Was “Eyes Wide Shut” a Cultural Watershed?
“Eyes Wide Shut,” released in 1999, was the last film of the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. He died of a heart attack six days after he submitted the final cut of the film to the film studio. Kubrick’s other films include “The Killing” (1956), “Paths of Glory” (1957), “Spartacus” (1960), “Lolita” (1962); “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” (1964), “2001: A Space Odyssey” (1968), “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), “Barry Lyndon” (1975), “The Shining” (1980), and “Full Metal Jacket” (1987). A most impressive list. While I’m sure “Eyes Wide Shut” was a seriously intended expression, and by all accounts Kubrick gave it his best effort, it doesn’t contribute positively to his oeuvre.
At least ostensibly, “Eyes Wide Shut” is an erotic drama Kubrick produced, directed, and co-wrote with American-born British resident Frederick Raphael, starring Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman. It is based on the 1926 novella Traumnoville (Dream Story) by Arthur Schnitzler. Kubrick and Raphael changed the setting of the story from early twentieth-century Vienna to contemporary New York City. The film follows the—again, ostensibly–sexually charged night of medical doctor Bill Harford (Cruise). It includes his infiltrating a masked orgy by a secret society and the apparent murder of a woman attendee. The film grossed $162M world-wide, a very good return. “Eyes Wide Shut” is widely available now for purchase and streaming. It has its admirers and has become something of a cult film in recent years.
In the late ‘90s, “Eyes Wide Shut” received a great deal of attention in the media, both while in production and after its release, because of Kubrick’s excellent reputation and Cruise and Kidman’s association with the film. The pre-release media coverage was extended—the 400-day shooting schedule is the longest in film history. Kubrick was known for his multiple takes—up to a hundred for a scene. Harford’s encounter with a prostitute early in his roaming night—incidentally, the one good thing in the film—about seven minutes of screen time, took Kubrick two weeks to shoot.
Critics’ responses to the film at the time were mixed, though none of them was as scathingly negative as I’ll be here. I saw “Eyes Wide Shut” when it came out and remember being disappointed after all the hype and almost completely unaffected by it; it stayed “over there,” it didn’t engage me. I saw it again about ten days ago and this time, indeed, it was “right here” and not in a good way; I found it stunningly bad. Words that come to mind include artless, coarse, contrived, sophomoric, undisciplined, and vulgar. For all its sex talk, sexual situations, and nudity and couplings, this film curiously lacks eroticism. While I found its merits wanting to say the least, “Eyes Wide Shut” intrigued me enough in my second viewing to spend a good a deal of time thinking about it, reading about it online—reviews, analyses and such–and going through co-writer Raphael’s memoir about his experience with Kubrick during the development of the screenplay (Eyes Wide Open, Ballantine Books, 1999).
Why all this attention from me to this bad film? Because I speculate that “Eyes Wide Shut” may have been a watershed in our collective life, a turning point, an historical moment in the core culture. It may have set the stage for, paved the way to, pointed the direction to, legitimized, what is going on now in center-stage mass entertainment taken seriously by critics and the informed—or perhaps better, pseudo-informed—public. I’ll give over the next paragraphs to fleshing out that assertion and invite you to add your own best thinking to what I offer. To orient you to what’s coming up, the last word in “Eyes Wide Shut,” and thus the last word in Kubrick’s directing career, is “fuck.”
* * *
I’ll begin by recounting how I came to watch “Eyes Wide Shut.” I had streamed the 1967 French film “Belle de Jour” starring Catherine Deneuve and really liked it and was looking for a next film with that same theme. “Belle de Jour” deals with sexuality and is about a young woman who spends afternoons as a high-class prostitute while her medical doctor husband is at work. It was directed by the renowned director Luis Buñuel (“Un Chien Andalou,” “The Exterminating Angel,” and “The Obscure Object of Desire”), who co-wrote the screenplay with French writer Jean-Claude Carriere. I found “Belle de Jour” the opposite of what I later found objectionable about “Eyes Wide Shut”: it is artful, refined, true, mature, meticulous, and tasteful. Without any nudity at all, it was highly, and appropriately, erotic.
Looking around for a “next film” after “Belle de Jour, I read reviews of “Eyes Wide Shut,” and it seemed to be a good choice. The late Roger Ebert in his review when the film came out in 1999 wrote:
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman star as Dr. Bill and Alice Harford, a married couple who move in rich Manhattan society. In a long, languorous opening sequence, they attend a society ball where a tall Hungarian, a parody of a suave seducer, tries to honey-talk Alice (“Did you ever read the Latin poet Ovid on the art of love?”). Meanwhile, Bill gets a come-on from two aggressive women, before being called to the upstairs bathroom, where Victor (Sydney Pollack), the millionaire who is giving the party, has an overdosed hooker who needs a doctor’s help.
At the party, Bill meets an old friend from medical school, now a pianist. The next night, at home, Alice and Bill get stoned on pot (apparently very good pot, considering about a young naval officer she saw last summer while she and Bill were vacationing on Cape Cod: “At no time was he ever out of my mind. And I thought if he wanted me, only for one night, I was ready to give up everything.” There is a fight. Bill leaves the house and wanders the streets, his mind inflamed by images of Alice making love with the officer. And now begins his long adventure, which has parallels with Joyce’s Ulysses in Nighttown and Scorsese’s “After Hours,” as one sexual situation after another swims into view.
New York Times reviewer Janet Maslin concluded:
This is a dead-serious film about sexual yearnings, one that flirts with ridicule yet sustains its fundamental eeriness and gravity throughout. The dreamlike intensity of previous Kubrick visions is in full force here, in an adaptation of a 1926 Viennese novella that is stark and haunting in its own right. In Arthur Schnitzler’s ”Dream Story,” which the film follows with such surprising ease that its New York has a grandly Viennese flavor, a doctor and his wife are teased apart by sexual jealousy as the husband is drawn into ”a wild, shadowlike succession of gloomy and lascivious adventures, all without an end.” Step by step, this languorous yet precise film glides into a similarly mysterious realm.
Seeing “Belle de Jour” and “Eyes Wide Shut” back-to-back as I did, prompted me to compare Bunuel and Carriere as people with Kubrick and Raphael under the assumption that the art we create grows out of who we are and where we’ve come from. Raphael’s memoir made much of his and Kubrick’s Jewishness and the Jewishness of Schnitzler’s novella, the source material of what came to be called “Eyes Wide Shut.” Examples: “Jews are often real Jews only with each other. Gentiles never suspect this.” “SK [Kubrick] has said more than once, ‘What do we know about how Gentiles feel?’ Yet he wants to suppress any overt allusion to Jewishness in our story. He takes joy in the surreptitious.” A notable exception to this assertion is the character of Victor Ziegler, who at the end of the film informs Bill Harford (the Cruise character) “how it is.” The Ziegler name is often Jewish, and he is played by Jewish actor Sydney Pollack, who had replaced another Jewish actor, Harvey Keitel. This kind of thing, which pervades Raphael’s book, got me thinking about whether the fact that Kubrick and Raphael were Jewish and Buñuel and Carriere were Gentiles contributes to an understanding of the differences between “Belle de Jour” and “Eyes Wide Shut.” Does a Jewish sensibility infuse “Eyes Wide Shut”? Raphael’s memoir seems to be saying yes, it does. I’ll leave it to people who are more ethnically astute than I am to take this angle farther than I am able to.
