Stanley Kubrick’s 1980 film The Shining is clearly a Jack Nicholson movie. The role of Jack Torrance suits Nicholson perfectly, turning his crowd-pleasing devilish charm into something darker. In fact, it’s the reason Stephen King disliked Nicholson for the role; a less charismatic actor would have made the character’s transformation more shocking. With Jack, your murderous breakdown is visible from a mile away.
What’s often forgotten in these discussions is that the film is actually a two-actor effort. Picture the scene where Jack breaks down the locked bathroom door to get to his wife Wendy and son Danny. Your first thought is probably the iconic image of Nicholson’s lecherous face pressed against the jagged hole he’s just made: “It’s Johnny!” But it’s Shelley Duvall as Wendy who really exudes terror, cowering in the corner, screaming with each axe attack, pathetically waving the knife around as if to dodge her inevitable fate.
It’s easy for an actor of Nicholson’s talent and temperament to play a madman, but how hard is it to convey plausible fear for that madman, under hot lights, surrounded by a crew, take after take?
Duvall, who died yesterday at age 75, spoke candidly about the challenges of filming the film: “After a while, your body rebels,” she said. Seth Abramovich of The Hollywood Reporter said: 2021:
It says, “Please don’t do that to me. I don’t want to cry every day.” And sometimes just that thought makes me cry. If I wake up really early on a Monday morning and realize that I have to cry all day because it was planned, I just start crying. I’m like, “Oh no, I can’t, I can’t.” But I did it. I don’t know how I did it. Jack told me that too. He said, “I don’t know how you do it.”
But she did it, and delivered one of the rawest, most disturbing depictions of pure despair and terror in the history of cinema.
Steven Spielberg is a fan Reference to author Lee Unkrich “It’s Wendy’s realistic mental and physical frailty that makes The Shining so compelling,” he said. “The only suspense for me is whether Wendy will be strong enough to stand up to Jack and save her son. That’s why I think Shelley Duvall’s performance rivals Jack Nicholson’s.”
