I’ve always thought her poor acting dragged The Shining down, but it made me realize maybe that wasn’t her fault. Kubrick didn’t give the character much personality. Most of the role is just reactions to Jack’s craziness, and crying, for the hundreds of takes Kubrick insisted on. She’s an extremely sensitive person & a dedicated actress, but she didn’t have any friends or a therapist on the set, and went through hell. I already had a whiff of that through Vivian Kubrick’s documentary, where Kubrick barks at her mercilessly at times, and treats her acting ideas like they’re shit. It was just a bad match, his coldness vs. her sensitivity. I don’t think he cared much about that role, he simply hired her because she could “cry well”, and when she tried to bring some life to it as she did in her Altman roles, it didn’t work because there wasn’t much room for it in his script. Kubrick was more concerned about the Indian motifs on the carpet and such things about the hotel. So these days I put the blame more on him than her. She shouldn’t have been in it in the first place.
This article says, “In a 2015 interview with film critic Roger Ebert, Duvell said making the film was ‘almost unbearable’.”
I know you can’t expect much from a UK tabloid, but not only did they misspell Duvall’s name, but they apparently found an interview Roger Ebert conducted two years after he died! (The writer took the quote from Duvall’s Wikipedia page and misread the reference to mean an interview from 1980 was from 2015.)
Yeah, the article sucked. I was just amazed by the picture of Shelley Duvall. The years have not been kind.
Much better article.
I’ve always thought her poor acting dragged The Shining down, but it made me realize maybe that wasn’t her fault. Kubrick didn’t give the character much personality. Most of the role is just reactions to Jack’s craziness, and crying, for the hundreds of takes Kubrick insisted on. She’s an extremely sensitive person & a dedicated actress, but she didn’t have any friends or a therapist on the set, and went through hell. I already had a whiff of that through Vivian Kubrick’s documentary, where Kubrick barks at her mercilessly at times, and treats her acting ideas like they’re shit. It was just a bad match, his coldness vs. her sensitivity. I don’t think he cared much about that role, he simply hired her because she could “cry well”, and when she tried to bring some life to it as she did in her Altman roles, it didn’t work because there wasn’t much room for it in his script. Kubrick was more concerned about the Indian motifs on the carpet and such things about the hotel. So these days I put the blame more on him than her. She shouldn’t have been in it in the first place.
This article says, “In a 2015 interview with film critic Roger Ebert, Duvell said making the film was ‘almost unbearable’.”
I know you can’t expect much from a UK tabloid, but not only did they misspell Duvall’s name, but they apparently found an interview Roger Ebert conducted two years after he died! (The writer took the quote from Duvall’s Wikipedia page and misread the reference to mean an interview from 1980 was from 2015.)
Yeah, the article sucked. I was just amazed by the picture of Shelley Duvall. The years have not been kind.