In any case, it is important to look at who is producing art and entertainment for mass public consumption. They are teaching us what to attend to and what to make of it and how to be. In her New York Times review at the time, Michiko Kakutani notes that “Eyes Wide Shut”
underscores Kubrick’s deeply cynical view of the world, his unaccommodated view of mankind as a species driven to distraction by greed and violence and its own delusions.
Later in her review, she points out that in his films Kubrick has portrayed sex
as an all-consuming obsession (Humbert’s compulsive pursuit of a pubescent girl in ”Lolita”), an uproarious sight-gag (the scene of two planes copulating in ”Dr. Strangelove”) and a brutal violation (the rape scene in ”A Clockwork Orange”), but it has never been depicted as a complex, emotional involvement encompassing love.
Who is depicting the world to us?
* * *
I’ve decided that the best way to get across my take on “Eyes Wide Shut” is through the dialogue of its climactic scene, an exchange between millionaire Victor and Dr. Bill. At Victor’s party, Bill’s piano-playing medical school classmate Nick tells him about an upcoming engagement where invitees to secret gatherings wear costumes and masks and must provide a password, which he gives Bill. Bill rents a costume and mask and takes a taxi to the country mansion location. He provides the password and enters and discovers a sexual ritual is taking place involving fifteen or twenty masked women, nude except for thongs. They are virtually identical and resemble large-breasted store manikins. One of the women warns Bill that he is in terrible danger.
Bill is unmasked by the master of ceremonies and it seems that he is in dire straits; perhaps he will be killed. The woman who warned Bill intervenes and declares she will volunteer to take his undisclosed punishment. Bill is let off with a warning not to tell anyone about what happened. The next day, Bill reads an article in the newspaper, “Ex-beauty Queen Dies in Hotel Drug Overdose.” Could it be? He goes to the morgue and views the body and is sure that it is the woman who warned him and then took his punishment. It wasn’t drugs; she was murdered, he concludes. He is then summoned to the lavish residence of Victor; what about, he isn’t told. This sets up an exchange between Bill and Victor in Victor’s billiards room that provides the denouement of the film.
Before getting into the dialogue between Victor and Bill, a couple of quotes that I deem revealing from Raphael’s memoir. “Kubrick wanted to show, not tell. He preferred to leave motive and ‘psychology’ to be divined by the spectator.” Kubrick disparaging exposition in another film: “Know what they did? They explained everything. They told you what everything means. Killed it. You tell people what things mean, they don’t mean anything anymore.” These quotes exemplify what Kubrick and Rafael did throughout their collaboration on the screenplay for “Eyes Wide Shut”—talk a good game and then produce commonplace, even contradictory, results. See what you think, but to me this scene coming up is the longest, most heavy-handed, meandering, tell-not-show, drama-killing exposition movie scene of all time. After all the references to Harold Pinter and the eighteenth-century letters of Junius, Kubrick and Raphael produce this rubbish—you and I could write better dialogue than this. This scene is crude enough that after I typed it up, I went to brush my teeth.
So, millionaire Victor and Doctor Bill in Victor’s billiards room, the big climactic scene.
VICTOR. Bill, I appreciate you coming.
BILL. Sure.
VICTOR. Sorry to drag you out here tonight. Let me take your coat.
BILL. No, no. You know, I was out anyway. Thank you.
VICTOR. How about a drink?
BILL. Are you having one? Sure.
VICTOR. OK. What would you like?
BILL. Just a little scotch.
VICTOR. Good. How do you like it? Neat?
BILL. Please. That was a terrific party the other night. Alice and I had a wonderful time.
VICTOR. Well, good, good. It was great seeing you both. Cheers.
BILL. Cheers. Were you playing [referring to billiards]?
VICTOR. No, I was just knocking a few balls around.
BILL. Beautiful scotch.
VICTOR. That’s a 25-year-old. I’ll send you a case. No, please.
BILL. Sure. No.
VICTOR. Why not?
BILL. No, no, no.
VICTOR. You, uh, feel like playing?
BILL No, thanks. You go ahead. I’ll watch.
VICTOR. I enjoyed, uh . . . listen. Bill, the reason I, uh, asked you to come over tonight is I—I need to talk to you about something,
BILL. Sure.
VICTOR. It’s a little bit awkward. And I have to be completely frank.
BILL. What kind of problem are you having?
VICTOR. It isn’t a medical problem. Actually, it concerns you. Bill, I –I know what happened last night. And I know what’s been going on since then. And I think you just might have a wrong idea about one or two things.
BILL. I’m sorry, Victor, I, uh . . . what in the hell are you talking about?
VICTOR. Please, Bill, no games. I was there at the house. I saw everything that went on. Bill, what the hell did you think you were doing? I couldn’t—I couldn’t even imagine how you, how you even heard about it, let alone got yourself in the door. Then I remembered seeing you with that—that—that prick piano player Nick whatever the fuck his name is at my party. And it didn’t take much to figure out the rest.
BILL. It wasn’t Nick’s fault, it was mine.
VICTOR. Of course it was Nick’s fault. If he hadn’t mentioned it to you in the first place, none of this would never have happened. I recommended that little cocksucker to those people and he’s made me look like a complete asshole.
BILL. Victor, what can I say? I had absolutely no idea you were involved in any way,
VICTOR. I know you didn’t, Bill. But I also know that you went to Nick’s hotel the next morning and talked to the desk clerk.
BILL. How did you know that?
VICTOR. Because I had you followed.
BILL. You had me followed?
VICTOR. OK, OK. I’m sorry. All right? I owe you an apology. This was for your own good, believe me. Now, look, I know what the desk clerk told you. But what he didn’t tell you is all they did was put Nick on a plane to Seattle. By now, he’s—he’s probably back with his family, you know, banging Mrs. Nick.
BILL. The clerk said he had a bruise on his face.
VICTOR. OK, he had a bruise on his face. That’s a hell of a lot less than he deserves. Listen, Bill, I don’t think you realize the kind of trouble you were in last night. Who do you think those people were? Those were not just ordinary people there. 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.
BILL. Was it the second password? [He was asked for a second password and didn’t know it.]
VICTOR. Yes, finally. But not because you didn’t know it. It’s because there was no second password. Of course, it didn’t help a whole lot that those people arrived in limos and you showed up in a taxi, or that when they took your coat, they found the receipt from the rental house in your pocket made out to you know who.
BILL. There was a woman there who, uh, tried to warn me.
VICTOR. I know.
BILL. Do you know who she was?
VICTOR. Yes. She was a hooker. Sorry, but that’s what she was.
BILL. A hooker?
VICTOR. Bill, suppose I told you that everything that happened there, the threats, the—the girl’s warnings, her last-minute intervention—suppose I told you that was all staged. That it was a kind of charade. That it was false.
BILL. False?
VICTOR. Yes. False.
BILL. Why would she do that?
VICTOR. Why? In plain words? To scare the living shit out of you. To keep you quiet about where you’d been and what you’d seen.
BILL. Have you seen this? [The newspaper clipping about the hotel death,]
VICTOR. Yes, I have.
BILL. I saw her body in the morgue. Was she the girl at the party?
VICTOR. Yes.
BILL. Well, Victor, maybe I’m missing something here. You called it a fake, a charade. Do you mind telling me what kind of fucking charade ends with somebody turning up dead?
