[NajdorfDefense]

Yeah, asking OOT for subtlety ...well, anyway.

Stanley Kubrick had the most masterful, yet subtle, camera shot or cutaway I've ever seen in his horror classic, The Shining.

Prior to this camera shot, Wendy interrupts Jack:

Jack: Wendy, let me explain something to you. Whenever you come in here and interrupt me you’re breaking my concentration. (He takes out the sheet from the typewriter and begins tearing it up.) And it will then take me time to get back to where I was! Do you understand?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Fine. Now we’re gonna make a new rule. Whenever I’m in here and you hear me typing . . . (tap tap taptaptap) or whether you don’t hear me typing or whatever the [censored] you hear me doing in here, when I am in here that means that I am working, that means don’t come in. Now do you think you can handle that?

Wendy: Yeah.

Jack: Fine. Why don’t you start right now and get the [censored] outta here?

Wendy: Okay.

Shelley Duvall, Wendy the wife, later goes back into Jack's workroom to see what he's been working on. She walks up to the desk and see what's in the typewriter ---

All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
all work and no play makes jack a dull boy
repeated hundreds of times.

She realizes this is very very bad, and carries a baseball bat for protection as Jack discovers her final invasion of his workspace.

Of course, Jack was watching her during this scene.

Now, any other director or movie hack would have cut to Jack standing right behind her, reaching out for her shoulder, making the audience jump and scream. After all, it is a horror film.

But not Kubrick.

He slowly pans the camera 180 degrees, and we see Jack, standing a safe distance away, staring at Wendy head-on, as she discovers Jack has gone completely batshi-insane, but is completely calm as he observes her transgression.

Not only a terrifically subtle moment, but even more scary given what we now know about Jack's character.



Not subtle: Here's Johnny!