Stanley Kubrick: The Shining (1980)

Film (color, sound) 135 min. USA

"While acting as the winter caretaker of an isolated hotel, an author is driven to hunt down his wife and child with an axe. The roots of his violence are contemporary criminal defense arguments: It was the whisky or writer’s block, cabin fever or a haunted past. Formulaic as the horror genre may be, the humor of The Shining makes accessible, even palatable, the primal myth of the family romance and the Oedipal terror of the castrating father. The film’s co- screenwriter, Diane Johnson, hoped The Shining would have the 'artistic satisfaction of a fairy tale.'"

The Museum of Modern Art. The Lost Childhood: The Loss of Childhood Innocence Examined in Film Exhibition. Press Release, sep. 2000.