Eyes Wide Shut
... along with their seven-year-old daughter Helena are the picture of domesticity. However, as with all Kubrick characters, looks can be deceiving. During a Christmas party, the couple each engages in some flirtation with the opposite sex, and upon returning home, Alice reveals that she has been unfaithful to her husband, at least in her fantasies. This results in a marital schism, as the bored couple increasingly allow their dark sides to take over, which enables them to maintain the illusion of their happy marriage, while achieving the sexual desires (Bill, physically, by participating in an orgy, and Alice, psychologically, in her dreams) that neither can satisfy in the other, after nine years of routine life and routine sex. Bill and Alice, reminiscent in many ways of director Kubrick himself, "they delve into territory that they had previously preferred to leave unexplored" (Leeman 1566). Eyes Wide Shut was Stanley Kubrick's interpretation of an obscure 1929 Viennese novel, Dream Rhapsody, written by an intellectual named Arthur Schnitzler, a physician who was fascinated by Sigmund Freud's theories on sexuality, dreams and the unconscious (Leeman 1566; Decter 52). Kubrick's directorial style has often been compared to auteur like Orson Welles and Alfred Hitchcock, each known for their pioneering of innovative camera techniques. Kubrick, like his esteemed predecessors, was acutely aware that cinema is, first and foremost, a visual medium. He uses the camera as a pair of voyeuristic eyes peering in on the Harford's at their most vulnerable. Kubrick, who began his career as a photographer, wanted to create a setting, which was a visually eye-catching blend of lighting and color, again a blatant appeal to the senses, perfectly in keeping with the sexual theme of Eyes Wide Shut (Leeman 1566). The color red is prevalent throughout the movie, traditionally the color for the Devil. It is especially present in those places that lead to Bill's downfall; the Sonata, Somerton, Rainbow and it is embodied in the Ringmaster or the Leader of the “House”. Kubrick also uses blue throughout the film; oddly blue represents female and emotion. Blue seems to be the precursor to red, as in you always see blue before something nasty happens. As Alice ruins Bill, the bathroom glows an eerie blue behind her. The gates of Somerton are blue. Alice owns a blue nightgown, perhaps Kubrick equates Alice to emotion and Bill to sensuality. The camera represented Kubrick's creative vision and his artistic genius. It moves slowly, often ponderously at times, as it contemplates the Harford's sexual walk "down the dark side." He often employed the use of slow motion, to let the audience know that what they were seeing was not necessarily representative of reality (Shargel 18). The script was criticized as being rather sparse in dialogue, but was also in keeping with Kubrick's visual interpretation that the psychological drama was more effectively seen, rather than heard (Shargel 18). With his probing camera, Kubrick translated Freudian psychology into a visual exploration of the human mind. His editing, i.e., the employment of the dissolve from one scene to another, also conveyed a dream-like quality to the film, with sequences often fading into black, as do images before the dreamer awakens (Shargel 18). The most controversial scene of Eyes Wide Shut involved a private orgy in a Long Island mansion, which the sexually betrayed Dr. Harford happens upon. Kubrick, again refusing to compromise, chose to film real naked bodies engaging in various sexual acts, which resembled ancient Greek bacchanalia rituals. However, in order to be distributed in America with an NC-17 rating, the scene was computer-edited to superimpose the faces of onlookers over the genitals of those engaging in mass copulation (Decter 52). Kubric...