Few photos in cinema historical past pack extra psychological punch than the ultimate {photograph} in Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. This black-and-white snapshot of Jack Torrance grinning amongst Nineteen Twenties partygoers has haunted audiences for over 4 a long time.
Kubrick’s horror masterpiece transforms the style by deliberate pacing, narrative ambiguity, and unsettling sound design. The movie elevates horror past soar scares into the realm of psychological terror.
The director’s genius culminates within the movie’s last moments. After Jack Torrance freezes to dying within the hedge maze, Kubrick cuts to a classic {photograph} hanging within the resort foyer. The caption reads, “Overlook Resort July 4th Ball, 1921.”
And there stands Jack, impossibly current at an occasion that occurred a long time earlier than his beginning.
This {photograph} ranks amongst cinema’s most annoying last pictures. What audiences did not know was that behind this fictional second lay an actual {photograph} with its personal fascinating historical past.
The story of how Kubrick found and remodeled this forgotten picture reveals the meticulous craft behind one in every of horror’s most enduring mysteries.
Analyzing The Shining’s Story
The Shining follows Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson), a recovering alcoholic and aspiring author, who strikes to the Colorado Rockies together with his spouse and son, Wendy (Shelley Duvall) and younger Danny (Danny Lloyd), after he accepts a job on the Overlook Resort because the winter caretaker.
Upon their arrival on the Overlook, the resort supervisor, Stuart Ullman (Barry Nelson), warns Jack a few earlier caretaker, Delbert Grady (Philip Stone), who killed his household and himself a number of years in the past.
In the meantime, the resort’s prepare dinner, Dick Hallorann (Scatman Crothers), realizes that Danny is clairvoyant. He warns him in regards to the presence of evil in Room 237 of the resort, and asks him to keep away from it.
As winter units in and the household turns into more and more remoted, the Overlook Resort’s supernatural forces start to prey on Jack and his household. Danny experiences terrifying visions whereas Jack turns into more and more unstable and violent. Stricken by the spirits of the Overlook Resort, he’s satisfied to kill his household.
‘The Shining’Credit score: Warner Bros.
Jack makes an attempt to homicide Wendy and Danny with an axe, however they handle to flee into the resort’s hedge maze. Ultimately, Danny outsmarts Jack, permitting Wendy and Danny to flee. Jack, misplaced within the maze, finally freezes to dying.
After Jack dies, we smash minimize to {a photograph}, dated 1921. Within the photograph, Jack stands proper within the middle, surrounded by the resort’s earlier friends in opposition to the backdrop of a full-blown occasion that is being hosted on the resort.
Analyzing the Fourth of July Photograph in The Shining
The {photograph} prompts us to rethink Jack and his arc within the movie. Kubrick informed French movie critic Michel Ciment about how he envisioned the character of Jack.
“[Jack] does not have very a lot additional to go for his anger and frustration to turn out to be utterly uncontrollable. He’s bitter about his failure as a author. He’s married to a girl for whom he has solely contempt. He hates his son. Within the resort, on the mercy of its highly effective evil, he’s rapidly prepared to meet his darkish position.”
Kubrick additionally mentioned that “the ballroom {photograph} on the very finish suggests the reincarnation of Jack.”
The {photograph} raises a number of questions in our minds. Was this bloodbath destined? Does his dying imply his finish, and the top to this evil?
Kubrick has left the movie open-ended, however the final {photograph} presents a sinister conclusion amidst the narrative’s ambiguity.
The suggestion of reincarnation is a direct trace on the absence of an finish. The resort will proceed to say victims and preserve them trapped in its purgatory.
How Did Kubrick Get the Fourth of July Photograph in The Shining?
Kubrick didn’t shoot the photograph, though that was the preliminary plan.
Kubrick informed Ciment that originally, he was all set to seize the in-film image, with Jack Nicholson posing with the extras because the partygoers. Nonetheless, Kubrick was not happy with the best way the images turned out.
Fortunately, he discovered an outdated {photograph} in an image library that matched his imaginative and prescient.
“So I very fastidiously photographed Jack, matching the angle and the lighting of the 1921 {photograph}, and capturing him from totally different distances too, in order that his face could be bigger and smaller on the destructive. This allowed the selection of a picture measurement that, when enlarged, would match the grain construction within the unique {photograph}. The {photograph} of Jack’s face was then airbrushed into the principle {photograph}, and I believe the outcome appeared good. Each face round Jack is an archetype of the interval,” Kubrick informed Ciment.
Who Are the Folks within the Photograph on the Finish of The Shining?
It was not simple to trace down the origin of the {photograph}. Forty-five years later, a retired tutorial from the College of Winchester, Alasdair Spark, discovered it. Spark received assist from Arik Tolar, a New York Instances journalist, and a few extraordinarily passionate Redditors (through IGN).
Spark mentioned that for years, individuals believed that the picture got here from the Warner Bros. archive. Spark spoke with Murray Shut, the photographer who took the photograph of Jack Nicholson for the edit.
Shut revealed {that a} Warner Bros. photograph archive didn’t even exist (through CBC Radio)
In 2025, when Reddit consumer Connor Plunkett tried to establish the true individual within the photograph utilizing facial recognition, he discovered a match. It was Santos Casani, a famend Nineteen Twenties ballroom dancer from London (through CBC Radio).
With that clue, Spark and Tolar dug deeper and eventually stumbled upon the person’s actual identify, John Golman. “Casani” was Goldman’s stage identify. He was in an plane accident that left him with a variety of facial scars, after which he underwent cosmetic surgery.
“That accounted for the unusual look of his face,” mentioned Spark.
Spark and Tolar have been lastly in a position to verify the identification of the person whose face was edited to create the notorious Fourth of July image.
On an Instagram publish for Getty Pictures, Spark revealed that the {photograph} was “one of many three taken by the Topical Press Company at a St. Valentine’s Day Ball, 14 February 1921, on the Empress Rooms, the Royal Palace Resort, Kensington.”
He additionally revealed that in their search, they found that Kubrick had licensed the movie underneath his manufacturing firm, Hawk Movies, two years upfront, in October 1978, to be used in The Shining.
Amidst all of the soar scares and cerebral terror, The Shining is a daring commentary on the deterioration of American society.
Please share your different favourite visible motifs from the movie!
