Eyes Wide Shut
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Or… Kubrick’s eye gravitated towards cinematographically pleasing shots, and the films are shot similarly because they’re made by the same director.
“Kubrick’s eye gravitated towards cinematographically pleasing shots, and the films are shot similarly because they’re made by the same director.”
Kubrick’s eye gravitated towards whatever shots he needed for the film he was making: ugly, shocking, epic, elegant, disturbing, disorienting, claustrophobic, horrifying, brutally ironic, tragically sad, hilariously funny, and so on.
He shot EWS very differently than the way he shot The Shining, just as he shot 2001 differently from Barry Lyndon, and both differently from Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, etc.
He called himself an “aesthetic opportunist” for a reason, and he wasn’t the only one. One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest is shot completely differently from Amadeus, but the same director - Milos Foreman - made both. Alien, Matchstick Men, and Gladiator were all shot by the Ridley Scott. ET and Schindler’s List both by Spielberg. Etc.
Maybe you’re thinking of Michael Bay?
“Aesthetic opportunist” is right. If anything, that supports my view that he gravitated towards cinematographically pleasing shots.
No it doesn’t, it supports the opposite. But if you want to insist that Stanley Kubrick movies all look similar because the same director directed them all, good luck to you.
“Cinematographically pleasing?”
Yeah I think that’s where we’re getting caught up. I think your idea of cinematographically pleasing and mine are different. I mean purely: an aesthetically pleasing shot. I think you’re taking me to mean something more in line with “pleasing to an audience. When of course, in Kubrick’s own words, he had no interest in ingratiating himself with his audience.
Groundskeeper Willie: “Shhh! You wanna get sued?!”
All the best people.
Stop me if you've heard this one before, but I believe there is a deliberate connection being made by Kubrick between the golden hued, gilded age-themed ball hosted by Ziegler in his mansion in EWS, and the 1921 ballroom featured in The Shining (sorry for the misspelling in the title)
Not just the gilded age style of formal fancy dress in both, but also the fact that one of the men from Ziegler's party, the taller, balding man that appears at the toy shop to lead Helena off, bears a striking resemblance to the caretaker/waiter Delbert Grady from The Shining.
There's also the curious use of the white-jacketed waiter from the Ziegler party to also collect Helena (along with the two older men)--who, in dress and appearance in the toy store--looks like either a younger Jack Torrence, or an older Danny Torrence. Also there's the fact that it's implied in The Shining that Jack Torrence and Delbert Grady are just part of a series of reincarnations of the same homicidal individual at the Overlook Hotel...here they appear as a dark, child-abducting trinity.
There is also the concept of 'Forever' at the Overlook and Jack telling Danny directly "Good. I want you to like it here. I wish we could stay here forever... and ever... and ever" that seems to be echoed in Bill and Alice's conversation about 'Forever' in the toy shop.
Oh yeah, and then there's the whole fed reserve/Woodrow Wilson backstory about and the 'gold room' in The Shining that Rob Ager goes into in depth here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoWZEwedPkc&t=183s-- which might have some tie-ins and the gold ball at Ziegler's mansion and the repeated references to eye of horus pyramid symbolism in EWS.
Apparently Kubrick was a gold bug irl also lol
i remember reading something comparing these films. the duality of a man and his family in seclusion (The Shining) and the duality of a man and his family in society (EWS)
Would love to read it if you come across it again. This is an interesting basis of comparison.
The Wilson/Fed theory is 1000% bollocks.
Did you watch the Ager video on it?
Yes, but I think his thesis fails for a number of reasons. First, it really proceeds from a simple connection of Gold Room - Gold Standard. OK, so the Red Bathroom is about communism then? It's about as complicated. Reliance on the Jack 1921 photo is dubious. First, Woodrow Wilson isn't in the photo, it doesn't look vaguely like him (and Wilson was bedridden in 1921 anyway, even if it was.) The photo is actually an original from 1923- the head and neck of the original person was replaced by Jack Nicholson, so neither has Kubrick created an entire photo by posing an actor who looks like Wilson. Ok, maybe it's a photo from earlier than 1921/23, which does include Wilson, even unrecognisably so - except the fashions are clearly 1920s. The best there is, is that it's a photo of someone who looks very slightly like WW and he's in the Gold Room (except he isn't, it's a different ballroom.) It doesn't fly.
Jack's scrapbook, from the Kubrick archives, which contains clippings about the Federal reserve (which was the eventual undoing of the gold standard and transition to an entirely fiat currency) is an important detail.
And the ballroom is not just a room with gold paint/details, but the walls look like they are practically constructed out of gold metal.
Also, the scene of Jack trying to pay for his drink with a $20 bill (fiat note) and told that "your money's no good here" and then with subsequent drinks being placed 'on credit', all of this seems completely arbitrary and nonsensical without this background context.
As for the red bathroom, that Jack is meeting a fellow demon/incarnation of himself in a hellish red room is probably a better interpretation.
I just watched The Shining last night and for the first time started wondering if the same secret society from ews was meeting at the overlook. So glad you posted this
Thank you :) Check out this excellent post on the topic also:
chickaboombang • 2h ago
Yes, there are similarities between the two ballroom scenes. Kubrick even considered including a masquerade and orgy in the ballroom scene in The Shining. He wanted to blend together elements from Dream Story and The Masque of the Red Death by Edgar Allen Poe. He also toyed around with the idea of having Wendy confess a sexual fantasy or dream to Jack. These ideas didn't really make it into The Shining, but they were being considered in the pre-production process.
Did EXIT signs like that exist in 1921?
The original photo might be from 1923 : https://theoverlookhotel.com/post/33841162601/the-original-unaltered-period-photo-into-which
Yes.
What signs ? I see none
It is partially covered by leaves.
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Can see the masked ball scene in this early version of The Shining script (page 44). https://cinephiliabeyond.org/stanley-kubricks-treatment-of-the-shining/
Also interesting that in this earlier treatment the photo date was 1919.
No