VICTOR. OK, Bill, let’s cut the bullshit, all right? You’ve been way out of your depth for the last twenty-four hours. You want to know what kind of charade? I’ll tell you exactly what kind. That play-acted “take me” phony sacrifice that you’ve been jerking yourself off with had absolutely nothing to do with her death. Nothing happened to her after you left that party that hadn’t happened to her before. She got her brains fucked out, period. When they took her home, she was just fine. And the rest of it is right there in the paper. She was a junkie. She OD’d. There was nothing suspicious. Her door was locked from the inside. The police are happy. End of story. Come on. It was always going to be just a matter of time with her. You remember? The one with the great tits who OD’d in my bathroom. Listen, Bill, nobody killed anybody. Someone died. It happens all the time. But life goes on. It always does. Until it doesn’t. But you know that, don’t you?
* * *
Legendary film director Stanley Kubrick’s contribution to the culture. I’ll leave it here and turn it over to you. I won’t get into the part about the father prostituting his thirteen-or-fourteen-year-old daughter to two eager middle-aged Asians which made me hit pause. What do you make of this? I’m thinking that “Eyes Wide Shut” was a watershed, a harbinger, it set a tone, portended the future, marked a cultural shift, validated a mindset, passed the baton onto a new set of tastemakers, however best to put it. Is there any validity to this idea, do you think? How about taking it further than I have, either with this film or some other artistic (or “artistic”) expression, a film or television show, whatever it is. Really, the only thing that’s come out of this consideration for me is a commitment to do my best to stay clear of creations as base as “Eyes Wide Shut.” If nothing else, I’ll save on tooth paste, and mouthwash too.
Thank you for this analysis, although I’ve seen a handful of other Kubrick films, I’ve avoided this one.
At the very least it appears to confirm the Jewish need to signal their intentions.
From Greg johnsons’s review: “ In the novel, the protagonist, Fridolin, is definitely Jewish, and the ball/orgy is represented as a gathering of members of Austria’s Christian elite…. [Kubrick] explicitly told his Jewish screenwriter, Frederic Raphael, that Bill would be played by a non-Jewish actor, and that the ball would be a gathering of America’s specifically Jewish elite…. parts of it were filmed at Mentmore Towers, the country house of Baron Mayer de Rothschild (1818–1874).”
Eyes Wide Shut certainly isn’t a masterpiece, but I’ve always been fascinated by Kubrick. As I’ve gotten older I’ve also been fascinated by Kubrick’s Jewishness. Unlike 99% of Jews in Hollywood, he is hard to pin down. I never found the underlying politics in his films to be typical and overbearing. He is not a Spielberg or a JJ Abrams or a Woody Allen. I do not know, but I suspect Kubrick may have been something of a renegade Jew. In choosing to make the degenerate elite Jewish, and the naive protagonists gentiles (when filmmakers almost always do the opposite, like portraying the Wolf of Wall Street as a WASPy goy), what was Kubrick saying? The main theme of the film is to me not sex (which to Kubrick is just a relation of power), but loyalty. There is the loyalty between husband and wife, which is almost undermined but remains intact. But there is also the loyalty between Ziegler and Bill, and between the nameless elites as a whole, which in the film are cemented through the perversion and debauchery they share. The elites of any society cannot function without loyalty. Without a god or a higher purpose, without any sense of morality or duty, what binds our modern and largely Jewish elites together? I do not know a ton about Kubrick but I do know he was a family man who left America because it was too violent for his children. It would not surprise me Kubrick was legitimately disturbed by the behavior of the modern liberal west, particularly in the the people who he found as he ascended to the highest levels of society. But maybe I’m totally wrong, and he was just reveling in degeneracy and Jewish power. Either way, he seems to have warned us about Epstein Island long before it became a meme.
Just visited Griffin’s web site and holy moly, he writes about white nationalism. Yet, he totally missed all the white nationalist content in the movie.
Mr. Griffin’s response to this movie is about the same as my brother’s response. (He’s the innocent type who plasters facebook with stories about Leave It to Beaver and other vintage TV shows of the sixties). No doubt Kubrick knew many people would respond to the movie this way. In fact, I had the same response when I saw it the first time. I walked into a showing during the morgue scene, which is followed by the Ziegler “charade” scene. What terrible acting and dialogue. However, after I saw some seemingly ridiculous comments online by a girl who claimed to be an MK Ultra victim and who interpreted all the women in the coven as MK Ultra victims, did I eventually start to appreciate this movie for things that are NOT said in the script.
The original last word in the movie was “Duck!” because at that moment an assassin from the orgy cult leaped into the frame and killed both Bill and Alice.
“artistic expression”
Darwin being brought into the presence of Christ and realizing the seriousness of the moment collapses to the floor while uttering all kinds of incoherent words. He is so distraught that he can’t even look at Christ but then finds the courage because well one just has to see Jesus. When their eyes meet what does Darwin hear? So Charles did I evolve from an ape in the primordial past? Poor Charlie goes back to gazing at the floor while again uttering all kinds of incoherent words to himself. Jesus then motions with his hand to remove this from his sight to the angel standing nearby.
Jesus is not a political leader to be taken lightly and there isn’t a pleasure sexual or otherwise worth losing a drink from the fountain of eternal youth which exists and can be substantiated and proved.
Depart from me, all you workers of evil!’ In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God but you yourselves cast out. Luke 13:28
“artistic expression”
How about a song? Poor Darwin
https://twitter.com/GerryFo62113279/status/1324158412041592832
Based on personal experience in youtube comments sections, I think that especially since the Jeffrey Epstein case this movie has an uptick in reviews which determine that this movie is piffle, this movie is about how Bill and Alice had marriage problems but had a happy Christmas after all, how this movie is about healthy hedonistic sexuality. Alice gets her groove back. But even Kubrick’s widow wants to make the movie about Bill and Alice, not about what is going on in that mansion over there with a temple.
Strangely clueless “review” which omits the huge fact that Kubrick was obviously warning the goyim in this movie about learning too much about their (((masters))). Very disappointing to not notice this.
It’s interesting that the Victor Ziegler character does not feature in Schnitzler’s Traumnovelle. Originally Harvey Keitel was cast as Ziegler but conflicting commitments saw the unmistakably Jewish Sydney Pollack get the part. Keitel’s Ziegler couldn’t have possibly been as effortlessly Jewish as Pollack’s.
They are both Jewish, to me. But HK played Judas in a movie. And since Mandy is a Christ-like figure…
Could be. But Victor’s explanation at the end – that it was all a sham – also makes complete sense of what has just happened. So you could argue that Kubrick was taking the piss out of conspiracy theories. (It might have given him particular pleasure that two Scientologists – Kidman and Cruise – were the leads.) That’s part of the appeal of the movie: you’re left to make up your own mind.
Incidentally, the Op Art crayon drawing above little Helena’s bed traces out the word “Sex”. Curious choice for a child’s room. Kubrick’s hint maybe that she too is inevitably destined to be a sex object : either a party girl, an occult celebrant, a frustrated wife, a prostitute . . . just like all the other women portrayed?
Why would it make sense that it is all a sham? And if it was a sham, why would Ziegler have Bill followed and why would he call him over to his house and admit it all? One thing is for sure, Zeigler seems to be acting, badly, in that scene.
In Ziegler’s telling the Cruise character had simply stumbled into a sex party whose rich participants spiced up their jaded appetites with ritualistic mumbo-jumbo. Naturally they wouldn’t want the press learning about their orgies so decided to give Cruise a good scare with their pretend trial. It was all just an act : think of the theatrical way the prostitute suddenly appears and offers herself as a sacrifice in his place. Ziegler called Cruise over to his house to warn him not to mess with these powerful men. Up till now no-one had been killed (the prostitute had OD’d, Cruise’s piano-player mate had just left town) but best not to push your luck as these guys can ruin someone’s life.
So whether Cruise is paranoid or not is left up to the viewer.
