April 23, 2019 (XXXVIII:12) Stanley Kubrick: EYES WIDE SHUT (1999, 159m) The version of this Goldenrod Handout sent out in our Monday mailing, and the one online, has hot links.

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DIRECTOR Stanley Kubrick WRITING Stanley Kubrick and Frederic Raphael wrote the screenplay that was inspired by the story “Traumnovelle” by Arthur Schnitzler. PRODUCED BY Stanley Kubrick, Brian W. Cook (co-producer) CINEMATOGRAPHY Larry Smith MUSIC Jocelyn Pook EDITING Nigel Galt CAST Tom Cruise...Dr. William Harford Nicole Kidman...Alice Harford Madison Eginton...Helena Harford Jackie Sawiris...Roz Sydney Pollack...Victor Ziegler Leslie Lowe...Illona Peter Benson...Bandleader Todd Field...Nick Nightingale Michael Doven...Ziegler's Secretary Sky du Mont...Sandor Szavost Louise J. Taylor...Gayle Stewart Thorndike...Nuala Randall Paul...Harris Julienne Davis...Mandy Lisa Leone...Lisa Kevin Connealy...Lou Nathanson Marie Richardson...Marion Thomas Gibson...Carl Mariana Hewett...Rosa STANLEY KUBRICK (b. July 26, 1928 in New York City, New York—d. March 7, 1999 (age 70) in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, England, UK) was an American film director, screenwriter, and producer. He is frequently cited as one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers in cinematic history. His films, which are mostly adaptations of novels or short stories, cover a wide range of genres, and are noted for their realism, dark humor, unique cinematography, extensive set designs, and evocative use of music. Kubrick taught himself all aspects of film production and directing after graduating from high school. After working as a photographer for Look magazine in the late 1940s and early 1950s, he began making short films on a

shoestring budget, and made his first major Hollywood film, The Killing*, for United Artists in 1956. This was followed by two collaborations with Kirk Douglas, the war picture Paths of Glory* ** (1957) and the historical epic Spartacus (1960). As he was cementing a reputation as a great innovator in cinematic vision and technique in the 1960s with the tragicomedy of his first Oscar-nominated (Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing) Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb* ** (1964) and the aporetic, Oscar-winning (Best Effects) and Oscar-nominated (Best Director and Best Writing) 2001: A Space Odyssey* ** (1968), Kubrick had acquired the rights to Arthur Schnitzel’s “Traumnovelle,” but it would not begin filming until 1996 in London “under the veil of severe secrecy” (Cinephilia & Beyond). The secret production would end up being Kubrick’s final film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut.* ** In the intervening years, Kubrick would make several controversial and lauded films. The shocking Anthony Burgess adaptation A Clockwork Orange* ** (1971) and the epic Barry Lyndon* ** (1975) were both nominated for Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Writing. 1980’s Stephen King adaptation The Shining* ** became one of the most revered horror films, generating wild fan theories about the significance of architecture in the film’s haunted lodge. These are the other films he directed (16 credits): Flying Padre* **** (Documentary short) (1951), Day of the Fight** *** (Documentary short) (1951), Fear and Desire** *** (1953), The Seafarers*** (Documentary short) (1953), Killer's Kiss* ** ***(1955),

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Lolita* (1962), and Full Metal Jacket* ** (1987), for which he received his final Best Writing Oscar nomination. *Writer **Producer ***Cinematography and Editing ****Cinematography ARTHUR SCHNITZLER (b. 15 May 1862, Leopoldstadt, Vienna, capital of the Austrian Empire—d. 21 October 1931, Vienna, Austria) was an Austrian author and dramatist. He once responded to a question about criticisms against his recurring themes: "I write of love and death. What other subjects are there?" In 1879, he studied medicine at the University of Vienna, eventually earning his doctorate of medicine. He worked at Vienna's General Hospital, and then moved to exclusively writing. He wrote work deemed controversial in late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century Vienna where there was a growing hostility to works that were frank about sexuality rooted in an increasing sentiment of anti-Semitism. In a letter to Schnitzler, Sigmund Freud mused, “I have gained the impression that you have learned through intuition—although actually as a result of sensitive introspection—everything that I have had to unearth by laborious work on other persons.” He was a member of the avant-garde group Young Vienna (Jung-Wien), where he toyed with formal as well as social conventions. His 1900 novella Leutnant Gustl was the first German fiction to use the modernist technique, made famous by Virginia Woolf and James Joyce, stream-of-consciousness narration. Schnitzler's works were called "Jewish filth" by Adolf Hitler and were banned by the Nazis in Austria and Germany, along with writings from Freud, Einstein, Marx, and Kafka. LARRY SMITH (b. London, England) is a British cinematographer (22 credits) known for his work with Stanley Kubrick, Tom Hooper and Nicolas Winding Refn. Before making his debut as a cinematographer for Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut (1999), Smith had done lighting and electrician work on the sets of Barry Lyndon and The Shining. He made his first directorial effort in 2015’s Trafficker. These are the other films and television series he has done cinematography for: Cold Feet (TV Series) (1999), Love in a Cold Climate (TV Mini-Series) (2001), The Piano Player (2002), Fear X (2003), Prime Suspect 6: The Last Witness (TV Mini-Series) (2003), Red Dust (2004), Elizabeth I (TV Mini-Series) (2005), Marple (TV Series) (2007), Bronson (2008), The Blue Mansion (2009), The Guard (2011), Austenland (2013), Only God Forgives (2013), Calvary (2014), The Man Who Knew Infinity (2015), Dark Angel (TV Mini-Series) (2016), The Alienist (TV Series) (2018), Tau (2018), and Puppy Love (2018). TOM CRUISE (b. July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York) is one of the most commercially successful American actors who is also widely respected and recognized (49 credits). He is both known for high-grossing action films, in particular the Mission: Impossible franchise, where he famously does his own risky stunts and for recognized comic and dramatic turns, in such films as Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), and Magnolia (1999), all three films for which he received Oscar nominations for Best Actor. Throughout the 1990s, he was famously married to his Eyes Wide Shut (1999) co-star, Nicole Kidman, adding a layer of intrigue to the film’s themes of marital

infidelity. These are some other films he has acted in: Endless Love (1981), Taps (1981), The Outsiders (1983), Losin' It (1983), Risky Business (1983), All the Right Moves (1983), Legend (1985), Top Gun (1986), The Color of Money (1986), Cocktail (1988), Rain Man (1988), Far and Away (1992), A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996), Mission: Impossible II (2000), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Mission: Impossible III (2006), Lions for Lambs (2007), Tropic Thunder (2008), Valkyrie (2008), Knight and Day (2010), Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011), Rock of Ages (2012), Jack Reacher (2012), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), The Mummy (2017), and Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018).

