Listening to Stanley Kubrick (39 page)

Table 6.1. (
continued
)

Chapter Seven

Kubrick’s Final Word

Eyes Wide Shut

Two years after the release of
Full Metal Jacket
, Kubrick had once again returned to the idea of telling the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, even thinking he might adapt the story for a multiepisode television series. But the notion didn’t last long. Kubrick switched to another idea, the adaptation of Louis Begley’s
Wartime Lies
, which was to become the film
Aryan Papers
. This project never made it past pre-production because it would have come out after Steven Spielberg’s
Schindler’s List
. The decision to postpone the project was made by Kubrick and then CEO of Warner Bros., Terry Semel. Kubrick moved on instead to a possible adaptation of Brian Aldiss’s short story
Super-Toys Last All Summer Long
, even collaborating with Aldiss to create a working screenplay. When their efforts yielded nothing to Kubrick’s satisfaction, the director worked with other writers, including Arthur C. Clarke, to hash out a scenario. In the end, Kubrick put aside the project ostensibly for a very practical reason; the state of special effects in the late 1980s could not possibly have accommodated what Kubrick envisioned for the film.
1
It was Steven Spielberg’s
Jurassic Park
in 1993 that inspired Kubrick to return to the
Super-Toys
adaptation. Kubrick met with special effects gurus Dennis Muren and Ned Gorman from Industrial Light and Magic to discuss possible effects for the film (the two men had done visual effects for
Jurassic Park
and many other films).
2
When production of
Eyes Wide Shut
was finally announced by official Warner Bros. press release in 1995, the statement also confirmed that Kubrick was still planning to make the
Super-Toys
film—now called
A.I.
—after he completed
Eyes Wide Shut.
3

Kubrick eventually offered
A.I.
to Steven Spielberg after a year of pre-production, believing Spielberg to be better suited to make the film. Spielberg worked on other projects in the late 1990s, but after Kubrick’s death, Christiane Kubrick encouraged Spielberg to revisit
A.I.
He agreed, fast-tracking the film into production and releasing
A.I. Artificial Intelligence
in 2001.
Eyes Wide Shut
would be Kubrick’s last film. He died three months before the film was released in theaters, and although we hear that Kubrick had, in fact, completed editing, we can imagine that he might have continued to fiddle with the final product up until the release date. He was known to do such a thing, even working on edits
after
the release date in the cases of
2001
and
The Shining
.

Kubrick’s interest in adapting Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 novella
Traumnovelle
(sometimes translated as
Dream Story
or
Rhapsody
) seems to go all the way back to the late 1960s, when Kubrick read a translation of the story around the release date of
2001
.
4
In an essay about
Eyes Wide Shut
by Hans-Thies Lehmann, there is a photograph of a note made by Kubrick about the acquisition of the rights to
Rhapsody
on 22 May 1968. It says, “Rhapsody . . . agent says $40,000 but obviously high.”
5
Kubrick bought the rights to the property in 1970, but the idea of making it into a film remained on the back burner for quite some time.
6
Interestingly, Schnitzler wrote
Traumnovelle
in his early sixties, about the same age Kubrick was when he finally got around to beginning production on
Eyes Wide Shut.
7

When he finally decided to make the film, Kubrick engaged the services of screenwriter Frederic Raphael to help adapt Schnitzler’s story to a filmable form. Raphael wrote about their collaboration in his book
Eyes Wide Open: A Memoir of Stanley Kubrick
. Most scholars agree that it “is a source to be used with caution.”
8
At issue, among other things, are the lengthy conversations Raphael somehow quotes verbatim. In an interview a few months after Kubrick’s death, Christiane Kubrick stated that Raphael’s memoir was one of the two most unreliable sources of information about her husband.
9
Nevertheless, Raphael makes some interesting comments, even if they must be taken with a grain of salt.