Also : the title “Eyes Wide Shut” does suggest someone who is determined not to see the truth. Well Cruise is hardly avoiding investigating the “cult”. I suggest what he’s determined not to see is his own little girl’s inevitable destiny as a sex object.
Dear Right_On
I appreciate your COMMENT-REPLY to SS, and for all of us, but I disagree with you. 1. SS’s observation that Mister Victor Ziegler is acting badly is indirectly an interesting observation with regard to Mister Sydney Pollack’s performance in that scene as well as Mister Tom Cruise’s as Bill. They both perform well in the film, especially Mister Pollack. Yet, the scene around the pool table is stilted and uncomfortable because of film director Mister Stanley Kubrick’s obsession with perfection that he renders the interpretations of his film thespians to be void of emotion and wearlily plastic, and self-conscious. This happens with competent professionals. Mister Ziegler/Pollack is left with egg on his face at the end of it and it’s ever so obvious that Bill/Cruise is physically has almost undue awareness as to what to do for apprehension that there might be another take. I believe Mister Kubrick shot that scene ridiculously over sixty times. This can destroy any film actor, hence the scene, or perhaps an entire film. It’s not as if like Mister George Stevens he shot it from many different angles which would be decided upon in the final edit, or the problems that respectively Messers John Huston and Billy Wilder had with an incompetent-problematic Marilyn Monroe. 2. I sincerely believe that Mister Ziegler invited Bill over because he was concerned for him, as well as a warning; he has a liking for Doctor Harford. He feels he can trust him; after all as a physician he didn’t break his hippocratic oath and gossip or slander about the near fatal overdose by Mandy during the Christmas party. 3. You allude to the press and therefore the need to give a scare to Bill. Stop and think! Some of these powerful people, amongst them, are also members of the Fourth Estate! What could Bill tell them that would be permitted to be published. 4.Some of what occurred at the Hell Fire Club mansion gathering was an act, notwithstanding such a seeming charade is also part and parcel of their ritualistic behaviour. The prostitute is the human sacrifice not to be murdered but offered as everyone’s, including almost certainly the women present, as a prize fuck: a satanic abuse of an unfortunate.Sorry if I seem naive but I have compassion for a woman mistreated like that even if a whore. I love the female. 5. Correction: The prostitute at the mansion was not killed off or by her own drug abuse; that was Mandy. They’re two different women: Mandy either had her life taken or she passed away from a fatal overdose. Most likely murdered, if you know the workings of these all-powerful demonic degenerates. Study the prototype cases of Wilma Montesi and Elizabeth Short. Mandy and the woman at the mansion are two different women: I know it for sure since it is easily perceived by the different bodies they have. Both are beautiful women: Mandy is fulsome, with large breasts and rather hefty.The prostitute at the ceremony is long and tall, moderate beautiful breasts,with long thin legs like those of a model and a well-defined facial physiognomy. Not that Mandy isn’t beautiful but she is the type who runs the risk of gaining weight. I remember clearly these physical differences. 6. Finally Nick. Yes, he just left town because he was forced to. At the mansion we see Nick being escorted down a hallway. Ziegler correctly guessed it was him who informed Bill. 7. Finally, if this was supposed to scare the shit out of Bill, then it succeeded. Sometimes when one entering dark areas and corners of existence instead of keeping forever a distance,thay do the opposite. To put it simply: curiosity killed the cat syndrome. 8. One thing that falls like a two ton lead pipe is the Beauty Queen article; whenever was Mandy referred to as such a star.This is exactly an example of what I composed above to Doctor Robert S. Griffin that Mister Kubrick and Mister Frederic Raphael really didn’t know how to adapt the novel, convey its inner meaning and psychological end. In fact I now remember, I believe I’m correct, that Mister Raphael came on board after the project had started since Kubrick had a problem with the script. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Re Aristo Boho’s the prostitute at the mansion not being Mandy :
Perhaps, but if they are not the same woman why would a whore sacrifice herself for a man she’s only just met? Again it makes more sense if the trial was a staged drama.
Anyway, the Tom Cruise character *believes* them to be the same woman. That’s all Ziegler needs.
(To be clear: I’m only suggesting Kubrick mischievously leaves it an open question whether sinister, lethal cultists or just thrill-seeking degenerates are behind Cruise’s experience.)
A quite interesting fact about Mandy : Julienne Davis, the American actress who played the role, was enamoured by the chic nightlife in London and stayed on there after filming EWS, becoming part of the in-crowd at the fashionable clubs. (Life imitating art?) Now older and wiser she regrets not having raised a family instead and has become a committed anti-feminist.
Dr. Harford/Tom Cruise have the same secret – they don’t want to admit they are in the closet gays.
The hook of the movie, if you get hooked, is that Kubrick sprinkles all these subliminal or faint clues that something is wrong here and we are left to figure it out for ourselves. For the record, I take the bad acting in the Ziegler explains it all scene is there because Ziegler is a bad liar. And when Ziegler says, this makes me look like a complete a… the unspoken retort to that should be, “You are a complete a….”
Indeed. The film cannot be understood literally (hence the title). It is a parable criticizing the Jewish religion. The prostitutes are essentially White women (shiksas). The cultists are Jews. Kubrick seems to be suggesting that Jews did not sacifice animals but non-Jews in their temple. There is also symbolism related to the Biblical flood, in particular encoded rainbows appear in the film. Too much to go into in a comment, but basically the film relates to Mark Brahmin’s concept of Judaism as a Semitic Bride Gathering Cult: https://theapolloniantransmission.com/the-bride-gathering-cult/
I didn’t think Eyes Wide Shut was so bad. Ok I agree it had some clunky parts, particularly the spat between the husband and wife, but I thought the movie was an excellent rendition of the novella, which I also liked.
I thought the dialogue the author excoriates was actually pretty good. What’s wrong with it? Particularly this: “Listen, Bill, I don’t think you realize the kind of trouble you were in last night. Who do you think those people were? Those were not just ordinary people there. 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.”
My curiosity about Eyes Wide Shut has more to do with it’s possible connection to the Epstein scandal and various other likely blackmail operations. Many people have associated EWS with the Epstein scandal, as the timing was appropriate to when these activities would have been in their heyday. There are other possible symbolic representations of these activities in the Hollywood/msm, for example, the great movie LA Confidential. I believe these films are a subtle revelation or warning to these politicians and movers and shakers that they have been ensnared in blackmail, that there escapades have been filmed and they had better behave themselves accordingly! There are many smaller, subtler references in tv and lower culture. Although, I believe EWS is more in the direction of a satire or protest than warning. Someone else pointed this out to me: what do you want to call your film mr Kubrick? (J)ust (E)yes (W)ide (S)hut! I don’t know. Do you guys think that is there?
Let’s not forget the long tradition of blackmail via sexual impropriety, without even getting into the trafficking of minors, brought into relief by Epstein.
http://www.autentico.org/oa09439.php
Yes. EWS = JEWS!
People who are alienated from the societies in which they live always develop a “…life sucks and then you die” perspective. It’s silly but this banality explains a large percentage of the dynamic of western decay over the last 75 years. Of course, you can always jazz up this perspective with so-called art, pseudo-morality, incomprehensible philosophizing, and worthless psycho-drama but the attempt is always the same – to make host populations feel as alienated and as bad about life as they feel. Misery loves company, after all, and we’ve been given it by the truckload. So what do we do? Seek maximum pleasure, fuck our brains out, and adopt a take-no-prisoners irreverence to anything that host peoples value.
Great review once again by Mr. Griffin.
