Colville's "Horse and Train"

590 LS view of beast. (2:09:44)

We see a room numbered 05.

Past this room we see a door open on a room in which someone, perhaps a man, in a peculiar costume, is bent over a man in a tux on a bed. Their positioning is such that one the impression is intended to be given that the one in costume is performing fellatio on the other.

Becoming aware of Wendy's presence, they sit up and look at her.

Figure 23 - Longshot of the beast and man.

The costume has a drop seat and is perhaps that of a bear or a boar with snaggly, overextended, upper and lower teeth and eerie glowing eyes. What makes the image so terrifying is the nature of the costume which really resembles no creature at all, and its curly plush hide seeming to stand at odds with its plastic face when revealed. There is no way an act of fellatio could be performed by this costumed "beast" with its large fangs. The creature's mouth is shaped in such a way that it is a combination of two expressions, both a smile and a frown. There are no eyeholes for a person inside to look though. Instead the mask has large eyes with large black pupils illuminated with bright white points, the kind of bright illumination on the pupils we've seen with episodes of shining. It's an image that really makes no sense and is as frightening as it is due the shining eyes and the mouth being dual, having both a smile and a grimace.

Which is a reason why I think the creature is so disturbing. Our brains are taking in the seeming sexual context and the costume and the teeth and we don't dig immediately down to what is rawly registering in the unconscious whose business it is to measure and comprehend facial expressions without our conscious input. It sees the face is actually split into a smile and frown, showing both in an incomprehensible way as the shape of the mouth is thus not an oval but an X. It takes a longer time for the conscious mind to catch up and really figure out what is wrong with the face beyond the teeth and the peculiar eyes. Indeed, one feels less a sense of threat than of mocking.

Figure 24 - The beast.

There may be a connection with Danny's vision of the two girls in the Boulder bathroom, when one had a slight grin and the other had a slight frown.

The costume could possibly link back to the large bear pillow on which Danny was resting following his shining in Boulder, when being interviewed by the red-haired doctor. As I've noted elsewhere, the drop seat possibly corresponds with a crossfade image of Room 237 to Wendy in the boiler room, in which her rear is briefly obscured by a dark square, and another correspondence had with the similitude (if decorative) of a red handprint on the back of the woman's dress during the party scene in the Gold Room, the individual who had caused the domino effect of Grady bumping into Jack.

This vision seems to be a complement to Jack's vision of the woman in Room 237. In Stephen King's book, Danny encounters a man in a dog costume on all fours, and though it's a man his eyes are tiny and red. From the end protruded what rather sounds like a poodle's tail. The man's mouth and chin were covered in blood and he confronted Danny threateningly, saying he wouldn't let Danny by, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin", and that he would eat him up, beginning with his cock. Danny flees, and he continues to hear the drunken dogman yelling at Harry Derwent to get it up, and that he'll huff and puff until Harry Derwent's all blown down. Harry Derwent was a millionaire (somewhat like a Howard Hughes figure) who purchased the Overlook in 1936 and though he made everything else he touched turn into gold, not so with the Overlook. The dogman was a sometimes lover.

In the book, Jack had a vision of the dogman during a costume ball in which he also confronts Grady, tells him he recognizes him, but Grady says Jack has always been the caretaker.

Back when Wendy was in the boiler room, as she heard distressing yells, she went into the laundry room. I wrote that I heard one of the yells as a dog.

That Danny, in the book, had a vision of the creature that threatened him sexually, saying he wouldn't let him by, "Not by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin", takes us back to Jack calling to Wendy and Danny, before he began to axe the bathroom door, "Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in. Not by the hair on your chinny-chin-chin? Then I'll huff, and I'll puff, and I'll blow your house in!"

Again, the beast-dog has incorporated into its face the idea of opposites. One reason its mouth is so peculiar is because it is cut to have both a frown and a grin, exemplifying in one form the oppositions, such as with the two girls, when one had a slight grin and the other had a slight frown. Something which might seem friendly could turn into a terrifying thing. Whatever is the meaning of what Wendy has seen, it's difficult to say, as there are so many possible connections in cross-analysis. The most pertinent, to me, is the combining of opposites, and that what appears to be one thing can turn into something else.

There are many who posit that Danny has been sexually abused by either his mother or father. I lean instead to something in Jack's past pursuing him, which King seems to allude to in his book but then drops the subject. The fact is that many of Kubrick's films have a young individual who is in some way sexually abused by an older person, or we've the feeling it might have happened. In the book on which Barry Lyndon is based, it is made apparent that Barry, in his young teens, is abused by his cousin who is much older than him, which he mistakes for love and this screws him up, and how he relates to women, for the rest of his life. Lolita is abused by Humbert. In Killer's Kiss we are given the uncomfortable feeling a woman, who has committed suicide, might have been abused by her father, whether emotionally or physically we don't know. The Shining has incorporated the film Summer of 42 in which a teen boy is abused by an older woman, which screws him up. Jack's encounter is then with a young woman who turns into an old one, and pursues him as death.

We are left to wonder however, at Kubrick having taken the line from the dog-beast that sexually threatened Danny in the book, giving that line to Jack, then having Wendy witness the beast in a a compromising position of an act which couldn't have been performed with those teeth.

591 MS Wendy. (2:09:56)

Horrified, Wendy backs up down the hallway and flees in the opposite direction to the left. The camera focuses long enough on a door number at the end of the hall that we're able to see it could be either 107 or 101.

Figure 24 - Wendy flees past 107 or 101.

If we compare this level with the others we see that the area where a room corresponding to Suite 3 would be has disappeared.

As seen in the screengrab above, tn the level below the one where Wendy sees the frightening vision, where Suite 3 would be, is just beyond the double door at the hall's end.

On the level where Wendy sees the frightening vision, again where a corresponding Suite 3 would be is beyond the end wall.

To compare with the map of the floor on which is their suite, as demonstrated by the grey overlay, we see that not only do these floors eliminate anything comparable to that suite, the area in which Danny saw his vision of the murdered girls may have also been eliminated.

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ENTERING THE MAZE

JACK PURSUES DANNY INTO THE MAZE, THE ENTRANCE OF WHICH HAS SHIFTED

592 LS Jack. (2:10:04)

Cut to Jack exiting the hall with the red diamond wall hanging, the same style as was observed through the door when Jack entered the men's room area with Grady. (View image.) It's the same hall Wendy had used when exiting to look at the Snowcat. Coming down this hall with the rug observed in the background, Jack passes on (our) left one of the red elevators. He turns through the door on the right into foyer.

The lodge had only unfolded to the point of our being aware of this area in the 8 am section when it was used by Wendy to go check the Snowcat.

