The American Cut of The Shining
 

So I went to a showing of the Shining yesterday and it was weird. Despite having seen the movie at least three times before on DVD, it seemed to be longer than I remembered with a lot more foreshadowing. One thing that always bugged me bofore is that I never quite got how Jack recognised the old caretaker, but there the foreshadowing was. When the movie was almost over, Wendy came across some skeletons, at which point it was confirmed that was indeed a cut I've never seen before.

So I looked up alternate cuts of the Shining to see if it was a director's cut and was surprised to see it was the standard American cut, what I had been watching all these years was a shortened European cut. This was especially odd to me because I always thought censored/trimmed foreign releases didn't get widespread DVD releases, or at least not without being marketed as such. Not much of an incentive to preserve such versions, you know?

Anyway. There is a big thing about the American cut that bugs me. A common interpretation is that the Ghosts may not be entirely real and only appear to Jack because he's going crazy. While this still isn't quite a working interpretation in the trimmed version because Danny still gets visions and Wendy sees the furry giving a blowjob, I can kind of get it. In the American cut though, Wendy is clearly seeing even more crazy horseshit, so they basically have to be real.

As far as I know, it was Kubrick that didn't want the US cut to be broadcasted in European countries or released on VHS. He was quite specific about this kind of stuff. Also, he wanted different aspect ratios for theatre and home releases.