But Dr. Harford seemed to be pretty happy until his wife started a fight and made him jealous.
Eyes Wide Shut is a masterpiece, and this reviewer doesn’t get it. In context, the quoted scene is great and effective, but it won’t work if you haven’t connected with the entire movie and plot up until this point. If you are looking for bad taste watersheds of the 1990s, rather look at Tarantino.
I also don’t see how can one complain about the costume lender father prostituting his daughter (this is connected to the debauched satanic elites/Pizzagate-esque themes of the movie), while showing admiration for Belle de Jour which has far more perverse scenes and suggestions.
Bunuel’s worldview by the way was nearly as cynical and bleak as Kubrick’s, but he had more compassion and a wicked sense of humour. He saw sex more through the lense of surrealist amour fou.
The film shows what actually goes on in Hollywood and among certain elites (actually just wealthy, decadent perverts) such as the Podestas: Orgies, Satanism, and more.
As “based” as Eyes Wide Shut?
Jewish perversion normalized as high class society. Little glimpse into the real Epstein/Maxwell (Koch)/Wexner pedo cult seething in NYC and elsewhere (Wexner lurks in Ohio).
Was Kubrick’s death immediately afterwards meant to be a message to anyone who dares expose the cult, or was it another fake like Epstein’s to give Kubrick a way out of the limelight? Or both? Such a fortuitous death–6 days–is not to be believed.
As others have pointed out, the reviewer seems to have missed the central point of the movie. Schitzler’s novelle, “Traumnovelle” (It’s a pun in German, meaning both dream novel and a novel involving a trauma. In fact, the word trauma enters English directly from the German via Freud who used the word trauma to describe a serious psychic injury.) Schnitzler’s original novel was set in fin de siecle Vienna, a city in which Jews were marginalized. The protagonist and his wife are Jewish. The powerful figures are all Christians.
Kubrick is already telegraphing a powerful message when he sets the movie, “Eyes Wide Shut” in contemporary New York City, where Jews hold the cards, and makes his protagonists archetypical White, self marginalized Christians. The movie is replete with references to occult cabals promoting sexual exploitation and perversion and apparently directed by and for powerful and connected Jews. Although the movie was made decades before the so-called Pizzagate scandal, the astute and visually alert viewer can find symbols associated with that scandal in the movie.
The movie clearly meant a lot to Kubrick. He devoted even more attention to it than most of his previous movies. Many believe that it was his attempt to communicate the organized depravity among the elites that he’d observed over the course of his life. He had to do this surreptitiously. Indeed, it’s suspicious that Kubrick’s final version of the film has never been screened. After he died his final version was edited and much material wound up on the editing room floor.
Some think the movie is already too long but those who suspect Kubrick’s underlying motive was a dangerous revelation can appreciate that his necessary circumlocutions served both an artistic and a political purpose. The tragedy is that those with authority over the film made sure that Kubrick’s full message never reached rtghe public.
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Yes, that’s what I meant in my comment. Many times rumors of scandals will circulate among elites and seep in to media years before they break into mainstream, if they ever do. For another example, the nsa spying operation is often alluded to in the 80s, most notably in the movie Sneakers. What allusions to Pizzagate do you see in EWS?
I see JEWS.
Pizza on the table with the Chinese food in the man in the closet scene. Domino, name of prostitute – Domino’s Pizza. Perhaps she was raised in this cult.
(BTW – As a student of old films, I have always thought “I’ll have a little Scotch” was a reference to ordering up a young red head type child prostitute. And we all know “chicken” is a reference to an underage boy prostitute, often jokingly worked into film dialogue. )
@Moderator: If I may, two spelling corrections, both of which relate to a personal name.
1) Dr. Griffin uses “Schnitzer” in the very first paragraph and “Schnitzer’s” in the paragraph immediately following the long blockquote from the Times’s Janet Maslin. The spellings should be “Schnitzler” and “Schnitzler’s” respectively. (Note that Maslin spells the playwright’s name correctly.) Not coincidentally, besides being a man condemned in his own time as a pornographer and admired immensely by Sigmund Freud for that very reason, Arthur Schnitzler was, like Kubrick and Raphael, a proud and remarkably obnoxious Jew.
2) “Machiko Kacutani” should be “Michiko Kakutani.”
I have read Frederic Raphael’s novel , ‘The Glittering Prizes” and it makes early and frequent references to anti – Semitism at Cambridge University and elsewhere . The author is , of course , Jewish.
In my experience, you are the first to have read the novel, Al. Did you ever see the multi-episode BBC video made from it? If you did, is the latter faithful to the former?
I vividly recall that lengthy BBC production (1976), which, despite much that even then seemed stupid, fascinated me not least for its surprisingly warts-and-all presentation of the Tom Conti character as a smartass, frequently obnoxious Jew. Although I saw equally distasteful US Jews just about every day at work, I’d never seen a similarly true-to-life portrait on the TV or movie screen. I have no idea whether the video would still interest me today.
And then there’s David Suchet as Augustus Melmotte in the British 2001 series “The Way We Live Now” based on the book by Trollope. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Indeed!
Happily, Trollope’s book is rather less Jew-friendly than the horrid series. But then, it could hardly be otherwise.
I never saw “Eyes Wide Shut”. I think at the time it sounded to me like a movie made to attract crowds with the famous names involved in the film, Kubrick, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and not because it was a great film, maybe a last work by Kubrick before retirement. I’ve seen a number of Kubrick’s other films and I thought they were entertaining.
The quote “SK [Kubrick] has said more than once, ‘What do we know about how Gentiles feel?’ Yet he wants to suppress any overt allusion to Jewishness in our story. He takes joy in the surreptitious” leads to what I think is an interesting fact about Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick married a German actress named Christiane Susanne Harlan in 1958 and they were married until Kubrick died in 1999. They had 2 children together. Christiane Harlan’s uncle was Veit Harlan, the German director that made the film Jud Süß (1940), commonly, or even always referred to as “anti-Semitic” and “infamous”. He was tried at Nuremberg as a “war criminal” and he was eventually released. Historian David Irving once commented how Germany made 2 “anti-Semitic” films under Hitler’s leadership that are endlessly talked about and by comparison the Jews have made thousands of anti-German films that are never identified as such.
I once told someone that Stanley Kubrick married Veit Harlan’s niece and he said that he was sure it wasn’t because Kubrick supported the “NAZIS”. I didn’t say anything but I have always been certain of that too. No, if anything, I am suspicious it could have something to do with Veit Harlan being Christiane’s uncle and his reasons could have been sinister, but not out of any positive feelings towards Germans and just the opposite. It’s also entirely possible Kubrick had no ulterior motives when he married Christiane.
According to Raphael, on Hitler’s birthday Kubrick told him that Hitler “got nearly everything right”. He did not elaborate and Raphael did not know exactly what to make of the remark. It may be that Kubrick took a clear eyed and unsympathetic view of his own tribe.
Hitler “got nearly everything right”? Probably Kubrick knew Hitler was part of the staging of WW2, and did most of what was expected, including etting ‘Jews’ to Israel, setting up the holohoax fraud, and killing plenty of Germans and plenty of Russians. And others.
…. Look at https://big-lies.org/hexzane527/ and just pick any item and read it.
I’m so glad someone took the time to analyze this film at this depth. I agree with some of the criticisms in the review but also think there is more going on in this film. I always thought the film title “Eyes Wide Shut” was Kubrick’s way of trying to tell us something, like maybe that satanic cults are ruling the world in secret. I’ve heard that the satanic ritual scenes were filmed at one of Rothschild’s mansions. Some have speculated that Kubrick’s heart attack just six days after submitting the final cut was no accident and that some scenes (24 minutes?) were deleted because he was revealing too much.
