Video: analysis of the film
My senior project was an analysis of The Shining. There's a link to the paper the presentation is based on in the video's description.
https://youtu.be/J35DGi9LpQk
I'm not crazy about this as others are.
The lone scene that I positively love takes place in the apartment after the boy has fainted and the doctor makes a house call. Anne Jackson plays the MD. The boy is resting in his bedroom. The doctor & Wendy are talking. Wendy is chain smoking as she tells the tale. Back & forth goes the lens. The doctor obviously smells a rat as she actively probes the mother, ferreting out facts. Finally, Wendy is forced to confess how Jack broke the boy's arm. The camera is fixed on Wendy as she painstakingly tells it, making the requisite excuse for Jack's violent behavior. Finally the camera tracks back to Jackson and holds. The look on her face is just fantastic. No more dialog. The scene ends.
***One more appeal. I like women with an overbite. Duvall has a great one. She's adorable.
That's a fantastic scene. The way it's cut off at the end really emphasizes that there's something not quite right going on, and Wendy's answer to the doctor is insufficient or deceptive.
Rob Ager's analysis (which was mentioned below) points out that Wendy claims that Danny was hurt 5 months ago whereas Jack, when he speaks with Lloyd, says that it was "3 goddamn years ago," which Ager says means that the Jack we see in that scene is actually Jack's father. I think what it means, partially, is that he's hurt Danny multiple times, and in that scene with the doctor Wendy's covering for him, which explains her nervousness and the Doctor's sense that something is wrong.