Figure 25 - Jack comes from the same hall as had Wendy earlier.

We see on the left wall in the foyer area a print that was also in the secretarial area, which was only viewed when Bill had entered Ullman's office. It is Norval Morrisseau's "Flock of Loons".

593 LS exterior, Snowcat. (2:10:17)

Looking out the open door, Jack sees Durkin's Snowcat in which Dick arrived.

Figure 26 - Jack sees the Snowcat but not Danny.

The camera pans to the right and we realize that the entrance of the maze has shifted so it is now facing north, the hotel, rather than west. I write about this shift at length in the A Month Later section.

594 MS Jack, interior. (2:10:28)

Jack cuts on the lights, brightly illumining the maze.

Figure 27 - Jack illumines the maze.

Both of the doors are now open fairly wide. Wendy had trouble forcing one door open a little against the snow, and Dick had been able to open that door only about an inch wider. Danny would have passed through them when he returned to the lodge after having escaped outside, and then when he ran back outside. But it isn't possible that he would be able to force these doors open wide when neither Wendy nor Dick could do so.Also, all he would have needed to do was slip through. Instead, it's as though the lodge has opened them for Jack.

595 MS Danny, exterior (2:10:39)

Cut to Danny peeking out from behind the Snowcat.


596 MS Jack, interior (2:10:43)

JACK: Danny!

597 MS Danny, exterior (2:10:48)


Danny steps several feet out from the Snowcat.

598 MS Jack, exterior (2:10:53)

Jack limps into the snow.

JACK: Danny!

599 MS Danny, exterior (2:10:55)

Danny flees to screen right, his eyes on Jack.


600 MS Jack from behind, lodge beyond (2:10:56)

JACK: Danny!

Jack pursues him. We view the lodge beyond him and the Snowcat.

Figure 29 - Jack pursues Danny.

601 LS Danny, exterior maze. (2:11:01)

Cut to Danny climbing a hill to the entrance of the maze and disappearing within it.

Figure 30 - Danny enters the maze.

602 MS Jack. (2:11:05) Jack limps his way toward the maze, the Snowcat and the main entrance to the hotel in the background.

Figure 31 - Jack having passed the Snowcat, Danny having entered the maze, now clutches his right hand shut at his jacket.

I discuss in The Clenched Fist of Jack Torrance how from now on he will pursue Danny with his right hand clenched shut, appearing to hold shut his jacket, only carrying the axe in his left hand. Before now, both hands had been on the axe. As soon as Danny entered the maze this changed.

603 LS Danny in maze (2:11:08)

Cut to Danny running through the maze, the camera following behind. His first turn, after a number of feet, is a left, then an immediate right. He runs a number of feet and takes a left, cutting immediately back around with another left in a hairpin turn. He falls.

Figure 32 - Danny falls.

Figure 33 - Danny presses himself back up.

After running a few feet he next takes a right and then an immediate left and another immediate left, then a right.

604 MCU Jack in maze (2:11:33)

Jack in the maze now we view him from the front as he follows Danny's footsteps.

JACK: Danny! I'm coming! I'm coming, Dan!

605 MCU footsteps in snow (2:11:50)

We view the footsteps Danny has left in the snow.

606 MCU Danny's feet. (2:11:57)

Cut to Danny's feet as he races through the snow. He takes a right and runs down a long lane of the maze, snow flying into the camera.

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GREAT PARTY, ISN'T IT

607 LS Wendy in 7-Up hall. (2:12:03)

Cut to Wendy coming down the 7-Up hall.

WENDY: Danny!

Turning to look up the stairs. She stumbles on carafes and other items Jack had earlier knocked on the floor and picks her way through them. After Jack had knocked over the carafes he had exited the hall to come upon balloons in the lobby, evidence of the party going on in the Gold Room.

Exiting the hall, Wendy makes a hairpin turn into the hall parallel it, the one that runs behind Ullman's office.

Figure 34 - Wendy runs down the dark hall.

She reaches the intersecting elevator hallway and looking down it sees Dick lying in the lobby.

608 MCU Wendy. (2:12:28)

Reaction shot of Wendy. The driftwood centerpiece has disappeared.

Figure 35 - The driftwood has disappeared.

609 LS Dick's body. (2:12:30)

Cut to Dick's body, the camera then doing a quick zoom.

Figure 36 - The ashcan is back in place.

We can now observe the ashcan is back in place. We observed it in place in Figure 13 when Jack is looking over the lobby, preparing to hide. Then in Figure 16 we see the ash can is to the right side of the pillar rather than behind it as Dick approaches it. It has moved 90 degrees. In Figure 17, Jack leaps out from behind this pillar, he only having been able to hide behind it because of the ash can having been moved. He doesn't replace it after killing Dick, but here it has been returned to its proper place, a 90 degree shift around the pillar. We should have something that has disappeared, as these 90 degree turns accompany disappearing things. The driftwood?

610 MCU Wendy. (2:12:35)

Return to Wendy. Bewildered, she looks about, takes a couple of steps further down the hall. She then screams and turns to face the direction from which she came, the camera quickly panning to show a man in a tux standing at the end of the hall, blood running from a deep gash in the center of his head. The chandeliers are lit at this end when they hadn't been just a couple of seconds before.

Figure 37 - Wendy sees the party man.

611 MCU Wendy. (2:12:46)

Reaction shot of Wendy, terrified, showing the red panels behind her.


612 MCU Party man. (2:12:47)

Cut to the man and we see that the drink he holds is red with blood.

PARTY MAN (raising his glass): Great party, isn't it?

This refers to Wendy, in the Gold Ball Room on Closing Day talking about what a party they could have there, and Ullman saying they won't do too well unless they brought their own supplies.

They appear to have brought their own psychic supplies to have just this kind of bloody party.

Figure 38 - Great party, isn't it.

I'm of the belief this man could be the one who came around the corner on Interview Day when Jack stepped on the spot where he would later murder Dick and we heard the first "sha" sound, the man who was observed looking over the maze when Jack phoned Wendy from the lodge to tell her he'd gotten th job.

613 MCU Wendy. (2:12:51)

Wendy backs up then runs toward the red doors which resemble the red elevators, only they are not doors. It is only now in the movie that these doors, which have the appearance of the elevators, have ever been used, so it's only now we learn that the brown panel in the middle is a door between red decorative panels. I also think of them as doorposts of a sort (refer to my earlier relation of this to the Passover, when Jack's hand is slashed by Wendy).

Figure 39 - Wendy flees toward the service hall.

