly claustrophobic horror classic.

Jack Torrance takes a job as caretaker at The Overlook Hotel, which he is to look after during the winter when it is closed. Before he leaves, the management asks whether he can cope with such a long period of isolation. Jack brushes off the warning and sees the job as a perfect opportunity to finally find the peace and quiet to write the novel he has been carrying around inside him for so long. He sets off with his wife and young son. But a snowstorm cuts the little family off completely from the outside world.

The story of The Shining moves somewhere on the borderline between dream and reality. Kubrick’s visualization of Jack’s accelerating madness is expressed through extraordinary cinematography: the camera glides silkily through the hotel’s endless, identical corridors, its vast kitchen and lavish ballrooms, making people seem small amid the overwhelming surroundings. Jack Nicholson gives one of his greatest performances as Jack Torrance, who desperately tries to fight the forces of nature around him, but gradually loses control of his own.