NICOLE KIDMAN (b. June 20, 1967 in Honolulu, Hawaii) is an Australian and American actress (84 credits) and producer (8 credits). She began her acting career in Australia with the 1983 films Bush Christmas and BMX Bandits. In 1990, she made her Hollywood debut in the racing film Days of Thunder, opposite Tom Cruise. She went on to achieve wider recognition with leading roles in Far and Away (1992), Batman Forever (1995), To Die For (1995), and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). She received two consecutive nominations for the Academy Award for Best Actress for playing a courtesan in the musical Moulin Rouge! (2001) and the writer Virginia Woolf in the drama film The Hours (2002). In 2012, she received her first Primetime Emmy Award nomination for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Miniseries or a Movie for her role in the HBO film Hemingway & Gellhorn and returned to television in 2017, co-producing and starring in the HBO drama series Big Little Lies, winning the Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress as well as Outstanding Limited Series. These are some of the other films she has acted in: Wills & Burke (1985), Windrider (1986), Emerald City (1988), Billy Bathgate (1991), Malice (1993), The Portrait of a Lady (1996), The Peacemaker (1997), Panic Room (2002), Dogville (2003), The Human Stain (2003), Cold Mountain (2003), The Stepford Wives (2004), The Interpreter (2005), Bewitched (2005), Fur: An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus (2006), The Golden Compass (2007), Australia (2008), Rabbit Hole (2010), Just Go with It (2011), Stoker (2013), Grace of Monaco (2014), Paddington (2014), Strangerland (2015),

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Secret in Their Eyes (2015), The Guardian Brothers (2016), The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017), Top of the Lake (TV Series) (2017), The Beguiled (2017), The Upside (2017), Destroyer (2018), Boy Erased (2018), and Aquaman (2018). MADISON EGINTON (b. August 28, 1989 in Los Angeles County, California) is an American actress (12 credits) known for her work on Star Trek: Generations (1994), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and the Buffy the Vampire Slayer spinoff Angel (1999). These are some of her other film and television appearances: Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman (TV Series) (1996), Touched by an Angel (TV Series) (2000), Psycho Beach Party (2000), ER (TV Series) (2000), and Death and Cremation (2010). JACKIE SAWIRIS is a Jordanian/Egyptian actress (17 credits) who is best known for playing the Arabian genie Majida in Knightmare from 1993 to 1994. Other notable performances include playing Roz in Eyes Wide Shut (1999). These are some of her other film and television appearances: Undying Love (1991), Death Machine (1994), Table 5 (1997), The Big Swap (1998), The Wire (TV Series) (2003), Incendies (2010), and45 Minutes to Ramallah (2013). SYDNEY POLLACK (b. July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana—d. May 26, 2008 (age 73) in Pacific Palisades, Los Angeles, California) was an American film director (41 credits), producer (48 credits) and actor (43 credits). As he was beginning a career directing for television, for series, such as Shotgun Slade (1961) and The Fugitive (1964), Pollack played a director in The Twilight Zone episode "The Trouble with Templeton" in 1961. His film-directing debut was The Slender Thread (1965). He was nominated for Best Director Oscars for They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969) and Tootsie* (1982) in which he also appeared. His 1985 film Out of Africa won him Academy Awards for directing and producing. During his career, he directed 12 different actors in Oscar-nominated performances: Jane Fonda, Gig Young, Susannah York, Barbra Streisand, Paul Newman, Melinda Dillon, Jessica Lange, Dustin Hoffman, Teri Garr, Meryl Streep, Klaus Maria Brandauer and Holly Hunter. Young and Lange won Oscars for their performances in Pollack's films. He also received a nomination for the Palme d’Or at Cannes for Jeremiah Johnson (1972). These are the other films and television series he directed: Wagon Train (TV Series) (1963), Ben Casey (TV Series) (1962-1963), Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (TV Series) (1963-1965), The Slender Thread (1965), This Property Is Condemned (1966), The Scalphunters (1968), The Swimmer (1968), Castle Keep (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Way We Were (1973), The Yakuza (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), Bobby Deerfield (1977), The Electric Horseman* (1979), Absence of Malice (1981), Havana (1990), The Firm (1993), Sabrina (1995), and The Interpreter* (2005). Oddly, after 20 years of not acting, arguments he was having with Dustin Hoffman on the set of Tootsie led Hoffman to suggest Pollack play his agent in the film, lending authenticity to the conflict in the film. This jump back into acting led to a revitalization of Pollack’s acting career, which he continued to pursue throughout the rest of his career. One of a select group of non- and/or former actors awarded membership in The Actors Studio, Pollack resumed acting in the 1990s with appearances in such films as The Player (1992) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999),

often playing corrupt or morally conflicted power figures. These are some of the other films and television series he acted in: The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (TV Series) (1956), The Big Story (TV Series) (1957), Now Is Tomorrow (TV Movie) (1958), Playhouse 90 (TV Series) (1959), Alfred Hitchcock Presents (TV Series) (1960), The Twilight Zone (TV Series) (1960), Have Gun - Will Travel (TV Series) (1961), The Asphalt Jungle (TV Series) (1961), Ben Casey (TV Series) (1962), War Hunt (1962), Death Becomes Her (1992), Husbands and Wives (1992), Frasier (TV Series) (1994), A Civil Action (1998), Random Hearts (1999), The Majestic (2001), Changing Lanes (2002), The Interpreter (2005), Will & Grace (TV Series) (2000-2006), The Sopranos (TV Series) (2007), Entourage (TV Series) (2007), Michael Clayton (2007), and Made of Honor (2008). *Actor and Director

‘Eyes Wide Shut’: A Tense, Nightmarish Exploration of Marriage and Sexuality in Kubrick’s Ultimate Fiim” (Cinephilia & Beyond) Almost a decade passed since Full Metal Jacket hit the theaters, and Stanley Kubrick lived a sort of a reclusive life in London, distanced from the press. It was then that he felt he could turn his attention to his slow-brewing passion project. In the sixties, he purchased the rights to Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler’s novella called ‘Traumnovelle,’ which translates as ‘Dream Story.’ Kubrick apparently felt the story was an ideal foundation for a cinematic exploration of sexual relations and all the tension, jealousy and passion that inevitably come along with it. Kubrick’s fourteenth feature film, which would unfortunately turn out to be his last, was written by screenwriter Frederic Michael Raphael and it soon acquired Hollywood superstars and real life married couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. In 1996 the production began in London under the veil of severe secrecy. Given the fact that the idea for the film was conceived three decades earlier, it only seems fitting that, in the hands of a notorious perfectionist of Kubrick’s rank, the project would break all records in terms of its production length. Filming took no less than 400 days, which earned Eyes Wide Shut a deserved place in the Guinness Book of World Records. Sometimes classified by critics and scholars as a mystery-driven erotic thriller, Kubrick’s last movie is a complex exploration of marriage and sexuality, fidelity and jealousy, a detailed, nightmarish study of human intimacy with strong erotic tones, carried on the performances of a highly talented cast, with excellent back-up from supporting actors such as Sydney Pollack and Todd Field (both acclaimed filmmakers in their own right),