The man's head is gashed right down the middle. If one considers the construct of a labrys, a double axe (a word seemingly related to the labyrinth), what you have is possibly a representation of the brain and its two hemispheres--this having all to do with dualities, and I think of the interview and the "second thoughts" mentioned that individuals would have upon learning of the axe-wielding Grady.

The word "party" comes from partire, meaning to divide. I have held that because the opening trip up the Going-to-the Sun road crossfaded east of the Continental Divide (the VW traveling east to west), and because on Closing Day it crossfaded out to the lodge west of the Continental Divide (the VW traveling west to east), that Kubrick was showing the Overlook positioned psychically on the Continental Divide, as in a place of a meeting of opposites. What is the Continental Divide also called? The Great Divide.

As I've stated I believe this is the man who came out of this area and passed the elevators, as Jack, the day of the interview, walked over where Dick would be killed and we heard the "sha" utterance. He was seen after that, a second time, standing before the maze and looking over it when Jack called Wendy to let her know he'd gotten the job. He was standing at the opposite end of the table from where Jack would later stand when looking at the maze, when it had turned 90 degrees and we had viewed it as the world maze from a point of view across the table from him.

I wrote in the A Month Later section...

Though we have seen the opening to the outdoor maze being in the west (or east) and that its heart runs parallel the hotel, as soon as the world maze appears this has changed, and we see this change reflected in the shadows shown as Wendy and Danny walk the heart of the physical maze. The shadows coming from the W/NW, the heart of the maze now runs perpendicular to the hotel. The 90 degree shift of the maze has already occurred. The shadows in the world maze can be assumed to be coming from the W/NW as well which means the camera is viewing the maze from opposite Jack, who stands in the west. The camera is viewing the maze from the position of the elderly man who had been looking at the maze on the day of Jack's interview. The same man who had appeared from around the corner when Jack stepped on the spot where he will later murder Dick.

So, the question is, who is this man? For if this is that man who was looking at the maze, he seems to represent Jack's dilemma as being split down the center. The man also ends up taking the position of the camera in opposition to Jack.

I think back to the party. Might he be at the party? How about after Jack crosses from the hall into the Gold Room, where we have a black divide in the shot as the camera passes behind the wall between the hall and the Gold Room, and the maitre'd (master of the house) greets Jack by name. Perhaps?

The man playing the party guest is Norman Gay. The maitre d' is not named. Norman Gay also appeared in bit parts in two other Kubrick films. He was in A Clockwork Orange as a BBC producer, and in Barry Lyndon as a tailor who is keen to sell Barry a garment of the finest velvet that is stitched with silver thread.

Ignore the screengrab to the right above, squeezed in with the other image, of Lord Bullingdon and Bryan. It was a composite image for comparing reds.

Killer's Kiss, which was a Minotaur Production, features in it an fight between Davey, a boxer, and a dance hall boss who has kidnapped Davey's girlfriend who was working at the dance hall until the boss raped her. The dance hall boss wields the axe, and loses. In the analysis for that film I discuss how a labyrs appears tobe depicted in it as well.

In some versions of the myth of the birth of Athena, Prometheus (or Hephaestus or Hermes) cleaved Zeus' head with the labrys in order for Athena to be released from him. How did this come to be? Zeus had swallowed Metis, the goddess of crafty thought, as it had been foretold she would bear a child by him more powerful than himself. Within Zeus, Metis began crafting a helmet for Athena, and the pain of the hammering was such that Zeus caused his head to be split in order to ease it. So did Athena spring from his cleaved head fully grown, a patron of both wisdom and battle who made use of strategy rather than brute passion.

It's sensible that the dual blades of the labrys used to cleave Zeus' head might represent dual natures via the two hemispheres of the brain, just as people still tend to think of the brain as having left and right natures. And it makes sense to me that the man with the cloven head would appear as Danny leads Jack into the maze.

For really, it's not that Jack has chased Danny into the maze. Instead, Danny has very sensibly and calculatedly led Jack into the maze, running into it knowing that Jack will follow and that he will be able to lose him there.

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DANNY REACHES THE MAZE'S CENTER

614 LS Danny in the maze. (2:12:56)

In the maze we see Danny running, the chanting continuing over. After going down a long lane he takes a left, then a right, we hearing Jack call, "Danny!" He passes down another lane and takes a right followed by an immediate right then an immediate left. We see a bench and realize he's reached the maze's center.

Figure 42 - Danny in the heart of the maze.

615 MCU Jack. (2:13:11)

Cut to Jack seen from the front, yelling.

JACK: Danny, I'm coming! You can't get away! I'm right behind ya!

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DICK DISAPPEARS AMIDST SKELETONS AND COBWEBS

616 LS Wendy Gold Room hall off lobby (2:13:33)

Wendy now is shown running down the hall outside the lobby that supposedly leads to the Gold Room Hall. As with when Dick passed down the hall earlier, this time we're allowed to see to the point where the July 4th photo will be on the right wall. The photos that we can see appear to be the same as when Dick passed down, but the place of the photo where Jack will later be seen is this time obscured by shadow.

The mirror that has always been on the far end of the corridor is no longer there. It was hanging on the wall when Dick earlier entered (see Figure 15).

Figure 43 - Wendy enters the Gold Room hall off the lobby.

The hall is cast in greenish-blue light. The camera turns with Wendy as she reaches the lobby doors to see all the lights off, spiderwebs covering everything. Dick no longer lies on the floor. Though the drapes were earlier closed, light from the outside maze pours in. Skeletal forms are seated and standing about. Wendy screams.

Figure 44 - Dick has disappeared.

617 MCU Wendy. (2:13:29)

A reaction shot of Wendy's terror.

618 MS skeletons. (2:13:32)

Cut to a group of skeletons seated where Jack had lunch on Closing Day. They wear tuxes, white tie, and long dresses that are of a generation before the flapper party we'd seen earlier. A champagne bottle and glasses rest on a table.

619 MS skeletons by phone booths. (2:13:34)

Cut to the seating area before the phone booths with their modern phones. We see skeletal men in the booths. A skeletal man and two women are seated before the booths. On the table before them are two bottles of champagne and more glasses. Cobwebs are everywhere and the table is thick with dust.

620 MS skeleton and waiter. (2:13:37)

A group of 6 skeletons, including a balding waiter with hair on the sides of his head. Could this be Delbert Grady? But the hair appears longer than his. He looks a little like Bozo the clown. As with the other skeletons, they all seem to be facing Wendy, looking at her. Again, they are in white tie tuxes and dresses that appear to be from an era earlier than the flapper garb.