Several years ago at a conference, I listened to a man speak who was very knowledgeable about Kubrick and has produced several videos about his theories of what his films were really all about. His name is Jay Weidner and a google search will show several of his videos and interviews on the subject. Essentially, Weidner believed that Kubrick was a super-genius with an IQ of about 200 who’s movies were multi-leveled in their meaning. He was a high level (32 degree) Mason and of course, also being a “chosenite”, he was well connected at the top levels of Hollywood. After making Dr. Strangelove, Weidner claims that the top brass at Hollywood were so impressed with Kubrick that they made a secret Faustian pact with him. They would let him use NASA’s state-of-the-art newly invented cameras to shoot his upcoming “2001, A Space Odyssey,” in exchange for his promise to film the fake Moon landing! Kubrick had developed a new technique of seamlessly merging a fake background into his set in his 1968 Space Odyssey movie which was successfully used the following year to seamlessly blend-in a fake Moon background to Arizona desert shots of the Apollo 11 astronauts, thus faking the Moon landing.
This might sound like crazy conspiracy theories to some but Weidner makes a compelling case in his videos. Many people today, including myself, think the Moon lading was a hoax. Weidner goes on to explain how Kubrick went on to cryptically embed cryptic symbolism about this in his subsequent film, “The Shining.”
So, apparently, Kubrick was a very clever fellow who, like other good directors, are able to seduce their audiences into accepting a multitude of beliefs, attitudes and disinformation that (((they))) want us to accept. Surely, many of these beliefs are consistent with their NWO agenda of dumbing down, demoralizing and corrupting the goyim.
Coming back to “Eyes Wide Shut,” I think there are two possibilities of what Kubrick is doing and maybe both are valid.
One is that the film is designed as degenerate social conditioning against us seducing us to accept sexual perversion and decadence as Dr. Griffin suggests. The other possibility is that Kubrick, as he did in “The Shining,” might be revealing that it is these Satanic secret societies ruling the world, hidden in plain sight and we should open our eyes instead of keeping them shut. The second scenario assumes that Kubrick feels a moral responsibility toward his audience which might be wishful thinking. Either way, there is no doubt that Kubrick was a genius and that there is a lot more going on here than meets the eye.
Maybe it’s just designed to keep us guessing. Again, there are many youtube videos analyzing EWS. Here is one of them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oUlStJ__UuU&feature=emb_logo
If anyone wants to know why America and the West are being systematically destroyed, one only needs to look at what passes for “entertainment” these days. Hollywood has always had a very dark side, but back in the 50s, no movie would be passed by the censors that showed the bad guy(s) winning. Even a “good” bad guy would have to repay his debt to society even if it was a stretch in prison with the heroine waiting for him at the end. After that, not only did the bad guys win quite often, but there were no heroes, only anti-heroes and goodness was shown as weak, vacillating and bound to lose. You see in today’s acceptance of criminality of the worst kind (child trafficking etc.) the eventual result of a wicked culture.
That Jews dominate the porn industry is certainly relevant in this essay. See Nathan Abram’s essay in http://jewishquarterly.org/issuearchive/articled325.html?articleid=38. The Communist influence is also relevant. Allen Ryskind’s book, “Hollywood Traitors,” exposes their methods. Among them the depiction of Americans as morally decadent. Commie writers are charged with the effort to infuse as much propaganda into their work as possible. The purpose of porn in film and everywhere else is to demoralize the population, to break down family life and the social order. Furthermore, it seduces consumers into becoming corrupt like the purveyors of porn themselves. That is the purpose of porn coming from Kubrick and others, to create revolutionary malcontents, commies, socialists perverts and Democrats.
“For all its sex talk, sexual situations, and nudity and couplings, this film curiously lacks eroticism”
That is the one thing that possibly saves this film, which is a bit dumb for other reasons. If anyone needs assistance in getting worked up, the internet can help him out there. I think Kubrick knew what he was doing in making the sex situations bloodless.
As to Belle de Jour, about which you consider to be “artful, refined, true, mature, meticulous, and tasteful.” I saw it recently, before I ever read your article. I tuned it in because I had heard so much about it over so many years and was convinced that I was the only person who hadn’t seen it. Here’s my review: the worst famous film I have ever seen and maybe one of the worst in any category. I am filled with remorse for having wasted 100 minutes of my life. “Crap” is too kind a word.
But I never regret watching the many full length films in the ultra-popular Japanese series Zatoichi The Blind Swordsman. Indeed, I’m going to tune yet another one in tonite to cleanse my palate of Belle de Jour. This unfortunate blind man even attracts beautiful women who want him, not just for sex but to be with him permanently – but he always walks away from them because he knows that his itinerant, dangerous life would not be good for a decent woman. How about them apples.
I agree with you about “Belle de Jour,” a film that was badly overrated in its day in large part, I think, because of the magnetic presence of Deneuve. Times change, and plainly so does magnetism, at least in films. Yet for “Viridiana” and “The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie” alone, I would characterize Buñuel as a true artist.
Each to his taste, of course, and with no disrespect meant to his fans on this thread, but I do not understand what anyone sees in Kubrick, aside from a man who enjoys consuming and peddling smut. Apart from fragments of “Paths of Glory” —a film ruined by the lachrymosity of its final third and the incompetence of Ralph Meeker and several other actors—nothing in his oeuvre has ever triggered more than distaste, disgust, or anger in me, nor has Dr. Griffin’s essay prompted a reevaluation. Overall, Kubrick’s contribution to the cinema seems to me comparable to that of Charles Schumer to governance.
@Howdy, Pierre. The hip ‘n’ cool folks in the world of cinema appreciation just keep telling each other how great Kubrick’s works are. And so much of the baloney stuck. I disliked Eyes Wide Shut, esp. the last scene, all such a waste of my time. That’s why I head for Japanese movies, both pop stuff like Blind Swordsman and the more arty, older, B&W films.
And then there are ancient Joan Crawford movies, before she really started looking like herself. Hey, who said all films have to be like War and Peace. Unfortunately, it’s hard to find the really old oaters – good old fashioned cowboys & Indians entertainment.
1) Apropos Japanese films, Kagemusha and The Burmese Harp (1956 version) are in my all-time top twenty.
2) Apropos westerns: (a) An old friend has organized film festivals centering on the thesis that the Durango Kid series represents the summit of Hollywood’s creativity. I see his point. (b) My own thesis is that the western as a popular and mythic form was knee-capped by Ulzana’s Raid. It never recovered from the blow and has been little but a vehicle for propaganda ever since.
3) I expect to shamelessly repeat your Joan Crawford remark whenever the opportunity presents itself. Whether I’ll give you due credit when I’m applauded for it is still undecided.
