There are filmmakers and fans that speak about Stanley Kubrick like he’s the second coming. I am not one of them. I’m not arguing that Kubrick’s films were not striking, revolutionary or important contributions to cinema, both as landscape and language. I just don’t really find them entertaining.

Notable exception: The Shining (1980). I’m not sure if it’s because of Jack Nicholson’s killer (ahem) performance, or the fact that I don’t think that there’s been a better adaptation of a Stephen King novel (save perhaps that one scene from the 1990 TV miniseries of IT).

The Shining made the American Film Institute’s “100 Years, 100 Thrills” list (#29), deservedly. It’s creepy as hell and if you haven’t seen it, you should be so embarrassed for yourself that you pretend you have seen it, if anyone asks. (To pull this off convincingly, you need only quip, “Here’s Johnny!” then laugh, or, ditto, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!”)

Go figure, though, it turns out that almost no one has ever really seen the film in its entirety. Kubrick was known to be obsessive about the editing of his films, right up to their release; sometimes even after they had been released. He famously trimmed about 19 minutes out of 2001: A Space Odyssey after its premiere.

For The Shining, Kubrick cut about two minutes from the film, just a few days after its theatrical release. Since film release patterns were different back then — when people still went to the movies, and torrents were just a twinkle in some computer nerd’s eye — The Shining was only screening in a handful number of theatres, so only a small number of audiences ever got to see the scene. And no, the version of The Shining that you’ve never seen is not this (admittedly brilliant) 2005 hatchet job.

The exclusiveness ends on October 22 and 23, when The Shining will be screened in its first-cut form at the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theater in Rochester, NY.

Currently, on my Facebook wall, a group of filmmaker friends is debating whether to make a pilgrimage to one of these screenings, or try to convince local rep theatres to bring a print to Canada (for us, Toronto). If you’re a fence-sitter, maybe this WorstPreviews description of what you’ve never seen will push you in one direction:

The coda comprises two scenes, a few days later. The first shows some police officers outside the Overlook, looking for Jack’s frozen body. The second is set in a hospital and features the Overlook’s manager telling Wendy and Danny that the police were unable to find Jack’s body… (Or perhaps you’d rather watch William Karel’s fascinating mockumentary Opération Lune (2002), which argues — quite convincingly, so deadpan is the humour — that the 1969 lunar landing never happened and that the world-famous footage was shot on a sound stage and directed by none other than Kubrick himself.)

If anyone’s seen the (mostly) unviewed Shining footage, we’d love to hear from you in the Comments. Is it more faithful to the ending of King’s novel? Does the restoration detract from the overall tone of Kubrick’s approved edit? If the footage does make a better movie, why? And, why do you think Kubrick cut it in the first place?

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Image courtesy of Cea.