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This was, viewing it first time in the theater, probably one of the most astonishing scenes, in as much as how did we go from a pretty sophisticated horror story to having a run-of-the-mill horror idea of a haunted house thrown in? It seemed almost for laughs, but I felt that as this was what Wendy was seeing, this was her vision, we had to take it seriously in relationship to her.

At least Dick's gory body was gone, but to where? I doubted it meant he'd never been there, but who knew?

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DANNY, IN THE HEART OF THE MAZE, COVERS HIS TRACKS

621 LS Jack from behind. (2:13:40)

In the maze, Jack continues to follow Danny's tracks but already he is appearing to become confused. He takes a left for a couple of steps then backtracks and continues on.

622 MS Danny. (2:13:50)

Having reached the heart of the maze, we now see Danny carefully backtracking in his footsteps...one, two steps.

Figure 45 - Danny backtracks.

623 MCU Jack. (2:14:09) Alternately laughing, grimacing, gasping, Jack continues through the maze.

JACK: Danny!

624 MS Danny. (2:14:16) Danny continues retracing his steps, carefully placing his feet in the footprints he'd made in the snow. One more step as we hear Jack yell.

JACK: Danny!

Danny leaps to the side and begins covering any trace of that leap and where he has just stood.

Figure 46 - Danny covers his tracks.

I have discussed several times already how what Danny does is a pattern that appears in the movie, and is based upon Danny's methodology for hiding himself here. We have had numerous instances of an opposition/reversal accompanied by a 90 degree turn and the disappearance of something. This is Danny retracing his steps (opposition) then taking a 90 degree turn into the hedge and covering his tracks.

Thus does Danny disappear from Jack. It is the ultimate disappearing act in the film.

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THE RED HALL AND THE BLOODY ELEVATOR

625 LS Wendy in the red hall. (2:14:25)

Classically Kubrick, he responds to the intense blue of the skeletal lobby scene with an intense red.

Cut to Wendy running down a shocking red hallway with its green tables and stacked chairs. Danny having himself knowingly ennacted the opposition/reversal accompanied by the 90 degree turn and thus disappearing, covering his tracks, Wendy finally will come upon the revelation of the bloody elevator.

Figure 47 - Wendy in the red hall.

Astonished, confused, disbelieving, she looks screen left (her right) into the hall of Danny's bloody elevator vision. We note on the left wall a photo of trees that is the same photo that had been hanging on the right wall of another hall as she fled the bloodied "party" man, but it is not that hall.

Figure 48 - Wendy sees the red elevators down the hall.

I'll implant here my a post on the relationship of the red hall and the service hall behind Ullman's office that I originally had on the blog.

The green hall behind Stuart Ullman's office appears to have no direct relationship to the red hall, the appearance of both is distinctly different, but a kind of sympathetic relationship is had.

Figure 49 - Closing Day, on the way to the basement.

Below we see Wendy at a point in the red hall near where she is with the group in Figure 49. We see behind her, on screen left, the two alcoves in the wall in which are the vending machines in Figure 49. We see the vent on screen right in the ceiling. We see the lobby beyond.

Figure 49a - Before seeing the bloody elevator.

The red hall is the set of the green hall that has been reworked. As I've read that Kubrick's plan was to film according to the timeline of the script rather than out of order, this may have been shot toward the end, but I have also read of scenes filmed out of sequence.

And that single appearance of the red hall is shocking, because Kubrick has trained us to view the back service halls of the hotel in greens, but then suddenly, at film's end, the hotel immersed in the icy blues of a blizzard, we're granted a view of this red hall that is made doubly alarming in that it is painted red in glossy, highly reflective paint.

The green tables and stacked chairs that line the walls suggest the red hall is in proximity of the Gold Room.

Figure 49b - Closing Day, Stuart's office.

Figure 49c - Saturday, before Danny happens on the girls in the flowered hall.

Figure 49d - Before the bloody elevator

Continuing down the green hall, we see on the left the rear door to Stuart's office, while on the right is a double door exit.

Our first acquaintance with the green hall is with Jack and Wendy leaving Danny in the kitchen with Dick, Stuart taking them to see the basement. The atmosphere is light-hearted, Wendy eventually comparing the hotel to a ghost ship.

Our second viewing of the green hall is with Danny on his big wheel, just before he runs into the twins in the bloody flowered hallway. The shot of Danny cycling down the green service hall begins just after the thickened sections of wall that separate the rear of Stuart's office from the hall which its impossible window should overlook. That hall outside the impossible window is one we know exists from observation in the lobby, but Kubrick won't show it to us until the scene in which Jack limps toward the lobby stairs, readying himself for his attack on Dick. We do, however, see access doors from that hall to the green service hall on Closing Day (figure 49h).

Having mentioned where the camera begins its pursuit of Danny down the green service hall, before his encountering the twins, when Wendy is fleeing down the red hall she stops in the same location, just before the thickened walls. The thickened walls aren't there in this red version of the hall. Instead there is an unexpected door (figure 49g).

Figure 49e - Closing Day.

Figure 4f - Danny hides.

Figure 49g - Wendy approaching the door.

Figure 49h - Approaching the 7 Up hall on Closing Day.

We know the hall in which Wendy views the bloodied man who announced it's a "great party" exits onto this green service hall, We have conceived of it as being directly behind Ullman's office, but it turns out not to be. So it is that in the red version of the service hall Wendy turns short of where the party hall would be, beyond the brown doors. Where the thickened portion of wall is between the brown doors and Ullman's office is what is now absent and that is where is the new hall that Wendy encounters.

Perhaps what may be overlooked, as Wendy approaches that hall, long before she can see down it to the elevator, the blood as yet unleashed, is the fact her expression is one of utter astonishment, as if she is surprised by this hall. Running down the red hall, it's as she passes what would be, in the green hall, Stuart's office door, that Wendy slows, well in advance of being able to see down the hall to the elevator. From her viewpoint, she can't possibly see what is in that adjoining hall, and yet she is dumbfound by it, and as her astonishment and anxiety have nothing to do with an as yet unseen bloody elevator, it must be this hall, its very existence, that amazes her. I think for most audience members, as we soon see the bloody elevator, Wendy's surprise at the hall is compressed instead into her horror at the blood flowing subsequently from the elevators, and they forget that Wendy, advancing toward the hall, had no idea what she would see. She only knew something was different.

Figure 49i - Closing Day detail.

Figure 49j - 4 p.m. hall detail.

Looking at figures 49i and 49j we see that, however different the two halls seem to be, another green hall remnant and identifier is the plaque on Stuart's office door appearing to be the same as the plaque on the door in the red hall, and I'd be curious what that plaque in the red hall reads. So much has been altered, and yet there remains perhaps the same plaque? Why should that be if not to provide a linkage.