I always read Dr Griffin’s TOO contributions with particular care and admiration, which is one of the reasons why I found some extra stimulation in disagreeing with most of his fascinating criticism of Eyes Wide Shut. My admiration for the film applies less to the work as a whole (which I find partly boring and tedious, especially in its latter half) than to several of its various isolated episodes or dialogues, forming marvellous pieces of Kleinkunst, showing Kubrick’s genius as an immensely talented and meticulous director and moviemaker (music, photography, actor instruction, everything). Seldom are true professionalism so wonderful to behold as in these episodes (beginning with the introductory credits and their music). I am referring not only to the one so rightly admired even by Dr Griffin (the first one with the prostitute), but also to the second one, with another prostitute at the same location, with its amazing mixture of grotesque humour and sudden abysmal HIV info. Other episodes, showing a more subtle but nonetheless magnificent sense of refined humour, are the first meeting with Bill’s drop-out medical student pal Nick, the first great dialogue between Bill and his wife (great drama performance indeed!), and Bill’s discussions with the equipment dealer, with the gay hotel receptionist, and with the coffee-house barmaid. Greatest of all, however, are, first, Bill’s house call and meeting with the bereaved daughter and her fiancé, and second, his meeting with Victor Ziegler in the latter’s library, staging the dialogue so severely dismissed by Dr Griffin. This dialogue, quoted in full by Dr Griffin (a thousand thanks for this!), is evidently carefully worked out in its every detail, and is in my eyes a true masterpiece, the most admirable feature being in my opinion the true and convincing portrait it gives of Ziegler, effectively supplementing the former presentation of him in his bathrum at the beginning of the film. Without doubt, Kubrick has here made a deadly serious attempt at portraying the charming, ruthless, cynical and immensely rich and powerful New York Jew in all his glory and all his splendid environment. And, being a true artist, Kubrick has here strived for the truth only, regardless of moral issues, Jenseits von Gut und Böse. Ziegler shows great loyalty, friendship and tact to Dr Bill, his highly paid physician, at the same time clearly indicating that Dr Bill, for all his social success in Manhattan, is, after all, an outsider, “not one of us”, ostensibly one of the many well-to-do guests at Ziegler’s party but essentially the obedient man to summon upstairs for instant duty when the host and his equally summoned prostitute find themselves in sudden and acute danger. As I see it, Ziegler is the most interesting character in the film, masterfully played by Sydney Pollack, followed by the bereaved daughter (of the house-call scene), equally masterfully played by a Swedish actress. Incidentally, the palace where the great orgy takes place is often used for movie-making purposes. According to the film script it is to be found on Long Island, but it is actually situated in England, where I recently saw it in one of the Endeavour Morse films.
One oddity that often seems over-looked are the two costume-store scenes.
In the first, the owner Milich is outraged to catch his underage daughter in flagrante, yet in the second, Milich has sold his daughter into prostitution. Was his anger in that first scene just because he hadn’t been paid his percentage?
Is it possible that when the orgy celebrants discovered Tom Cruise’s costume receipt they contacted Milich to ask him what he knew about their mystery party guest? (We’re aware they are established customers of the owner as his young girl had whispered in Cruise’s ear exactly what outfit he needed.) Milich, learning about the cruel (mock?) trial that the revellers planned, decided to have his own fun at Cruise’s expense – and teach him a lesson – by arranging the latter (phony?) sexual encounter to discomfit the good doctor. Otherwise the rapid change in Milich’s behaviour is hard to explain.
Re your “As I see it, Ziegler is the most interesting character in the film, masterfully played by Sydney Pollack, followed by the bereaved daughter (of the house-call scene), equally masterfully played by a Swedish actress” :
Totally agree with your judgement here. Kubrick really knew how to pick his actors, place them in out-of-the-ordinary situations, and get compelling, believable performances out of them.
I won’t recapitulate my experience circa 2000 regarding “Eyes Wide Shut” as it is in the Usenet archives for those finding my comment here of sufficient interest.
Regardless of the artistic or cultural de/merits of the film, it was an occult work with paranormal impact. Jews? Well, yes. Jews are involved in starting “religions” — including “scientific skepticism” — keeping us alienated from the power of our birthright.
(Mod. Note: “Aristo”, perhaps you should submit your long articles to Dr. MacDonald for publication rather than post them in TOO comments. Comments are supposed to be on one or two issues, related to the article they’re posted under. Long conversations with LONG texts submitted as “comments” just don’t seem appropriate. This Mod’s first reaction was “TLDR”, so I just scanned it for slander, name-calling, and illicit expletives. I’m familiar with your comments, so didn’t expect any. But it’s still too damned LONG. Shorter, Puleeeeeze.)
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Dear Doctor Griffin,
Thank you for your interesting essay on “Eyes Wide Shut” by Mister Stanley Kubrick. I shall herein contribute my own experience with this film which is paradoxical because I’ve both a negative and positive opinion of it. When I lived in England at the time Mister Kubrick was filming it, there were discussions of the necessity of censorship that would be required, a lot of immature hoopla about it going to be ever so erotic, as in pornographic, and that there would be overt sex scenes with the film thespian couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, interpreting the Harfords, Doctor William, also known as Bill, and wife Alice. The only other story that circulated was that Miss Winona Ryder had been involved, and this has never been accurately substantiated, at least to my knowledge, nor what might have been the cause of her departure, if, I repeat, she ever was a participant in the project. This was more than just rumour yet the pure fact is unknown to me and I refuse to speculate, but there was discussion that the two leading characters in the film, as in the novel, were Jewish. Hence the possible presence of Miss Ryder, even though one does not have to be Jewish to interpret a Jew; at the end of the day this wouldn’t be evident, despite in the novel by Mister Arthur Schnitzler, “Traumnovelle” / “Dream Story” Doctor Fridolin and Albertina are. I often wonder if Mister Kubrick was forced to not have them as Jewish in the film. This is not shallow conspiracy wondering on my part, for later I’ll reveal a fact about Kubrick being forced in another circumstance to take a decisive action. Now before I precede let me say that I would not call the film erotic but stagnant pornography: the orgy scenes are very cold and rather without much human feeling, even though depraved and humiliating is the explicit descriptive sex act outside of its proper context. The film was never censored in England or elsewhere in Europe, but only in America: the scene at the mansion where a gathering of a modern Hell Fire Club are having a Satanic orgy, and perhaps much more is to ensue, the image of Bill/Cruise is superimposed on the sex scenes of copulation and other acts. Here I must point out a positive aspect of the original uncensored cut to keep in mind, that each room Bill in costume enters is a different degree of crossing a threshold for a level of sexual activity with also posed bodies in a sexual context that all have a meaning of one’s gradation in this organisation. Each room is symbolic, much like all symbols in Metaphysics, good or bad, mystical and occult, such as the Stations Of The Cross, Tarot Cards and so forth. Also, another deliberate symbol: the inverted Star Of Bethlehem on the tall Christmas Tree at the party held by Mister Victor Ziegler, a patient of Doctor Harford’s well played by Mister Sydney Pollack. As for The American print one can never make sense of the equivocation of a given Board of Censors who can permit the most overt sexual acts in one film and in another, the acts are tame compared to the former, yet censorship is called for. And there weren’t any sex scenes involving the Harfords, which was most likely publicity to stir up interest for those who are superficial film goers and need to be basely stimulated. Unless a Presbyterian of the most rigorous Calvinist mind flips out over a couple having a discussion in their underwear.
