The adaptation of The Shining by Stanley Kubrick in 1980 undoubtedly has one of the most memorable final plans of all genre cinema: the completely disturbing photography of the July 4 ball of the Overlook hotel, which is not yet born at the front and the center of the image. Nicholson had been added to a real image that was modified for the film – but the original faded in the dark after its use in the film. That is to say so far. It’s true, Shining-Heads, the original photography of the July 4 ball of 1921 was found 45 years after the film was released.
Winchester Academic’s retirement university, Alasdair Spark, spoke of the image research process on Instagram from Getty. “Following the previous identification by facial recognition software of the unknown man on the photo at the end of The Shining as Santos Casani, a dancer from the London ballroom, I can reveal that the photo was one of the three taken by the topical news agency in a Valentine’s Day ball, on February 14, 1921, in the Empress rooms, the Royal Palace Hotel, Kensington” explain. The message also included a new scan from the original glass plate of the image, as well as other handwritten documents supporting the photo.
Spark revealed that he and the staff member of the New York Times Arick Toller, as well as many passionate Redditors, have done a wild goose hunt trying to stock up in the image. “It was starting to seem impossible, each reference crossed to Casani has not succeeded. Other probable places that have been suggested did not correspond,” he wrote via Getty. “There were places for which we could not find images and we started to fear that the photo could be lost in history, and never be found.”
The historian continued explaining that the photographer on the set had been informed by Murray Close, who took the image of Nicholson who was superimposed on Casani for the film, which the image had from the BBC Hulton Library. Spark knew that Hulton had bought a topical press in 1958, and that Getty later took in 1991, which gave the former teacher the idea of browsing the millions of images of the agency. From this research, they discovered that the image was authorized in Hawk Films, the Kubrick production company on October 10, 1978, clearly for the production of The Shining.
“Joan Smith had said the photo dated 1923. Stanley Kubrick said in 1921 and he was right,” said Spark. “The photo does not show any of the celebrities on which I had speculated – the Trix sisters for example – nor the bankers, the financiers or the presidents like Rob Ager did not imagine.
Now, if that does not warm up your heart a bit that loves the film at the moment, I don’t know what will do. Stephen King’s novel, The Shining, was released in 1977 and was adapted twice: the emblematic film by Kubrick and the 1997 1997 mini-series of Kubrick.
Photo by Warner Brothers / Getty Images.
Lex Briscuso is a critic of cinema and television and an independent entertainment writer for IGN. You can follow it on Twitter at @nikonamerica.