My thought is that Wendy is as surprised as she is because this adjoining hall is out of place, it's not supposed to be there, as if she recognizes the red hall should be the green hall and knows there is a now another hall here in the place of the thickened walls. But as Kubrick maintains ambiguity through the film on the nature of what is happening at the Overlook, whether its nature is purely psychological or has a supernatural element, and because Kubrick also has painstakingly unfolded the hotel for us so slowly, meting the halls and rooms out sometimes in mere inches, it's sensible to say that the red hall could be just another area of the hotel we've not yet viewed, especially considering that it's populated with the Gold Room chairs and tables. Nor does Wendy look alarmed by this red hall proper. We take her, at this point, as fleeing from other horrors she's witnessed, pellmell wandering like a ball in a pinball machine bounced around by frightening situations, looking for a way out as much as she is for Danny. She was obviously terrified by the transformation of the lobby with its blue party skeletons, so why not of the red hall itself if it is indeed the green hall?

What's more important is the audience's reaction. In fact, I think Kubrick understood if we had Wendy reacting in horror to the red hall, leaping in surprise at it, looking all about her as if, "Where did the green hall go?" the audience's horror would be diffused by Wendy's. Vivian Kubrick shot 28 hours of footage for her documentary on the film but only a brief 25 minutes was kept. In that 25 minutes was footage of Kubrick coaching Shelley Duvall not to leap in response to every aggressive or threatening aspect of Jack's performance, that after a while it began to look fake. The same could be said of the hotel. If she expressed overt alarm over every sinister or changing aspect of the hotel, there would have been no room for the audience to feel their own horror and react to their own sense of astonishment, they would have been instead examining Wendy and responding to her. And the audience is surprised, alarmed, horrified by this red hall, its walls saturated with the supernatural, the hotel--and not just its ghosts--seeming to come to life, threatening to swallow Wendy whole.

In the meanwhile, Danny, out in the maze, has just prior this scene successfully concealed himself by covering his footprints, and here Wendy is very near where would be the cupboard in the green hall in which Danny had been hiding when he shined the murder of Dick and we saw his expression of horror as he shined it in his Denver bathroom on the day of Jack's interview. Do I imagine there is a relationship between Danny screaming in the cupboard, his face showing the same horror as it had in The Interview section when he saw the bloody elevator, and that here, in not exactly what would be the same location in the green hall, but near it, Wendy is about to see the vision of the same bloody elevator? Yes, I do. It's as if, in the same psychic location of it, his mother enters the territory of that scream and now will see the same bloody elevator that has threatened Danny from the film's beginning.

Figure 49k - Day of the Interview.

The sections of white ceiling in the red hall have always been curious to me, seeming to stand out in the kind of idiosyncratic way that demands examination of correspondences. To my eye they echo the square fluorescent lights in Stuart's office. But there's more to it than that. I've long questioned those high shelves in Stuart's office which serve only as holders for plants despite the difficulty that would be had in watering those plants. If we compare those high shelves with the green and red halls, we see that they recall the dropped sections of ceiling in those halls that run parallel the walls. Further, the way the light of the impossible window plays on the ceiling, there is more than a passing resemblance with the fluorescent lights in the green service hall. It seems to me that the white boxes in the red hall's ceiling are intended to bring to mind the office where we first saw the impossible window via a similarity to the boxed fluorescent lights.

We know the preposterous window in the office shouldn't be there, that beyond the office is the hall in which Wendy sees the "great party" man. In that "great party" hall is a connection with the hall down which she views the bloody elevator, though they are two separate halls. That connection is in the form of a landscape photo.

Figure 49l - Wendy flees the party man.

Figure 49m - The photo of the trees.

Figure 49n - The photo of the trees.

Figure 49l shows Wendy in the hall behind the office after her discovering Dick's body, and that terror compounded by the apparition of the "great party" man. As she flees that apparition, we see behind her the doors that go to the green hall. On the right there is a landscape photo of trees, similar to those around the lodge, standing against what may be either an early morning or late evening sky.

In figures 49m and 49n we see this same landscape photo in the bloody elevator hall.

We have two different halls in about the same place, and the photograph of an exterior landscape relates them.

One of the first stand-out intimations we have that something is wrong with the Overlook, that all is not as it seems, is the impossible window in Stuart's office, viewed near the beginning of the film. Here, toward the end, Kubrick returns us to that same impossible window, positioning us to look directly behind it, even between it and the formerly observed "great party" hall, where slips in the shined hall that leads to the bloody elevators. Whatever is the significance of this picture of the trees, I'm not confident, but a reason it stands out is not only for its doubling, being both in the "great party" hall and the bloody elevator hall, but also for reason of its being, aside from the painting of the landscape above the bed in suite 3, and the four seasons photos of the Overlook and its environment just outside the office door in the reception area, the only other image in the Overlook that appears to portray what would look to be a surrounding landscape. My inclination has been to associate the landscape photo with the impossible window in Stuart's office, reminding us of its impossible view.

My gut emotional feeling as regards the red hall is that this pictorial landscape, because it appears in the same position both in this and the "great party" hall, intends to suggest that the red hall is--regardless whether it is in fact the green hall or not--one of the maze's variations of the green service hall behind the offices, at the very least the skeleton of a pattern repeating but adorned variously. The tables and chairs from the Gold Room give the impression of a stage now disassembled, yet their presence is also curiously consistent with Wendy's frantic wanderings of the service quarters where the halls were also lined with a clutter of old tables and chairs. These tables and chairs now seem to proliferate and have overtaken the Overlook, when before we were more aware of seeing shiny repetitive carts and cupboards holding dining china and coffee urns which alluded to the kitchen being possibly just beyond any one or even all of the doors in the service halls.

626 MS Red elevators. (2:14:40)

The blood pours forth, filling the hall, as if the blood of how many Passovers, the Passover being an observance to be repeated in perpetuity, forever.

627 MCU Wendy. (2:14:48)

Cut to Wendy gazing on in horror.

628 MS Bloody elevators (2:14:51)

The blood continues to fill the hall.

626	627
628

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THE REVERSED ELEVATOR DOORS AND HOW THEY RELATE TO THE SWITCH IN DOMINANCE OF THE GIRLS WHEN DANNY SEES THEM MURDERED

The elevator doors are actually reversed in Danny's vision and Wendy's. This is not something that is at all immediately obvious.

This is how the elevator doors appear when Wendy first sees them.

