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kottke.org posts about Filippo Ulivieri

Why Does Jack Nicholson Repeatedly Break the Fourth Wall in The Shining?

Yesterday I posted a link to a Twitter thread by Stanley Kubrick scholar Filippo Ulivieri about a previously overlooked (*ahem*) aspect of The Shining: Jack Nicholson breaks the fourth wall by micro-glancing at the camera dozens of times during the film. It turns out that Ulivieri also made a visual essay about this and it’s really worth a watch.

Let’s go back to that glance that has been noticed by a few film critics. 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, despite what the critics say. “The truth of a thing,” Kubrick said, “is in the feel of it, not in the think of it.” 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. But what about the others? Why on Earth is Jack Torrance constantly glancing at us, breaking the fourth wall over and over, and over, and over.

What all of these micro-glances mean is open to interpretation. Ulivieri offers a few theories of his own — e.g. Jack is looking at ghosts, or perhaps just one ghost: the camera ghost — but says one of the reasons he made the video is to hear what other film critics and fans think might be going on here. I thought this response to his thread hit near the mark:

My gf’s read The Shining, and it’s really interesting now that they notice all these fourth wall breaks Jack does. throughout the whole book, Jack feels like he’s being watched and judged, and that’s why he feels so much pressure to keep up appearances.

If Jack is the only one in the MOVIE to consistently break the fourth wall, where it’s always just passing glances, that’s a pretty effective way to show the character’s fear of being watched or judged. Especially if WE don’t notice it at first.

I wonder how many The Shining re-watches this video and thread have inspired…I’m gonna watch it again in the next few days and see how my awareness of the glancing changes the film for me.