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accompanied by nice miniatures from Vinessa Shaw and Rade Serbedzija. Cruise’s distanced, obvious insensitivity and certain woodenness that some complained about upon the film’s release actually fits in perfectly with the filmmaker’s assumed vision: Cruise’s character leads the audience onto a voyeuristic journey of intimate self-discovery, and his performance, labeled underachieving by critics who just might have misunderstood Kubrick’s intentions, allows the viewer to more easily relate to the character by projecting their own image onto the actor’s frequently blank face. The motif of masks, the act and symbolic meaning of wearing disguise, is delightfully explored here, whether we’re talking about literal masks worn at the infamous and unfortunately digitally altered orgy (the studio wanted to get an R rating, thus changing and diminishing the great filmmaker’s last vision for financial purposes) or the metaphoric ones that the protagonists of the film, and probably every other person in the real world, wear on a daily basis. The image we choose to project from the inside, either to impress, accommodate or deceive other people, is a constant theme throughout the picture, and it’s interesting to note that the whole plot is pushed violently forward when Nicole Kidman’s character confesses fantasizing an affair, a verbal act with a lot of gravity which completely shakes the image of a faithful, loving wife she projected until this fateful moment of drug-induced honesty. Kubrick relied on psychology in the process of preparing his lead actor and actress for the shoot. Kidman and Cruise we’re Hollywood’s hottest couple, but during filming Kubrick demanded complete honesty from them, leading them to confess and discuss things they would most likely have liked to keep for themselves. The usually fine line between reality and fictionbecame oblique, with more than a little help from the filmmaker, who made his stars sleep in their character’s bedroom. These tricks resulted in magical on-screen performances spurred by palpable chemistry. At the same time, the stretch was a bit too much for the couple, as it would soon turn out. Exhausted and tortured, they still remained faithful to their visionary leader, defending him to the public with regard to the prolonged shooting. English composer Jocelyn Pook provided the music, even though Kubrick still liked to base the score on classical tunes, while cinematography was handled by Larry Smith, former gaffer on Barry Lyndon and The Shining, whom Kubrick promoted. It’s needless to say that Kubrick remained very much involved with every single aspect of the film’s production. After the laborious shooting finally ended, Kubrick entered the lengthy post-production process and ultimately presented his film to Cruise, Kidman and the studio executives. Less than a week later he suffered a severe heart attack and died, three months before the film’s premiere, unable to witness its international box office success or discuss any of the themes and problems of this difficult project’s production. Upon seeing the film, some critics believed Kubrick needed more time to finish it, not failing to note the irony in the fact that the most notorious perfectionist ended his career with a practically unfinished film in need of some obvious polishing. But in the years that followed its release what was established was the dominant notion that Eyes Wide Shut was indeed a complete masterpiece, just what the old master wanted to present to the world. Kubrick was allegedly very proud of the film, even considering it his greatest contribution to the world of filmmaking, and the palpable

feelings of anxiety, perplexity and tension we experience every time we see the film somehow convince us Kubrick was not far from being right.

Kubrick, Cruise, Kidman and Pollack watch video playback on set

On the occasion of the LACMA retrospective, two of Kubrick’s friends and collaborators reminisced about the master director’s approaches, rituals, and concerns. Tom Cruise, who starred in Eyes Wide Shut, and former Warner Bros. head Terry Semel, who oversaw the production of many of Kubrick’s films, got together for a phone conversation that Annette Insdorf moderated in late August to discuss Kubrick’s brilliantly cinematic storytelling. Courtesy of Interview Magazine. CRUISE: We discovered that we were both Yankees fans. But in that meeting, he didn’t really want to discuss certain subjects—like how he made certain pictures or the choices he made. But as time went on, we became great friends, and he just broke down for me all the sequences of his movies—starting with 2001—and how he came up with all the ideas for each shot. It was an incredible learning experience. Working with Stanley was a lot of fun because even though it may look like a very simple film, he was brilliant at getting under the audience’s skin. He was very interested in the idea of, “How can I tell this with just a camera?” I know the games that he and Sydney Pollack used to play back-and-forth. They would trade commercials back-and-forth and see how much of the dialogue could be taken out of the commercial while still retaining a story and also seeing what they could do visually with it. When you look at Eyes Wide Shut, there’s the sense of, “Is this a dream or is this a nightmare?” and how do you handle the aspects of the story in such a way that you’re not resorting to the usual visual techniques to say, “This is nightmare.” You mean Kubrick was playing with formal structures? He was pushing the film very hard. One fascinating thing about Barry Lyndon was that he used the Apollo lenses [still photography lenses developed for NASA, modified for film use]. The speed of those lenses is startling, and he used them to shoot in candlelight, which gives it that incredible depth of frame that he’s really known for. He likes those wide-angle lenses and he would often adjust the furnishing and the pictures on the wall. He understood those lenses completely, because a lens like that

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will bend the picture. It will alter it, and he made adjustments because he wanted that depth, he wanted the audience to feel the space. He was very selective when he went into a close-up. Every director has his taste in a performance, but Stanley would explore a scene to find what was most interesting for him. When you look at the lens choices with Jack Nicholson, for example, when he’s in the pantry leaning against the door and Stanley shoots up at him, its clear what an amazing eye he had. When you’re working with a filmmaker with that command of storytelling, you know right away that it’s his taste, it’s an extension of him. It’s not necessarily analytical. As an actor—like an artist—you have to ask, “Why do I choose a certain moment to play something a certain way?” It’s organic to who we are. I think you see through Stanley’s movies that his visual command was an extension of him. And in Eyes Wide Shut he was very much pushing the film. Every morning, I would go in early and we would look at the negatives together. We would look at the day’s rushes—not with sound, but we would look at the image, and he was checking the film to see how hard could he push it. There was an interesting moment during filming. We were shooting in the backlot of Pinewood Studios and he had built a set to resemble New York. We were working on a scene where I see that a guy is following me. He cast a very distinct-looking actor, a bald guy with a very particular wardrobe. In the shot, this guy walks across the street. We went back and looked at the video playback; we must have spent hours studying it, just to figure out what the behavior of this man should be like crossing the street. Finally, Stanley said, “Listen, when you’re crossing the street, please don’t stop staring at Tom.” It looks like a very simple thing, but behaviorally, it had a tremendous effect. He just immerses you with his tone. His tracking shot through the trenches in Paths of Glory is revolutionary. And it’s the same with the Steadicam shot in The Shining with [camera operator] Garrett Brown. That was a very difficult shot where the boy is racing from carpet to floor to carpet. That was the brilliance of Stanley: he knew how to use the medium of film and the camera and the lens, and, of course, also sound. He had such command of his craft. Tom, were you amazed by how few people he had on the set? Yeah. In all matters of the film, he was economical. He needed time to make the film, yes, but he also needed time to think about the film. The script, for him, was just the blueprint. And, as you know, as much as Stanley projected this notion of him as not being collaborative, he actually was incredibly collaborative. We had a $65-million budget for Eyes Wide Shut, and everyone thinks we ended up shooting for two years. But it wasn’t quite two years. I got there in August and he gave us a month off for Christmas and left about a year and a half later. But we had a lot of vacations in between. Stanley would allow us to break, and that would give him time to evaluate the film and look