Arthur Schnitzler began writing
Traumnovelle
in 1925, and installments of the story appeared in
Die Dame
magazine. The book was published as a whole in 1926 and takes place in 1920s Vienna. Schnitzler’s use of dreams in his aptly named
Dream Story
brings to mind Sigmund Freud, a contemporary of the author and also a resident of Vienna. When Schnitzler turned sixty, he received a letter from Freud, who explained why the two had never met: Freud said that he had not reached out to him for fear of seeing his own “doppelganger.” Schnitzler, like the character Nachtigall in
Traumnovelle
(Dream Story), had studied medicine but instead ended up pursuing the arts. Schnitzler’s medical background was something he had in common with Freud, and the author read Freud’s work with interest. The degree to which Schnitzler’s work was influenced by Freud’s work has been the topic of some speculation,
10
and one can imagine the two would have a lot to discuss regarding their common interests: hypnosis, dreams, hysteria, and human sexuality.

There are connections between Schnitzler and Kubrick as well. In this case, the two men lived at different times and in different cities, but their work is linked by more than just literary interest on Kubrick’s part. Schnitzler provides a direct connection between Kubrick and legendary film director and auteur Max Ophüls.
11
Ophüls is recognized as a great influence on Kubrick, and in 1950 Ophüls produced a film adaptation of one of Schnitzler’s most controversial plays,
Reigen
(often translated
Round Dance
). Schnitzler’s original was intended only for the eyes of his friends but was performed in public in 1920 and 1921, drawing a strong negative response, including many anti-Semitic comments. The film version of
Reigen,
called
La Ronde
, features conversations between sexual partners. Ophüls cast actors who were some of the best and most respected of the time period.
12
In Ophüls’s
La Ronde
, the director adds two things: a master of ceremonies and a carousel. The added character comments on the interactions of the couples, maintains the carousel (which at one point breaks down), and acts as an omniscient presence. The character even contrasts his all-seeing eye with the limited view that men share: “Men never know but one part of reality. And why? . . . Because they only see one aspect of things.”
13
A similar sentiment is echoed in a line spoken by the main female character, Alice, in
Eyes Wide Shut
. In response to the notion that what women really want is security and commitment, Alice says: “If you men only knew.”

In the late 1990s, playwright David Hare adapted
Reigen
once again, this time into an English version called
Blue Room
, which premiered in London and was directed by Sam Mendes. It went on to open on Broadway in December 1998
.
The star of this play when it premiered—the actor who played all five of the female parts in the show—was Nicole Kidman.
14
(Her male costar, Iain Glen, played all the male roles.) In Ben Brantley’s review of
Blue Room
in the
New York Times
, he praises Kidman but opines of the production, “There is none of the visual sumptuousness, set off by swirling waltzes and equally swirling camera movement, of the famous French film version.”
15

The main character of
Traumnovelle
, Fridolin, is a doctor, and he is married to Albertine.
16
At the beginning of the book, Fridolin and Albertine, who are saying good night to their young daughter, are anxious to continue a conversation they were having about the masquerade ball for Carnival they attended the previous day. The film, in contrast, begins with the couple—now Bill and Alice, who live in late-twentieth-century New York City—getting ready to leave for a Christmas party. Bill and Alice are played by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, who were married when the film was made. The party is thrown by a wealthy friend and patient of Bill, Victor Ziegler, and the event allows the audience to assess the marriage of Bill and Alice before any crisis in the narrative. It also introduces the character of Ziegler, an invention of Kubrick and Raphael. Ziegler has been called the only “unambiguously evil” character in the film, because he is involved in a mysterious secret society that must protect at all costs the identities of its members (“If I told you their names—I’m not gonna tell you their names—but if I did, I don’t think you’d sleep so well”) and because he treats women as objects (he refers to a deceased young woman as “the one with the great tits who OD’d in my bathroom”). This supposedly evil nature is hidden beneath a layer of geniality and a seemingly genuine concern for Bill’s safety.
17
James Naremore describes the way Sydney Pollack played the character: “[Pollack] gives the impression of an intelligent, kindly and rather earthy father-figure, and his performance creates a disjunction between the character’s outward charm and actual corruption.”
18
Michel Chion adds Ziegler to Kubrick’s collection of flawed father figures alongside the drill sergeant in
Full Metal Jacket
, Humbert Humbert in
Lolita
, Jack Torrance in
The Shining
, and General Broulard in
Paths of Glory
.
19
Sydney Pollack was not the first choice for the role; Kubrick had originally envisioned Harvey Keitel for Ziegler, a choice that might have made Ziegler’s questionable nature a bit more readable. Harvey Keitel has often played criminals or corrupt men (Mr. White in
Reservoir Dogs
and the title role
Bad Lieutenant
—both from the 1990s—leap to mind) in his film career, while Sydney Pollack is best known as a director. In fact, Pollack directed one of Tom Cruise’s biggest successes from the 1990s,
The Firm.