The elevator doors

Now a close-up look at them. The elevator doors each have two parts. We see the screen left side of the door is dominant over the screen right side, as far as overlapping in front of it. This is the proper orientation and is what we see in the Colorado Lounge.

The elevator doors

This is how they appear to Wendy as the blood flows from them. The screen right side of the door is now dominant over the screen left side, as far as overlapping in front of it.

The elevator doors

Here's a still from when Danny was viewing the elevators.

The elevators

And this is how they would appear if the elevator doors were appropriately oriented.

The elevator doors are reversed

As you can see, Kubrick did not simply take the hall and reverse it while editing. Everything else is in its proper orientation, only the elevator doors have reversed. Kubrick has once again tricked us so that we aren't seeing what we believe we are seeing.

This shift in dominance we have seen before with the twin girls, and I examine this in the Saturday section when Danny sees them in the bloodied flowered hall.

Below is Danny's vision of the girls in the Boulder apartment bathroom. The screen left side girl has her arm in the dominant position over the screen right side girl's arm.

The two girls as viewed in the mirror in the Boulder apartment bathroom.

When Danny sees the girls in the game room, we have the same thing. The girl on the screen left side has her arm in the dominant position over the girl on the screen right side.

In the images below, the girls are briefly viewed as Danny looks at the number of Room 237, the girl on the screen left side is again the dominant one, her arm crossed over the arm of the girl on the screen right/left side.

The two girls as viewed in the left door of Room 237.

Below that are the girls as Danny sees them in the flowered hall. These shots have been staged so that they are almost exactly the same. Almost. Look at the folds of the dresses and how the ribbons drape, they are the same. The placement of the girls in the hall is the same, and even their skirts measure about the same distance from the walls. Their unlinked arms are almost but not quite exactly the same, positioned ever so slightly different, but the print of the wallpaper behind their figures and how it relates to their outlines is an exact match. Their hair, when Danny is in the flowered hall, is different. The girl on the left, previously, has hair that is slightly frizzy at the ends, while the other girl's hair is perfectly curled. The situation is now reversed, the girl on the screen left side has the hair that is perfectly curled at the ends, and the other girl's hair is not.

The two girls as they are in Danny's fourth vision, in the hall. The girl on the right now has the dominant arm.

It is only when Danny views the girls in the flowered hall, with the screen right side one in the dominant position, that Danny has his vision of the bloodied hall and their murder. Just as it is only when the screen right side of the elevator doors are in the dominant position, overlapping the screen left, that we see the flood of blood.

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JACK IN THE HEART OF THE MAZE

629 MS Danny in the maze. (2:14:57)

Cut to Danny, in the maze, hidden to the side. The camera pans left and we see Jack, exhausted, enter the screen. He stumbles on, always gripping his jacket with that right hand. He will not release it.

Figure 50 - Jack enters the heart of the maze.

630 MS Danny's footprints (2:15:12)

Cut to a POV shot of Jack following Danny's footprints.

Figure 51 - Following Danny's footsteps.

If we look to the screen right of the third footstep from the bottom of figure 51 (shot 630), we may see an ALPh, or aleph, the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, that is derived from the West Semitic word for ox.

Two points with a line between by which there is both division and connection.

The footsteps suddenly disappear. No more breadcrumbs to follow. The POV shot moves up to the white light at the end of the path.

Figure 52 - The footsteps end.

Danny will be passed over by his father who follows Danny's tracks to where they suddenly stop, as if he has simply disappeared.

Thus again does the Overlook recall the Passover.

I have read that pesach (passover) is also as a combination of pe, "mouth", and such being something like "converse", this combination meaning that the right to self expression and rule over one's destiny is restored, the individual released from the cage of pre-ordained fate. And it does fit as what we have here has become at least in part an Oedipal coming of age story, the son vanquishing the father, though in the myth of Oedipus he is caught in the tyranny of his destiny. We will see that Jack's ability to converse reasonably has left him, he becoming little more than a beast. He is caught up in destiny, it seems.

631 CU Jack. (2:15:37)

Bewildered, enraged, Jack turns about.

JACK: Danny!

632 MCU Danny. (2:15:44)

Cut to Danny listening.

633 MCU Jack. (2:15:47)

Jack, smiling, seeming to have gotten an idea, goes to the right (screen left).

634 LS Jack.

He plunges on past the point of Danny's inexplicable disappearance into the frozen maze. He proceeds where there are no footsteps to follow.

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THE ESCAPE OF DANNY AND WENDY

635 MS Danny emerging. (2:16:00)

His father having passed, Danny emerges from behind a bank of snow.

636 LS Footprints through the maze. (2:16:09)

Danny's POV of his father's footprints in the snow.

637 MS Danny (2:16:11)

Assured his father is past, Danny emerges from behind the snowbank to run in the opposite direction. He will follow the footprints back out.

638 MS Footprints (2:16:18)

Just as Danny is about to turn right, cut to his POV of the tracks in the snow as he follows them. He turns right.

639 LS back of Jack (2:16:26)

Cut to Jack trudging deeper into the maze over fresh snow. He stops at an intersection and turns about, puzzling whether to go right or left. He continues forward.

640 MCU Jack. (2:16:35)

Cut to Jack from the front, stumbling on.

641 LS light. (2:16:40) POV shot of Jack as he heads toward the light at the end of that untrodden path. Before reaching it, he turns right, into another light.

642 MS Danny. (2:16:44)

Cut to front of Danny as he runs through the maze. He takes a left.

643 LS Jack. (2:16:49)

Cut to a shot of Jack from the rear, stopping at another light, stepping right, looking back to the left. He decides to go left but seeing nothing he turns back and continues right, exhausted. Jack staggers on, becoming slower and slower, hampered by his limp and the cold. It doesn't occur to him to follow his tracks back out of the maze.

631	632
633	634
635	636
637	638
639	640
641	642
643

WENDY AND DANNY, REUNITED, FLEE THE HOTEL

644 MS Wendy outside the hotel. (2:17:03)

Cut to Wendy running toward the Snowcat.

645 MS Danny. (2:17:11)

Danny still running through the maze. He turns left, left again. He falls.

Figure 53 - Danny falls again.

646 MS Wendy. (2:17:18)

Danny has fallen at the entrance to the maze for we now see Wendy screaming as she sees him.

WENDY: Danny!

She throws down the knife and runs forward, the bathroom window of Suite 3 still illumined in the dark beyond the Snowcat.

644	645
646	647

647 LS Danny outside the maze's entrance. (2:17:20) Danny lies at the entrance to the maze.

Figure 54 - Danny lying at the entrance to the maze.