at the sets. So he knew what people he needed. And he was very smart about money. He never went back to Terry and asked for more. He stuck by the budget and did everything it allowed him to do—with the time he needed—to make his film. SEMEL: I don’t think it can be overemphasized how hands-on he was on his projects. He never became the type of filmmaker to direct from a distance.

CRUISE: Earlier on in his career, he would do all the operating. When you look at The Shining, you see that he operated a lot. He did less so on Eyes Wide Shut, but even then, he didn’t want many people on the set. He wanted to keep it very contained and very intimate and personal. It was the least amount of crew I’ve ever had on a movie. I think he was always looking at “How do I bring things down to a simplicity?” Annette, you spoke about Paths of Glory. After that film, he went on to work with Kirk Douglas again

on Spartacus. The original director for Spartacus was Anthony Mann, but Douglas replaced him with Stanley after the first week. And, of course, Stanley and [director of photography on Spartacus] Russell Metty didn’t get along, because Stanley, of course, really knew as much, if not more, about lighting and composition. Metty was used to, “You’re the director and you stand over there and I do my work over here.” He and Metty really came to blows on that. I think that experience changed Stanley’s feelings about Hollywood in terms of not wanting to go through that again. SEMEL: I remember he would finish a film and come to me and say, “I, Stanley, want to create all the ad campaigns. I want to do all the PR. I want to be involved in every aspect of the movie.” He worked on every inch of how a movie got promoted. He did the trailer. He decided when it was going to open, and in which city. And all of this was done with the backdrop of, “No, I cannot leave London or the greater London area.” CRUISE: The trailer for The Shining is stunning. And I think the one for Eyes Wide Shut is as well. I remember François Truffaut telling me about 30 years ago that Kubrick had a hook-up in his home that alerted him when a projection bulb blew in a New York theater that was showing one of his films. This was before computers were part of our daily lives. Was he the most exacting perfectionist with whom you’ve ever worked? SEMEL: Without question. He would get a list of the theaters that his movie would be opening in, and he would have his brother-in-law go from theater to theater taking photographs. Stanley was interested in how many people there were in the audience when the movie opened. His brother-in-law would photograph them coming in and out of the theater. So Stanley knew more about what was happening day by day than I did. [laughs] He’d call and say, “You gave me a list of all the theaters and I have photographs of them. This one doesn’t have good parking and the screen isn’t very good in this theater in Denver!”

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I’d say, “How do you know about this theater in Denver?” So this was not a man who just went out and made a movie. It was sad in fact that the final night before he died he had been going over every detail of Eyes Wide Shut—the ad campaign, the trailer, everything—and it was only week or two before it all came out. He was so good at that aspect of promotion, but he would often make this comment about other filmmakers: “Why in the world do they go on talk shows? Do they realize that they’re not celebrities? They make movies. Why are they there?” CRUISE: He did not want to be a celebrity. You know, [the late director] Tony Scott worked on Barry Lyndon. He was in art school at the time. Tony told me that he wrote down the exact longitude and latitude of where Stanley wanted the camera, the exact height of the camera, and the time, to get the shot that Stanley wanted. Tony said he sat there for a couple of weeks trying to get the right light. Stanley really loved the Scott brothers. I’ve had long conversations about this with both Tony and Ridley. Stanley was a director who did not let people borrow or rent his lens. He never gave his Apollo lens to anyone. But when Ridley was having a really difficult time with the end of Blade Runner, Stanley gave Ridley footage that he had shot but didn’t use for the opening of The Shining. He was offering to let him use it for Blade Runner. That’s how highly Stanley thought of them. I want to go back to something that you said, Tom, about his ability to get under the audience’s skin. In comparison to other contemporary filmmakers, his vision wasn’t upbeat or comforting. The choices he often made—a wide-angle lush exterior with a tiny human being in the center, or a crowded interior with few close-ups of the character, for example—give a sense of dehumanization. If you look at Eyes Wide Shut, the mansion is an arena where cold copulation is the norm and anonymity is the condition. Do you think that bleakness was an integral part of his vision? SEMEL: He had a great sense of humor. I don’t think he saw any of that as being bleak. CRUISE: In terms of the orgy scene, that’s how Stanley wanted it to feel. He wanted the audience to have that reaction. Here’s a guy going into the dark side of life. One of the themes that the film explores is jealousy—the wife never actually lived this fantasy that she had, and the husband goes on this journey where he feels, I’m going to do this. But nothing ever happens. He doesn’t sleep with the woman whose father has died. He doesn’t end up being able to participate in the orgy, and, as an audience, you wonder how much danger he was ever really in—you know what I mean? And yet, it does have to be dark. The character that I’m playing—and Stanley and I spoke about this—is using his title as a doctor as a way to open doors and as a weapon. Stanley’s own father was a doctor. People look at doctors like they know everything, and Stanley was very cynical

about that—people using their titles or power to allow themselves into places and to exploit others and the situation. And the orgy is dark, but it’s not satisfying either—it’s a slow burn. In The Shining, there is the same slow burn. There is no cat that jumps out at you. It’s a slow, slow burn that gets under your skin, and it builds and becomes quite terrifying. He’s someone who definitely understood the tone of the story that he was

telling and the consistency of tone. So I think, personally, when you watch Eyes Wide Shut, yes, it’s a disturbing film. But when we were shooting the end, Stanley said, “This is a happy ending.” We were in a toy store. As Terry said, he had an amazing sense of humor. And he was a lot of fun to be with. Terry, was there any serious thought of releasing Eyes Wide Shut as an NC-17 film with no digital covering of nudity? SEMEL: It was such a short period of time between Stanley’s death and the release of the film. I did not want our company to be responsible for changing

