The original was filmed in Fullscreen and thus the new WS transfers is cropped.

8/ Why are there two versions of The Shining? What was filmed but cut out?
The two version of The Shining are the US cut with has a running time of 144 minutes and the international version which is 20 minutes shorter. Both versions have the status of "director's cuts" as Kubrick made the cuts himself.

In November 1980 Monthly Film Bulletin ran a piece itemising the differences between versions (1) . Here is a summary of that article:



Scene cut from the US version during 1st run:

(1) A two-minute sequence was deleted from the end of the film in the first weeks of its run. A coda to Wendy and Danny's escape (which followed the shot of Jack frozen in the maze). This showed Wendy being visited in hospital by Ullman, and his complimenting her on having survived. (2)



After playing to what Movie Comment calls "generally bad reviews and erratic box-office in America," the film was preview-tested before its opening in London and a further twenty-five minutes were cut.

Scenes cut from the international version:

(1) Part of Jack's interview at the Overlook Hotel.

(2) Danny's examination by a doctor (Anne Jackson)

(3) Part of the tour of the Overlook with Ullman, Jack and Wendy, including the dialogue in the Colorado Lounge and The beginning of the scene where Ullman shows Jack and Wendy the hotel grounds and the scene leading up to Dick Hallorann's first appearance where Ullman shows off "The Gold Room"

(4) Part of Danny's conversation alone with Hallorann

(5) The end of the Torrances' first scene in the hotel, when Wendy brings Jack his breakfast

(6) Immediately after the scene in which Wendy and Danny explore the maze, a sequence has been cut in which Wendy is seen working in the kitchen while a TV announcer talks of a search in the mountains for a missing woman

(7) THURSDAY title card

(8) Wendy and Danny watching the Summer of '42 on television.

(9) dialogue from the middle of the scene in which Jack first goes to the Gold Room

(10) Wendy is seen crying and talking to herself about the possibility of getting down the mountain in the snowcat, and of calling the Forest Rangers

(11) Dick Hallorann again tries to get through to the Overlook by calling the Ranger station.

(12) 8AM title card

(13) Hallorann asks a stewardess what time they are due to land in Denver; she tells him 8.20 and he checks his watch. Jack is seen typing in the lounge of the Overlook. Hallorann's plane lands at the airport. Larry Durkin (Tony Burton), a garage owner, answers his phone and talks to Hallorann, who asks for a snowcat to get up to the Overlook.

(14) GS: "A whole scene where Danny is watching TV (a Roadrunner cartoon). After talking to Danny (I think telling him to stay there) Wendy picks up the baseball bat and exits (on her way into the Colorado lounge). I was particularly proud of the way I 'choreographed' the cartoon music on the TV with Wendy's movements. There was then a long dissolve, as the cartoon music faded, to Wendy entering the Colorado lounge. After a pause I then gently faded in the start of the Penderecki music as Wendy walks towards Jack's desk."

(15) The beginning of the scene in which Wendy finds Jack's type-written pages covered with "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" (GS: This then is really cut (14), i.e. the second half of the dissolve plus a few more seconds of Wendy walking into the Colorado lounge)

(16) A tableau in which skeletons are sitting at a table with a champagne bottle and glasses.

Notes
(1) You can read the whole article at on-line at Stanley Kubrick 1928-1999 (back)

(2) GS thinks Ullman's hospital visit was cut out after a preview in America, just before the film was released. (back)