Or has Danny fallen at the maze's entrance? I don't think so. Where he lies in figure 53 is very different from where he lies in figure 54. Just as we have often had three perspectives, and we've already seen (when examining the mazes) we had three versions of the labyrinth, we have a shift in perspective between when Danny falls and Wendy sees him so that the place where he falls isn't the same as viewed by Wendy from the exterior of the maze.

Danny actually fell while still inside the maze, in shot 645. His mother sees him in shot 646. In shot 647 he is now on his knees on the snow just outside the entrance to the maze, as if magically picked up and ported several feet.

His mother calling to him, he rises and yells for her, running toward her.

DANNY: Mommy!

The camera pans to Wendy and Danny reaching each other and hugging. Wendy kisses his cheek. Of course she does. She's his mother. She's desperately relieved to find him. Some people propose the kiss as some kind of proof that she was sexually abusing her son. No, she's a mom.

648 MS Jack. (2:17:30)

Cut to Jack still stumbling through the maze. He attempts to yell, "Danny!", but his words are choked, becoming more and more unintelligible. He may yell, "Wait!"

649 LS Wendy and Danny. (2:17:36)

Wendy and Danny run over the snow to the Snowcat, Wendy falling once to her knees. She opens the passenger door and lifts Danny in.

648

649

650 LS Jack from rear. (2:17:48)

Jack struggles through the maze. Finally he falls. We hear the Snowcat starting. Jack rises.

I note the following in my page on The Clenched Fist of Jack Torrance.

As if to point out how Jack is determined not to unclench that right fist, towards the end of this scene, Danny escaping with his mother in the Snowcat, Kubrick has Jack fall on his right side. He takes a full out tumble on his right side and he never removes his hand from his jacket, never unclenching his fist.

Figure 55 - Jack falls now.

When you fall, you are automatically going to reach out in order to try to brace yourself. The automatic, natural thing for Jack to have done, as he began to fall to his right, would have been to release his coat and reach out with his right hand and attempt to thwart the fall by grabbing the hedge, or brace himself with his hand as he fell into the snowbank. But Jack doesn't do that. The actor, Jack, doesn't do that, which means he has been instructed to keep that right hand always closed and holding his jacket. He had to fight the natural impulse to use that hand to protect himself from falling.

Even as Jack struggles to stand after the fall, he doesn't release his jacket. The natural thing to do would have been for him to use his right hand to help push himself back upright. But, no, the actor, Jack Nicholson, had to have been instructed to not unclench that fist, to keep a hold on the jacket.

Figure 56 - Jack struggles to stand.

Kubrick even showed us earlier the natural way for Jack to fall. It's how Danny fell in figures 32 and 33. Kubrick had Danny also fall on his right side, and he put out his right arm to catch himself and pushed himself up with his right arm.

651 LS Snowcat (2:18:08)

Cut to the Snowcat turning in front of the hotel, Jack yelling unintelligibly from inside the maze.

652 MS Jack (2:18:17)

Hearing the Snowcat drive away, Jack in the maze continues yelling incoherently, grotesquely, as if the bull-headed minotaur, human overwhelmed by animal nature.

653 LS Snowcat (2:18:24)

Having turned around, the Snowcat makes it way past the lodge.

654 MS Jack (2:18:30)

Jack yells inside the maze.

655 LS Snowcat (2:18:38)

The Snowcat drives past the pipes, up the hill and away, enveloped by cloud, the cloud removing it from us so it disappears. We hear Jack yelling in the maze.

Figure 57 - The Snowcat disappears.

656 MS Jack (2:18:50)

Jack stumbles along, cuts right then a hairpin right again as he yells. He cuts left.

651	652
653	654
655	656

657 LS Jack from behind. (2:19:06)

We watch from behind as Jack stumbles along, much like the Creature from a Frankenstein film. He waves his axe. Finally, he sinks down onto a snowbank, leaning against the hedge.

He still clenches his jacket.

Figure 58 - Jack slumps against a hedge.

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JACK FROZEN

658 MCU Jack frozen. (2:19:24)

Daylight. Jack is seen from the front, frozen, engulfed in snow, his eyes rolled partly back in his head, his mouth partly open showing his bottom teeth. His expression is much the same as when he took his first drink of Jack Daniels in the Gold Ballroom. The wind howls.

Figure 58 - Frozen Jack.

This below shot of Jack from "The Overlook Hotel Tumblr" reveals what is going on with Jack's right hand. It rests atop the snow, clenched tight. His left hand is instead relaxed open upon the snow. The holding the jacket shut has been, in a way, an excuse for Jack keeping that right hand closed fast. The holding the jacket shut against the cold was not the important thing. It was not why Jack's hand was clenched shut. Had he continued to hold his axe with that right hand as well as with his left, we would not have noted eventually that something had changed, seemingly in connection with Danny having entered the maze as it was immediately after this that he clenched his right fist shut and clenched it shut for the remainder of the film. That's from shot 602 to shot 658. Seeing Jack here in the snow, frozen, no longer holding his jacket shut, but that right hand still clenched tight, seals that Jack's clenched fist hadn't anything to do with having to hold shut his jacket shut against the cold. It's just that as long as he was holding his jacket shut with that clenched fist our attention was not immediately drawn to that clenched fist as peculiar, we thought his fist clenched over the jacket, holding it shut, was in response to the cold. Not so.

Figure 59 - Frozen Jack with his right fist still clenched shut.

Back in shot 401, in the Wednesday section, Jack had clenched his fist around the three relays he removed from the two-way radio, completely cutting them off. In 2001 HAL had reported that the communication Alpha Echo 35 unit was going bad. Bowman replaced it and he and Frank found it was all right, that HAL had seemingly made an error. Frank was in the process of duplicating Bowman's space walk, to put the unit back in, when HAL killed him, and then HAL took over the ship and disabled one function after another.

I'm going to go all the way back to Fear and Desire to explore Kubrick's use of the Shakespearean mousetrap, which is a play within a play that speaks not to the general audience but instead a select few who may see themselves in the lines, and the writer hopes to judge afterward by their behavior if what was written was true. An example of this is in Barry Lyndon when Bullingdon has Byron parade in his shoes, which sets off Barry. In Fear and Desire, in response to their wrecking behind enemy lines, Corby draws a peculiar map. All he needed to do was draw a line representing a boundary and another line bisecting it representing a river, and say, "Here we are, on the wrong side, on enemy territory, there is a river over there and we're going to ride a raft out of here." Instead, drawing the map, he talks of how they can cleverly use this reconditioned mouse trap as a springboard to get out of there. A dog immediately appears, an enemy dog, and he throws a stone to get rid of it, like playing fetch. The dog isn't supposed to bring it back, only give chase, and it does. Later, in order to get their weapons they kill several men who are eating. One of the dead, eyes open, has a hand clenched around some potato. Sidney, the next day, kills a captive girl. Eyes open in death, she suddenly holds clenched in her fist something that hadn't previously been there. This has everything to do with the stone Corby threw after drawing the mouse trap.