Stanley’s view or adding things to Stanley’s view. I just decided in my own self that I was going to do everything I possibly could to make sure that the film got this rating. It’s Stanley’s movie. And I don’t want anyone else touching it or fooling with it. I don’t want to change history with it. I think the best parts of the film still shine. I just made sure that we got the rating so it could be in lots of theaters throughout the world. CRUISE: Stanley wanted that. He wanted his movies to be huge successes. He did not want an NC-17 rating. SEMEL: He would call me every other week to tell me to go back to the rating board. [laughs] To push them against the wall… Tom, do you want to talk about the final nights before he died? CRUISE: What happened is, Stanley sent the final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to New York. And the four of us watched it—Terry and Jane and me and Nicole. We watched it twice in a row and went out to dinner after that. I had to leave after that for Australia to start filming Mission [Impossible 2, 2000]. You were on the phone talking with Stanley about the movie, going over everything— SEMEL: That’s right. Stanley wouldn’t allow anyone else to see the cut. I think his nephew carried the print from England to a screening room in Manhattan. And he called that night—“What did you think? And how was this? And how was that scene?” He went through every bit of the film. And generally speaking, we were all very happy and excited. I said, “Stanley, I’m going to fly back to Los Angeles,” which is where I was living. “We’ll continue this tomorrow. We’ll talk about lots of details. You have notes, we have notes.” And then when tomorrow came, he was on the phone with me—which was not a rare occurrence—for many, many hours. And it was probably about three o’clock in the morning at that point, and he and I had been talking the entire time. And he went over every detail of how the movie would be released—of who would do it, of what

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it would look like, etcetera. It just went on and on and on. When it was about four o’clock in the morning, I said, “Stanley, I’m really tired. I’m going to go to sleep now. We can continue this conversation in the morning.” So I go to sleep, get up in the morning, and in those days we had an answering machine, and there were dozens and dozens of calls on the machine, starting with Stanley’s wife, who was insisting that they wake me up. He had died during that night. She said, “What was it like? What happened? Were you guys angry?” I said, “No, we were laughing for hours. We were going over everything on that film and we were in hysterics for hours—for many, many hours until sunlight was starting to come through.” We were all in a state of shock. I’m so happy to say that his life ended on a huge up-note of feeling success coming from his latest movie, Eyes Wide Shut. It was like a celebration on the phone for many, many hours and a lot of laughing. Later, we did an opening for Eyes Wide Shut for a charity in Los Angeles, and I got up to introduce the movie to the audience, and I said, “This is going to be my last movie at Warner Bros.” I think all of my colleagues and the whole company all stopped to say, “Terry, what did you just say?” I just felt there’s no way to top the experience with Stanley. And then didn’t we all fly back to his funeral in his backyard? CRUISE: Yeah, we did. I was in Australia when I got the call. I talked to Stanley on the plane. We talked for about an hour, going through the film. And then I got the call. And we flew back for the funeral at his house in England.

Laleen Jaymanne: The Ornamentation of Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut) and Mita Vashisht (Kasba): a Sketch (Senses of Cinema) …As Tim Kreider said, “critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was almost unanimous and the complaint was always the same; not sexy.” True, it didn’t show Tom and Nicole making love nor was the orgy orgiastic. But the film’s colour and light left me breathless, wanting more and more. My encounter with the behaviour of colour (and I insist on the activity of colour rather than its meaning which seems to me a more art historical concern) drew me into the film. Eyes Wide Shut is strangely animated by the colours of the vegetal/floral paintings done by Christiane Kubrick (the director’s wife). Strange because these colours seem to jump out of the frames on the walls, strewn with these paintings, creating an ornamented garden of artifice in the couple’s affluent New York apartment. Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman), the wife of Dr. Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), is an out of work curator whose Soho gallery has gone bust. Her taste in interior decor is highly decorative, creating a richly layered, textured surface of materials, light and colour, the most conspicuous contributor to

which are the paintings themselves. While her late twentieth century Central Park West apartment is expressive of the couple’s taste and status, it does evoke, as Virginia Spate pointed out (to me in a conversation), the intimate domestic interiors of the late nineteenth century Symbolist painters such as Felix Vallotton, Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. This path into Symbolist art history is also made more mysterious by the briefly conspicuous presence of a Vincent Van Gogh coffee table book which Alice wraps up as a Christmas present, and also the painting of sunflowers on her bedroom wall. The Symbolists experimented with colour and surface ornamentation around the same time that cinema was invented in 1895. It is evident that the Symbolist aesthetic was developed as a resistance to the mechanisation of perception. The importance of this moment for Kubrick, after 100 years of cinema (and consequent technologisation of the human sensorium), is encapsulated in the film’s title. The expressive use of what Van Gogh called arbitrary as opposed to local colour is facilitated by the garden of artifice created by the paintings. I would go further and say that painting forms a virtual sphere nourishing this film. The importance of colour over light is made possible by Kubrick’s refusal to use studio lighting in a film shot almost entirely on a studio set. Instead of the usual studio lighting he used the available light sources visible in the shot, such as lamps, Christmas tree lights and so forth. When this was not adequate he used Chinese paper ball lamps to softly brighten the scene. The colour was enhanced in an unusual manner in the lab where the film stock was “force-developed by two stops” in processing to bring out the intensity of colour. The cinematographer Larry Smith makes the point unequivocally: “There’s no question that with force-developing you get exaggerated highlights—they really blow out.” This is a new kind of cinematic colour invented by Kubrick, working against the standardised norms of film lighting and processing. What Dorothy Parker said many decades ago – “men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses” – is still more or less true within Hollywood generic coding. Why then does Alice wear glasses, especially when she is naked? Does Alice/Nicole play the age-old role of nude model to Kubrick the artist or is she simply a naked woman who in wearing glasses creates a slight difference. If so what might this little ornamented difference be? Something funny is going on here between Kubrick and Kidman that develops into a little joke, the kind he liked to make at the expense of Hollywood codes of editing for continuity. Alice is helping her daughter, Helen, do her homework at the dining table which is shot at an angle and framing strongly reminiscent of the Nabi paintings of such intimate domestic scenes. At this point Bill comes home, sees them, goes into the kitchen, gets a beer from the fridge and begins to hear (in his head) his wife’s confession of the previous night, about her desire for another man. As this imaginary voice torments him he comes over to the dining table and Kidman smiles at him, her gaze slightly above her glasses but crucially directed at us/the camera/at Kubrick, though ostensibly it is narratively directed at Tom. This look directed at the camera (common in early silent film but proscribed with the formulation of the classical Hollywood codes of editing by the 1920s) gains another dimension if one sees a photograph of Kubrick by Christiane, taken during the production of Eyes Wide Shut. There, Kubrick, wearing his glasses, looks at the camera with the same gaze and expression as

