The Shining
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| Poster Origin : | United States |
| Poster Size : | US 1 Sheet / 27 x 41" |
| Poster Artist : | Saul Bass |
| Poster Year : | 1980 |
| Poster Version : | Studio Re-Strike |
| Film Origin : | United States |
| Film Director : | Stanley Kubrick |
| Film Year : | 1980 |
The disturbing, ghostly glare belongs to neither one thing or another, a nebulous apparition deliberately vague and unfathomably characterless. Looking more like a Roswell alien than a person it is equally scary and scared, tormented and terrifying, an inhuman manifestation of the horrors and traumas bound up in the malevolent Overlook Hotel.
The flipped proportions of the title words is a playful, convention-defying stunt, and gives a larger area to house the image - this design is almost an exact copy of Bass’ previous poster for The Cardinal (1964) with imagery contained within the huge letters of ‘THE’, similarly dwarfing the next and most significant word. Is it rumoured that Bass offered over 300 designs before Kubrick approved, so it is no wonder he resorted to regurgitating old work.
This poster was originally meant to be blood red, and the yellow colour was purportedly the result of an error at the printing plant. Bass was understandably rather upset with this mistake, and issued an extremely limited silkscreen edition to set the record straight, showing for the only time how the poster was originally intended (as one might expect the ‘masterpiece’ line was removed and the credits were much smaller, placed in a white border along the bottom). The crimson version is more consistent with Bass’ broader portfolio, and certainly more horrific, but somehow the urgency and sheer unexpectedness of this yellow monstrosity is what makes it so monumentally extraordinary.