Gray (S)adler 02

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http://idyllopuspress.com/idyllopus/film/shining_wednesday_1.htm

There is above the lamp in the entry to the inner apartment of 237 a picture and at its bottom one of the shadowy forms occasionally seen in the photographs of the lodge instead of the usual chronicle of faces arranged about a table. One has here a sense of something like the abyss, and a great question mark concerning the figure staring across that great desert–though the picture appears to be of a lake. The image blends with other background paintings in the hotel that are instead wastes of snow. Knowing that later Jack will come up to Room 237 to inspect it, the silhouette presence in the image imparts the impression of it being Jack.

Kearns points out a very interesting, apparent transformation of this silhouette figure into a boiler switch in the subsequent crossfade. I’ve captured some screen shots to show the effect. When I first read about this, I thought that maybe Juli was looking too deep at this particular aspect, and seeing too much.

I believe I’ve changed my mind, given that the switch is red, and the very next scene transition, a cut this time, has almost directly overlapping red rectangles. Toggle back and forth between successive frames around this cut pictured below to see the effect. How much did Kubrick plan?? I haven’t even begun to reach the depth.

Red rectangle at bottom of safety poster…

… transforms into rectangular red bottom of pack of Marlboro cigarettes.

So let’s back up and see what Juli has to say about that boiler switch/painting silhouette match. I’ll focus on the provided pictures:

Fig. 17 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237.

Fig. 18 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237 begins to overlay the boiler in the basement.

Fig. 19 – The silhouette in the painting at the entry of Room 237 seems to reverse orientation, when it is instead a switch on the boiler becoming more prominent.

Fig. 20 – The switch on the boiler in the basement.

As the silhouette from the painting fully merges into the hardware on the boiler, and the crossfade ends, Wendy leans to the right so that the lean of her posture mimics the silhouette/hardware. We will see this kind of side-leaning mimicry again when Jack knocks a number of objects to the ground on his way to the Gold Room, in the scene where he comes upon all the balloons. In that scene, the side-lean will be observed also in a poster beyond Jack.

Here’s the leaning Wendy, seeming to mimic the angle of the red and black boiler switch in question to her left.

Again, I now think Ms. Kearns is definitely on to something here. So let’s look again at the chOking poster also displayed not once but twice in this particular Shining shot… this is shot 263 of the film according to Kearns’ counting. Quoting her again…

The unique CH O KING poster has the 0 slightly truncating the red form of the pyramid or plane below, which reminds of Wendy’s action of operating the can opener over a crossfade of the mountain in the Tuesday section which results in a sort of truncation of the mountain so it is concealed from view for the remainder of the movie.

We will learn in a little while that a “crazy woman” has attempted to strangle Danny in the bathroom of room 237. The crossfade from room 237 to Wendy in the boiler room when Danny asks if she’s in there, and the presence of the CH O KING poster and the pinups of the nudes could place Wendy in Room 237 symbolically if not literally, or are simply revealing to us the story of what is happening to Danny at this very moment.

She then provides this close up of the poster, which I’ve already displayed in the 1st post of this little series just below. Here it is again.

Continuing…

No two ways about it, we’ve no ordinary safety poster here giving instruction on what to do in the case of choking. The lettering is hand done and has the feel of 1950s/1960s horror film movie poster lettering. We see above the truncated pyramid, in the O, what appears to be a human face, mouth open in a large O. A depiction of a choking individual? The Blu-Ray’s colors are more intense and one wonders what is that red field down below the mouth? It doesn’t appear red in the DVD, and there are some scenes in the Blu-Ray where the colors are so completely wrong it’s a travesty. Can we take this as an image of Danny being choked? We also can glean here the image of Danny screaming in horror of Dick’s being killed.

Keep in mind we see *2* CH O KING posters in shot 263, one in the boiler room, and another in the utility room just outside, with the washers and dryers. We’ve also already seen this in a photo above, (far left center) representing the very last frame of the shot. The 2 posters appear identical; twinned.

Green and gold Wendy runs between green washers and golden dryers to end shot 263.

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