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Alice and even has his eye brows shaped just like hers in the film. So what are they up to these two, playing little games, having some fun at Tom’s expense? Is Kubrick making a pass at his bespectacled model or more interestingly are they involved in what Gilles Deleuze called a “double becoming”? Does Alice permit Kubrick to become a little girl, playful, while Kubrick gives Nicole a chance to go slow, really to unwind time and make time itself play little games? Bathroom – Gaseous Blue In the “bedroom scene,” the couple get stoned; Bill begins a bit of foreplay while Alice starts questioning him about “the party last night.” She gets querulous and begins to talk about “last summer” which leads to the disclosure of her desire for a total stranger, to Bill’s stupefaction. Bill wants to have sex, while Alice wants to unravel time; “last night…last summer” and their whole past collapses into the present. Bill doggedly goes looking for sex while Alice hangs out at home and travels in another dimension that Bill can sense exists but does not know how to activate. From now on Alice and Bill operate two different series. Bill is driven by images and Alice surfs the sonic like a surfer a wave. The development of time as series is one of the crucial means of temporal ornamentation in this film. What I perceive as the virtual crack in the mirror (scene), separating Tom/Bill from Nicole/Alice, as she turns her head away from the kiss, is a sign (and there are several such signs) of the bifurcation of time into these two series, the audio and visual. The blue that fills the bathroom quite “arbitrarily,” behaves as if it were a gas because it does not obey gravity, seems to go any-which-way just like Alice’s speech at moments heightened by champagne, dope or the memory of a desire. A great deal could be said about Kidman’s extraordinary performance but briefly, the main point to be sketched is that, in her speech, she stretches syllables and vowels to a point where their semantic values are displaced by musical values. The consequent unpredictability of what she will say, of how her words will turn out, creates a correspondence between her speech and this blue. In this scene Alice/Kidman, with Van Gogh’s and Christianne’s mediation, enables Kubrick to draw out the power of colour as a transformative force. Alice (who is figured as a Symbolist woman; the red head a sign of sexual potency for them) stands framed by this blue, wearing her Calvin Klein-like underwear as though in a modern-day portrait but evoking some of Van Gogh’s vibrant ones. Beyond a mere correspondence, the colour and sound act on each other creating a synaesthetic vibration that wafts Alice out of the genre of the intimate “chamber play”. What is wonderful to see here is the agility of Alice/Kidman bifurcating time (creating multiple micro-series), ornamenting it at each instant, creating a range of micro-affects, sensations and emotions while poor Bill sits high on the bed frozen in a catatonic stare. Alice’s impulsive, girlish bursts and waves of laughter (her response to Bill’s assertion that women don’t have wild sexual fantasies), is one such micro-movement which even

the stately Kubrick camera gets infected by, moving around to capture her impulsive convulsions on the bedroom floor. Cinematic ornamentation here is not the same as a painterly plastic ornament because what is ornamented is movement and time. Alice’s ornamentation of time is not about harmonious effects created by synaesthesia (the traditional take

on the relationship between sound and colour) but rather her sonic ornamental line is aberrant, unpredictable, now humorous, now sad, now something else, difficult to name, but always moving like a gas, any-which-way. This is what Bill senses and wants to access in order to get out of his solid and stolid perceptions but the only ornamentation he can achieve is to simply repeat the last word or phrase from another’s speech, a mere

repetition with little capacity to create a different move, a dogged marking of time. In Deleuzean film theory, the non-anthropomorphic vision of the camera enables three kinds of perceptions; solid, liquid and gaseous. I contend that Kidman in her sonic performance accedes to a gaseous perception with the aid of colour. The blue responds actively, merging with the red of the curtains; becoming a purple halo around her hair. The Orgy In Eyes Wide Shut, the encounter between painting and film is staged within a self-conscious aesthetic awareness of the simulacral commodity form of the cinematic image. This awareness is structural, that is, internal to the composition of the film, which is why the film is shot on a set; a simulated Symbolist New York and this is also why Kubrick wanted a married couple to play Bill and Alice. The distinction between Bill and Alice and Tom and Nicole becomes imperceptible, simulacral. In Eyes Wide Shut, there are 12 perfect female nudes and only one naked woman (Alice). The dozen nudes are interchangeable commodities both because they are prostitutes and because they are of an identical body type rendered anonymous by being masked in the high-class orgy. Their speech, gestures and movements, their breasts, hips and legs, are all standardised. The expected eroticism of the bodies is transposed into the cinematic image. The very substance of Kubrick’s film is erotic, while, despite their promise of happiness, the perfect nudes remain disenchanted commodities, plastic bodies, moulded to the desire of late twentieth century mediatised beauty. Kidman’s Alice, whether naked or clothed, because of her Symbolist affiliations is able to take us elsewhere even in the shopping mall. [Jaymanne forgets the unconscious naked woman at the party who appears again as the dead naked woman at the morgue. BJ] The central orgy takes place in a palatial house whose interior decor consists of Islamic arches and decorative motifs. As well, the orgies staged as tableaux are accompanied by South Indian vocal music associated with erotic traditions within Indian culture. The complex montage and modulation of multiple rhythms in this sequence occurs within a context where the