The film takes place at Christmastime, and Kubrick makes the most of Christmas lights for the lighting design. The effect is similar to the one in
Barry Lyndon
, in which faces are often illuminated by candles, a source of light that creates a soft glow. There is no definite motive for this change, although Raphael mentions writing parts of his first draft during the Christmas season. The Christmas lighting did have a great technical advantage in that the ubiquity of the light source in certain scenes allowed the camera operator free range of movement. The curtains of gold lights at Ziegler’s party and Millich’s shop might also be a reference to the sometimes-erotic artwork of Gustav Klimt. who had a “Golden Phase” in his artwork and who lived in Vienna at the same time as Schnitzler and Freud.
20

The addition of Christmas to the film narrative, and the deletion of any reference to Judaism, is another thing that makes the film a bit different from the source material. There are a few places where Schnitzler made reference to Jews or Judaism in
Traumnovelle
. At one point in the story, Fridolin is menaced by a group of anti-Semitic fraternity boys, and Nachtigall (Nightingale in translation, Nick Nightingale in the movie), the piano player, is identified as Jewish. When Fridolin first runs into him by chance, Nightingale talks to him in what Schnitzler describes as “a soft Polish accent that had a moderate Jewish twang.”
21
And as Fridolin remembers details about his friend, Schnitzler goes on to describe a man who was “the son of a Jewish tavern owner in a small Polish town,” who had “left home early and had come to Vienna in order to study medicine.” While still a student he played music in some fashionable homes, but this ended when he had an altercation with one of his hosts. After an affront, the host, “outraged, though himself a Jew, hurled a common insult at [Nightingale].” Nightingale responded with a slap to the host’s face, effectively ending his career playing in fashionable homes.
22

Because he was to update the story to modern-day New York, screenwriter Raphael believed he could preserve these Jewish references but, according to him, Kubrick did not agree. “He wanted Fridolin to be a Harrison Fordish goy and forbade any reference to Jews.” In fact, Raphael explains that Bill and Alice’s last name, Harford, could be a shortened version of “Harrison Ford.”
23
Part of Kubrick’s desire to make the characters non-Jews might have come simply from his desire to cast specifically Cruise and Kidman in the roles of Bill and Alice.
24
It is interesting that the only character “coded as Jewish” is Victor Ziegler,
25
the morally ambiguous character who is the flawed father figure, or perhaps even Bill’s shadowy doppelganger. Regardless of these readings, Ziegler is most certainly the character who “represents the economic and political power elite.”
26

Despite its lack of reference to Kubrick’s familial heritage,
Eyes Wide Shut
can be read as an intensely personal story for Kubrick. James Naremore outlines some of the connections between the film and the life of the director: the Harfords’ apartment resembles the New York apartment where the Kubricks lived in the 1960s; Christiane’s paintings decorate the walls of the Harford home (as do works by daughter Katharina Kubrick Hobbs); and Nicole Kidman’s glasses and hairstyle seem to resemble those of Christiane. There are also numerous in-jokes in the film. At one point, Alice watches a film on television that was directed by Paul Mazursky, who played Sidney in Kubrick’s very first feature,
Fear and Desire
. Bill buys a newspaper from an uncredited Emilio D’Alessandro, Kubrick’s chauffeur and assistant. The name Leon Vitali shows up in the newspaper article Bill reads in Sharky’s café; Vitali, after playing the adult Lord Bullingdon in
Barry Lyndon
, became one of Kubrick’s trusted assistants.
27
The story in the paper covers the death of ex–beauty queen Amanda Curran, whom Bill believes to be the mysterious woman who “redeems” him at the masked ball. In the article, it says: