Dissolution

“In most films, a dissolve is used to indicate a long passage of Time between two scenes. 

But in The Shining, the dissolves go on for so long that they create a superimposition, where different scenes seem to be interacting with each other. 

For example, you have the exterior image... a tracking shot of the lobby of the camera moving along the western wall south towards the entrance. And you see a janitor mopping the floor, but it looks like he's... it looks like a he's a giant, mopping, like, clearing the forest because he's mopping, like, a vacant area in the forest. 

And then the... then the ladder lines up... lines up with the pyramid form of the exterior of the hotel, which, in the exterior set, disappears. Like, we don't see... we only see that in the Timberline exteriors. 

But the England movie set exteriors of the hotel, like, The Pyramid is missing, and it seems as if the hotel then takes both sides of the Timberline Hotel and then kind of, like, makes a composite of it. 

So it's... you know, it's a perceptual shift of making people look like giants, also making the hotel look larger or smaller than it is. 

I mean, these things kind of litter the movie. 

But then the shot goes on. We see a... we see a janitor pushing a folded-up bed on wheels. And then he's followed by another... he's followed by another guy, who's carrying, like, one... like, one coffee table? 

And then another... like, another guy is carrying one chair. 

Like, where are these guys going with, like, these light loads, you know? 

Then we see Jack sitting on a chair, eating lunch. And the manager and his assistant crosses paths with two women who... and just as he's in the corner of the screen... you just see it for a second. 

You see one of the women is wearing, like, a 13, a number 13 jersey? 

You know, so, like, he's like, leaning back and eating a sandwich. 

And he's got, you know, a magazine in his lap. 

And as he stands up to greet them, he, like, throws it down. And if you look at" look at... look at it, you know, close up, it's an actual Playgirl magazine. 

Yeah, a Playgirl magazine in the lobby of a hotel right in front of his boss, like on his first day at work. 

Yeah. Like, the cover is like, people getting ready for New Year's. There's an article about incest. 

At the beginning of the film, Danny's been physically abused. 

But there's a suggestion that he's been sexually abused as well. 

You know, so like, just in that one... one shot, there's all these, like, you know, complex things going on in the background, like things that are choreographed to match up exactly. 

Like, we see a guy... we see a guy, carrying a... entering the room, carrying a rug. 

And by the time the scene is just ending, we see him walking up the stairs. Like, he's crossed the entire place, you know, timed exactly. I don't even... Yeah.”

“When Ullman is leading the Torrances out of the elevator and into the Colorado Lounge for the first time, there's a pile of suitcases. 

And in the dissolve into that scene, the scene before, a group of tourists are standing in the lobby. And those tourists dissolve into the suitcases. 

Now, as an historian of the Holocaust, I find that very, very striking and certainly not accidental 'cause he's using those sort of cross-dissolves. 

Now, that could be, along with the ladder, where he's trying to make substantive connections as well as formal ones.”