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perfect orgiastic bodies are de-eroticised by being subjected to a mechanised rhythm of copulation, while in contrast, the vocalisation intimates a highly flexible rhythm marked by the microtones of that musical tradition. It is my contention that Kubrick uses decorative motifs from an Islamic visual aesthetic tradition as well as a South Indian (Hindu) aural tradition, to function together as critique (“Is this hell?…lovers…” is heard sung in Tamil) and lamentation of the commodification of bodies and the consequent loss of sensuality, but simultaneously to open up a multiplicity of rhythms. In combining two traditions of ornamentation (visual and sonic) in Indian culture that both Hindu and Islamic fundamentalisms would want to eradicate, and using it not only as critique but also as intimating other temporal potential beyond the chronometric time of the pulsed bodies, Kubrick makes a transnational gesture with the kind of care and precision one expects of him. The traditional pre-industrial ornamentation he deploys here now returns as a form of pastiche, made possible by technologies of mass reproduction. It is evident that Kubrick does use the familiar bag of tricks of postmodern pastiche – citation, irony, parody – quite liberally in this film: in his use of music, in the highly melodramatic hocus-pocus dialogue at the orgy and in the very construction of the plot; assuming urbanely that these examples of postmodern pastiche constitute a contemporary realism of sorts. But something qualitatively different happens with the South Indian music because at that moment there is a multiplicity of differential audio-visual rhythms: those of the copulating bodies; Tom’s slow walk; the floating camera; and the rhythms of the song. Through these, Kubrick creates a rasa (aesthetic sentiment) of sadness. This sadness is highly abstract, and precise, a function of the music; it is not achieved through a depiction of a sad scene. In fact there is one word that modulates that particular rasa – viraha – which may be translated as a melancholy yearning associated with erotic loss. Toy Shop Kubrick’s film ends in a toy shop, a place of artifice unlike Schnitzler’s Dream Novella which ends in the conjugal bed room with a beam of sunlight streaming in with bird song mingled with the child’s laughter enhancing the happy resolution of marital conflicts. I think the film ends there for the same reason that the orgy is mechanised and for the same reason that the film as a whole is shot on a set (all be it a Symbolist New York). They are perfectly controlled environments of late capitalism where all things and relations are under the reign of standardised exchange of commodities as signs. In this space of exchange, as if remembering Dorothy Parker’s comment, Alice wearing her looking glasses doesn’t wait, she makes a pass, (at her husband), but in an unusual manner, with a deadpan expression. She uses an infinitive: “There is something very important we need to do.” “What?” “Fuck”, thus virtualising the actual. Throughout the film, Alice has conjugated the “dark precursor”, the nonsense word “Fuck”, to replenish her conjugality with a light and perhaps also therefore terrifying humour. This is not the Freudian dirty joke that rouses loud laughter through exclusion of the other. There is no self or other to exclude in the infinitive which has no subject, a pure virtuality in language. If indeed one smiled loudly at this ending, as I recall doing the very first time I saw it three years ago, the absence of the reverse shot leaves one wondering if Bill was man enough to smile? Or would he still have that mildly

appealing obtuse look and posture of being quite out of his depth? Anyway in refusing us the grammatical reverse shot, Kubrick is once again calling the shots, giving Alice (in the wonderland of the late capitalist toyshop) the power to toy with time, to multiply micro series, which I have called the ornamentation of Nicole Kidman…..

Richard T. Jameson: “Ghost Sonata: Eyes Wide Shut” (Film Comment) We might begin with Todd Field's Nick Nightingale because, luckily or unluckily, Field's been hustled out of movies prematurely of late. Disappearing summarily from The Haunting was surely a blessing in disguise, deliverance on the cutting room floor. But in Eyes Wide Shut he's a fellow—like so many characters in Stanley Kubrick movies—we might expect to see more of before the final fade. Nick Nightingale, old med-school chum of our protagonist Bill Harford (Tom Cruise), is playing piano at the Upper East Side pre-Christmas party in Eyes Wide Shut's first major sequence. (To be sure, the nude rearview of Alice Harford / Nicole Kidman more than qualifies the opening titles as a major sequence, but you take my point.) Bill hails him and they reminisce briefly about old times. But though Nick never completed his medical training, it seems he's ever on call, to authorities both petty and potentially terrible. He's plucked from the narrative mainstream with barely time to leave a cue for Dr. Bill's subsequent nighttown itinerary: the Sonata Café, in the Village and, just maybe, in a more distant time than even their shared past. “Nightingale” seems a tad ornate, even for a guy who's a night bird and who does make music. It's just the Anglo-Americanization (for Kubrick's New York is, of course, a facsimile somewhere in England) of “Nachtigall,” the name in Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, the source work from Freud's Vienna that plucked at Kubrick's attention for thirty years. Yet the American ear in 1999 hears something more in the name: a nudge to be open to florid possibilities; an earnest of kidding on the square; an echo of the ghostly footsteps of another author, another medium, another era, another town, another language, another lifestyle. So when we do see Nightingale again—just too late to catch his set at the Sonata—we are not entirely surprised to find ourselves both titillated and tantalized by his presentation: from an intimate low angle and in symmetrically crepuscular lighting that lends him the look of a preposterous, cut-rate Satan. Is Nick Nightingale a Devil-figure in Eyes Wide Shut? Not in any way that Kubrick could expect us to believe. Say what you will about Satan, he's nobody's pawn (save perhaps God's), and old Nick's in too deep to be Old Nick. No, he's only wearing

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a mask; not Comedy, not Tragedy, just Temptation, on assignment from the Author. Bill Harford does all the work of seducing himself. Nick merely lets slip a password, “Fidelio”—apt signal to a husband who isn't sure how errant he means to be at an orgy he may or may not succeed in crashing. There are other things we could say about Nick, who is briefly but inconsequentially glimpsed at the orgy on Long Island, playing blindfolded (eyes wide shut?) as he said he would be. His most persuasive existence is offscreen, invoked or perhaps utterly fabricated: a man with what sounds like a normal life (wife, four kids, Seattle), taken away from his Manhattan hotel the morning after, a bruise on his face, by two men. The men represent “the authorities,” though they clearly wouldn't be police. Hard not to think of Kafka's officers of the Court and the end of Josef K., in another Mittel-European artwork, artworld. But the main point is that Nick—and “Nightingale”—is chiefly a figment, a pretext, a pun: at once a token of fidelity to a prior text and an index of stylization. His essence is that he has been translated. How are we supposed to watch Eyes Wide Shut? Really, how are we supposed to watch any Stanley Kubrick movie? Apprehension of so many of them has shifted between initial reviewing and years of re-viewing, of reconsideration from the vantage of a culture changed, often as not, by the films themselves. That's a measure of their impact on the artform and the audience, on how often the critics got it wrong. Add that not even Kubrick could know (could he?) that Eyes Wide Shut would be a posthumous release, Kubrick's Last Film, an occasion more monumental and definitive than it already, instrinsically, would have been. So some of the early, almost self-congratulating dismissals of the film have taken on the air of dismissing Kubrick, too. He was, after all, an old guy—what could he have hoped to know of sex, orgies, contemporary society, or even New York, the hometown he may not have visited in nearly four decades? For that matter, what did he really know about filmmaking? It's the Nineties, almost the new millennium; isn't this 2 hour 39 minute movie awfully slow for audiences as hip as we? Perhaps. Then again, what is “slow” and who decides? By that term, bad (re)viewers often mean “boring, overlong, unexciting”—whereas I would describe the film as compelling, engrossing, mesmerizing. Yes, Kubrick might well have trimmed it if he hadn't passed away five days after a “finished” version was screened for the Warner principals and the stars. Yes, it might have mesmerized as well, or better, x minutes shorter. But slow isn't necessarily bad. Slow can be a legitimate dimension all its own, a metabolism of legitimate life-forms and moods and experiences that couldn't be viable at any other rate. Once upon a time, The Shining was taken to task for failing to deliver the conventional horror-movie zap people were looking for, even as it drew us into a creepier metaphysical horror that reinvented the genre. Likewise, Eyes Wide Shut has been shrugged off for its woeful shortchanging of Cruise and Kidman's boogie nights. Yet for all the nudity (digitally obscured and otherwise) of the Renaissance Italian orgy sequence, and for all the reverence for Kidman's stellar nudity at several breathtakingly lighted moments in the early reels, the artistically radical visualizations of female privacy are two. One is very nude, indeed naked: the heroically forlorn sprawl of drugged-out Mandy Curran (Julienne Davis) in the chair in

Ziegler's…bathroom? bedroom? looking, at any rate, like a chamber of Bowman's suite Beyond the Infinite in 2001: the wages of cold, heartless sin, and the sad lot of a playmate who, time and resiliency having run out, is about to be obsolesced. The other keeps the nudity under wraps, and yet Alice Harford's end-of-main-title gesture—rising fully clad from the potty and brusquely drying her pubes under her gown with a wisp of toilet paper, while husband Bill checks his bowtie in the mirror—is perhaps the most startling theme-statement in cinema history. It defines the conjugally intimate precincts of the dream-drama about to occupy the next two and three-quarter hours. “My name is Sandor Szavost,” says the blond chap usurping Alice's champagne. “I'm Hungarian”—as though it were a credential and he an icon so pronouncedly abstract, he might shimmer away in the golden, “rainbow's end” glow of the festive wall behind him · as he might have materialized from it, like Lloyd the bartender of the Overlook Hotel. Can you believe this guy? Can she? Probably not, and yet he is persuasive enough, definitive enough, that the question was asked in the first place. (And the actor Sky Dumont is deliciously funny.) Eyes Wide Shut doesn't insist on it, it's too committed to its own imaginative reality for that, and yet almost no one and nothing in this film of a “dream novel” can be certified as “real” in any literal sense. Fair enough, and no problem: a film image is a film image is a film image, and dreams are a law and logic unto themselves—including, here, the ascertainability of just which Harford is dreaming when. Moreover, dreamers can be, if not bad, then very naïve artists. Eyes Wide Shut is often a funnier movie than its solemn critics appear to have recognized. Bill Harford's penchant for encountering redheaded shadows of his beloved wife bespeaks a deep ambivalence about honoring his marriage vows and accepting the inevitability of so many attractive women finding him irresistible. Bill (and this plays to Cruise's own strength / weakness) has a recurring ploy of repeating whatever someone has just said to him, then accompanying it with a chuckle he hopes will sound conspiratorial, rather than clueless. He's compulsively into wordplay, as in his choice reply when the student / hooker Domino (Vinessa Shaw) asks him what she can do for him: “I'm in your hands.” It's Christmastime in the Village—although pedestrians' breaths don't fog in the midnight air—and all work and no play make Dr. Bill a dull boy. Just as The Shining's Jack Torrance was shunted off to the bathroom at the very moment he thought he was going to the party of his life, so the dream-current of Bill's adventures is sometimes deflected. Going to Rainbow Fashions (cf. Alice's dance in the rainbow's end) to rent his orgy costume, Bill has to wait out the low comedy of the Serbian proprietor (Rade Sherbedgia) and his daughter (Leelee Sobieski), a nymphet seducing / seduced by / contracted out to a couple of pedophiles—in a wacky slippage of dream logic, Japanese sandmen bearing Chinese takeout. And though the progressions of Harford's dream narrative are sometimes clockwork in precision—Bill's gay-baiting by half a dozen college louts is immediately answered by the psychic rearmament of a gorgeous young woman (Domino) taking him in tow—at other times our “narrator” must resort to the threadbare dream dramaturgy of having a phone call interrupt the proceedings just when a situation threatens to become too erotically intense.

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But the drollery goes hand in hand with an ineluctable aura of menace, figured most obviously in the hints of however-improbable Mabusian conspiracy that could bring “dire consequences” for Harford and his family. The 13-minute billiard room interview between Ziegler (Sydney Pollack) and Bill “explains” a lot of what went before, confirms the identity and relevance of the masked woman who saved Bill's life—which of course didn't really need saving, just as her own demise had nothing to do with the “not just ordinary people” sponsors of the Somerset orgy. Reviewers have declared open season on this scene since, like Ziegler himself, it's one of the few additions to Schnitzler's original narrative. Yet the scene is essential, not only for enlarging Ziegler's corruptness but also for its culmination of the push-pull, how-awful / well-no-not-really dynamics of the entire film's waking-dream state. Ziegler's explanation elucidates, demystifies, and leaves us profoundly unsatisfied; Schnitzler's friend Sigmund Freud would have loved the way it simultaneously assuages and frustrates desire, the viewer's desire, for narrative and voyeuristic closure. Whether cinephile Kubrick intended it or not, it's a counterpart of the oft-disputed, now essential-seeming “explanation” by the psychiatrist at the end of Hitchcock's Psycho—really telling us more about Ziegler, and about Bill who needs to hear what Ziegler is saying, than about what really did or didn't happen over the past two nights. It locks in the bad dreams, rather than dispelling them. Kubrick's final film is unique in his oeuvre for concluding on a note of apparent affirmation. The Harfords come

clean with each other about their dream journeys and tentative infidelities, and hope for mature reconciliation. They may get it; sweet dreams. And yet the most positive notes have been sounded earlier, in the fleeting windows of potentiality that have opened from time to time as Bill wends his way through the enveloping mysteries of the city. The orgy is only the most outré manifestation of the grotesque, really quite silly lengths to which humankind will go to act out fantasies of fulfillment and dominion over themselves. Whereas connection can occur easily, tenderly, spontaneously, where and when no one was looking for it: the extra warmth of the café waitress who decides to give Nightingale's address to Bill; the sweet pixilation of the gay hotel clerk (Alan Cumming) who gets to bask in, uh, “Bill”'s confidence for a moment; the dreamed yet also affecting rapport Bill strikes up first with Domino and then with her roommate (Fay Masterson). This is also the justification for the tacit bond—sad and foreshortened though it be—between Bill and the young woman whose extinction he briefly postpones, and in the presence of whose corpse he experiences the strongest erotic and spiritual urgency in the film. Ziegler, like Hitchcock's shrink, isn't speaking the whole truth, but he isn't necessarily lying all the time, either. That's what's so awful about him. Kubrick's final dream can't wish away the awful, but there's consolation in it, too, and the only benediction available in the circumstances: “Nobody killed anybody. Someone died—it happens all the time. Life goes on, until it doesn't.”

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 38)

Apr 30 Frederick Wiseman Monrovia, Indiana 2018 May 7 Alfonso Cuarón Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: engdc@buffalo.edu…email Bruce Jackson bjackson@buffalo.edu...for the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto list@buffalofilmseminars.com....for cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/

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