The morphing stone (the dog was named Proteus after a polymorph) is "caught" in the hands of these dead individuals. What has happened in each case has been a lack of communication. One can't necessarily communicate with a dog. The soldiers don't speak with the enemy soldiers, and the enemy soldiers say nothing when attacked. The woman appears to not know the language of the soldiers who capture her and doesn't speak. Problems of communication. One is reminded of how Dave and Frank, in 2001, make an excuse that transmission may be faulty in a pod, they enter the pod, turn off the ability for HAL to overhear their conversation, and talk about cutting off HAL's higher functions, but HAL understands this by lip-reading and flips out. Which I think was the purpose of HAL's saying the AE-35 was going bad, to see what they would do.

Problems of communication have been associated with the incidents concerning the clenched hand previously, and Jack had disabled the Overlook's radio.

In seeming death, these individuals can't communicate, and yet Jack taunts us from 1921 with this piece of paper that he reveals in the palm of his hand.

It shouldn't go without notice, I don't believe, that in Barry Lyndon the last we see of Barry is a freeze frame, and in The Shining the last physical shot we have of Jack is him frozen in the snow, followed by, in essence, a freeze frame of Jack in the photograph.

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JULY 4th BALL, 1921

659 LS to CU through the lobby to the Gold Room hall. (2:19:33)

The camera moves through the lobby toward the Gold Room hall. The lights are off. The seating is all covered with sheets. It's as if we are at the beginning to Lolita, Humbert entering Quilty's mansion, and any moment one of the sheets will become animated and Quilty will rise, calling out, "I'm Spartacus. You come to free the slaves or something?" The Gold Room sign is on the right again, as it was in The Interview section.

Figure 60 - The ending recalls Humbert entering Quilty's mansion to murder him, Quilty appearing from beneath a sheet on a chair and asking if he's Spartacus come to free the slaves.

There are some very noticeable differences between how the lobby and hall are outfitted in this scene and in other scenes. One that I've discussed previously is how in the opening shot of Jack arriving for his interview we clearly see heating vents for forced air behind the radiant heaters.

The vents for the forced heat are visible behind the radiant heaters just above the baseboard. Click on the image for better view. I've lightened the shot so they can be a little better seen.

There are no forced air vents observed behind the radiant heaters in this section, or they are obscured, whereas they weren't in the shot of Jack arriving.

The radiant heaters in the closing section.

The camera continues closing in on the photos in the adjoining Gold Room hall. We notice there is no red sofa below these photos.

A kind of curious thing happens in respect to the "center" of the image.

Or, at least, it's curious to me. True center seems to be where we think it is, zeroing right in on Jack in the middle of the photograph that is about to be revealed. And it rather lines up with the center of the wall sconce right above. But it doesn't with the designs in the wainscotting below the photo, nor with the design of the carpet, nor with where we've a "center point" in the design of the lobby floor before the door. One will think I'm picking at details and I don't believe I am. Kubrick's symmetries are not absolutely perfect symmetries, they're not mirror images, nor should they be, but it has struck me that we have at least one other "center" here, which is the light of the sconce just screen right of center, and that we really kind of need to pay attention to the shadow sconce. The sconce that isn't there yet is by virtue of its shadow. The phantom sconce. Also note that Kubrick has it so that the shadow of the left sconce falls perfectly under the "center" one.

We really do need to pay attention to this idea of the "mirrored" sconce reorienting our idea of true center somewhat, for we are, after all, about to have revealed to us the hidden Jack.

I think you can see, with the very opening image of the film set above this closing image, how the island's alignment with the mountain has a certain relationship with the wall sconce and its shadow. And even as we zoom in on the photo that shows Jack we will have yet more hidden information divulged, will we not? It's like something keeps opening up and revealing more to us of what has been hidden.

Figure 61 - The photos. The red diamond rug now to their side and turned 90 degrees from the way we have always seen it.

There is a red and black diamond rug now, instead of a mirror, to the left of the photos, all of which seem, every one of them, to be different from any we've observed earlier on this wall. The rug is the same as was seen in the entry to the red bathroom off the Gold Room and in a hall off the only entry/exit we ever see anyone physically use, but this rug is at a 90 degree angle from those rugs.

We have now revealed to us a photo with Jack in a tux, at the head of a party of people perhaps in the old ballroom.

Figure 62 - Closer in on the photos, we see people at a table in the lower left corner looking up to the middle photo.

Figure 63 - Moving closer in on the photo.

Jack is waving at the camera, at us, a piece of paper tucked in the palm of his hand. A caption on the photo reads July 4th Ball, 1921.

660 Crossfade to CU of photo. (2:20:31 begin crossfade, ending 2:20:34.)

Crossfade to a closer view of the photo.

Figure 64 - Crossfade to a closer view.

Figure 65 - Closer view.

661 Crossfade to extreme CU of photo. (2:20:41 begin crossfade, ending 2:20:45.)

Crossfade to a close-up of the photo clearly showing Jack's face, if there was any question about it. The camera pans down to show Overlook Hotel, July 4th Ball, 1921.

Why was Jack so adamantly holding his fist clenched to his chest? Because he was holding something in that hand, represented by the paper he has now tucked against his palm, held there by his thumb, displayed for the camera to see.

Figure 66 - Detail.

Figure 67 - Detail.

Figure 68 - Detail.

Fade out and begin credits at 2:21:20.

"...surrender all my life to you..." can be heard on the soundtrack.

We wonder how does the man in the photo have Jack's face? Is the current caretaker Jack a sort of double of this person, reborn in some way, pulled back to the Overlook? Has he been pulled into the photo through actions that have taken place in the film, perhaps replacing someone else? Just as the 1970s Charles Grady became the ethereal 1920s Delbert Grady has he assumed a new name and identity through the lodge? What is the piece of paper he holds which makes us feel if we could reach out and take it we might know the answer, it may have a message? Why does the man behind him stand with his hand on Jack's upraised arm? Who is the woman with half closed eyes, in the laurel leaf crown, the heart-shaped pin on her breast, a bow decorating, a feather extending from it?

I continue with a few reflections in The July 4th 1921 Ball Photo.

First placed online 2007-2009 in loose form. Added all shots 2012. Approx 20, 600 words or 42 single-spaced pages. A 158 minute read at 130 wpm.

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