A. I. While the film was being shot in England an article-interview appeared in a Sunday edition of one of the four broadsheet newspapers of London. I believe it was an interview going back some years, perhaps to when Kubrick was making “Spartacus”, and he expressed his desire to bring to the screen Mister Schnitzler’s novel. Now, Mister Schnitzler was a Jew, most likely secular, and his literary work had an immense impact and influence upon Doctor Sigmund Freud. In my opinion one of the most damaging minds to have corrupted our culture and its world, along with Social Darwinism and Cartesian Logic. It was Doctor Freud who stated that the Roman Apostolic Catholic Church was the greatest obstacle to our revolution. Our, as in his and those he was allies with. You refer Doctor Griffin to Mister Luis Buñel; an excellent filmmaker but a first rate blasphemous apostate. He had been deeply religious, an altar boy serving Holy Mass, but then when he was sixteen he left the Church. Kubrick by the way shows his Babylonian Talmudic desecration of Christ Our Lord in “A Clockwork Orange”, having Our Lord dancing at the center of chorus girls with a face that is satanically scorned in a kitsch painting in the room of the protagonist Alex. Much like how Jesus is perversely vilified at the end of Mister Buñel’s overrated crap, “Un Chien Andalou”/ “An Andalusian Dog”. Both bring to mind the satanic faggotry of Mister Kenneth Anger’s “Scorpio Rising”. Kubrick was every bit as dark as Mister Buñel, despite the different personalities of the two men. He omitted the final chapter from Mister Anthony Burgess’ eponymous novel which is one of Redemption of the character-protagonist Alex. Imagine, and everyone pay attention to this, the American publishing world said American audiences would never accept this, so Mister Burgess was finally forced to omit chapter 21 from the New York edition. What an example of a society and its elite of well-planned social engineering and its framework of consensus reality control. Kubrick claimed he never knew of the final original English edition’s twenty-first chapter until having completed his screenplay and considered it implausible and irregular. I will be positively arrogant to say, Bull! He knew what he was doing; Kubrick was a calculating person and had a dark mind. And he wasn’t a maverick filmmaker at all. Robert Bresson, Vittorio De Sica, Carl Dreyer and Kenji MIzoguchi were. He had his talent no doubt, but? The maverick always got funding from Hollywood finance yet Mister Francis Ford Coppola, a superior film director, with five Oscars could never obtain funding and has had an aborted career. Sir Laurence Olivier never found money for his “Macbeth” project. We know this story only so well. He also was shrewd in what could sell, as was another intellectual burgess Engelian-Marxist degenerate, Mister Bernardo Bertolucci, acquiring Mister Marlon Brando and a victim to be the young Miss Maria Schneider instead of the original choices of Mister Jean-Louis Trintignant and Miss Dominique Sanda. Kubrick originally wanted The Rolling Stones to interpret Alex and his Droogs; observe the facial physiognomy similarity of Messers Mick Jagger and Malcolm McDowell. It appears I have digressed from “Eyes Wide Shut” but there is a reason I allude to “A Clockwork Orange”.
II. I viewed the film “Eyes Wide Shut” when it opened on a Friday in London. I am not impressed until there is the duologue between Bill and Nick, during which Nick gives him the address of where he will be playing that night. I considered, and still do, the film acting to be poor except for Mister Pollack, since Kubrick couldn’t direct actors at all, and whatever good or even excellent performances he did have in his earlier films was because of the professionals he had performing for him who were of classic cinema such as Messers Kirk Douglas, Sterling Hayden, James Mason, Adolphe Menjou and so forth.
III. Saturday the next day, the daily newspaper, “The Guardian” formerly “The Manchester Guardian”, gives out as a supplemental gift, the novel in paperback, “Dream Story”. I read it with deep interest and it suddenly was obvious that our film director and his co-screenplay writer Mister Frederic Raphael did not know how to adapt it. In fact, adaptation is a mistaken word all too often used; it was a superficial reworking of the story. In the novel there is a fascinating scene of a dream the wife, Albertine, has of her husband being crucified, and if I remember it correctly it is as if he’s Christ on Cavalry. Very rich is the description. This is very different than the juvenile moronic adult adolescent dialogue Alice Harford/Kidman has of dreaming of being fucked over and over by many men. And the poor film actress she is, Kidman, pronouncing the word fucked, only shows the lack of depth of this pretentious slickly made piece of excremental celluloid. Aesthetics and technique are important to any work of art, notwithstanding without depth of meaning and spiritual ascendency it is a half way house creation.
IV. The last scene in the film is practically the duologue between Bill and Alice taken from the novel which is never convincing, and I do not even think the profundity of it was understood and if it was it was diverted by the last line being Alice’s: “Fuck”. This duologue works in the novel, without the word Fuck, because it is philosophical and such talk is common on Continental Europe with the Upper Burgess, in this case Austria, not Upper Middle Class Americans in New York. The only thing this film taken at face value represents are the muddled perfunctory minds of Kubrick, Raphael, Cruise and Kidman. Dexterous film making with pretensions of being high art with a deep significance of what life’s inner workings are about based upon a materialistic sexual interpretation. I am going to be blunt: I do not even believe the high praises given to it by the film critic Janet Maslin or the film director Martin Scorsese. Did either of them actually study the novel? Because their comments about the film regard the book and not the film. Jealously doesn’t propel at all Doctor Harford on his night journey and there’s no way that one asks, did what we are shown really take place or was it all in Bill’s mind. Kubrick even reworks a scene of mask wearing persons from Zalman King’s “Wild Orchid” and the same camera shot of a front view of a mansion, in England, in Terrence Fisher’s “The Devil Rides Out”. This latter an excellent film the best I know of for its genre, notwithstanding, and second to, the exceptional and frightening in a very subtle manner, “The Seventh Victim” by Mister Mark Robson.
B. I. Why then did I go to see it again the following Monday? Because I truly believe that from the time Kubrick wanted to make it more than thirty years before certain experiences in his life took place. Let me first explain: Most of the time if I see a scene or two of a film and know not the title, or I may not have seen it previously, I can tell it is by Mister Michelangelo Antonioni or Mister Ingrid Bergman, just to give an example. I never experienced this with Kubrick, except with “Eyes Wide Shut”. Doctor Bill Harford retraces his steps the evening after he went to the mansion. This is what happens with Alex in “A Clockwork Orange”. What we have are Kubrick characters in two films with motifs and traits present that I do not find in his other films. This is where I see the film from a different perspective despite my maintaining that as a screen version of the novel it fails.
II. I truly believe that, despite his darkness and his seemingly anti-Christianity, and his possible problems of being a Jew, Kubrick had also understood there were controlling forces in our society that are subversive who have attained power, well-established and are steeped in darkness, which final agenda is to dominate us. The written word, either as a play, poem or novel, or the image of a painting, never have the same impact and breadth of contact with the multitude of persons that the cinema does. Both Messers Vladimir Lenin and Benito Mussolini understood this and Mister Douglas is correct that the cinema is the art of the twentieth century. Nor can the other arts capture and endanger certain nefarious forces at work, just as a photograph that has captured a person or any image or a particular object that could have serious repercussions, as Mister Antonioni shows us with a photograph within his motion picture, in “Blow Up”. But let me provide you with an excellent example of this fact between the cinema and two other art forms, the novel and drama on stage. In 1954 Mister William March wrote the exceptional novel, “The Bad Seed” about a psycho-sociopathic little girl, Rhoda Penmark. When the story ends she lives. One year later Mister Maxwell Anderson adapts it for the stage successfully, and as in the novel Rhoda lives on. In 1956 Mister Mervyn Le Roy, always psychologically probing, directs the excellent film version, from a screenplay by Mister John Mahin adapted from both the novel and the play. Yet! The censors have Rhoda killed off by lightning. Her continuing to live would have been too shocking for audiences and have adverse affects and effects upon the public that such a sick mind should survive. Not so as times change with the Paul Wendkos version in 1985 with a screenplay by Mister George Eckstein; Rhoda is uncensored. Here she lives on happily ever after to perform her satanic acts of homicide.
III. A. Now to conclude, here is why I call my experience with this film a paradox. It is a failure and a mess as far as the story goes on screen in conveying any of the essence of Schnitzler’s book. If Doctor Freud had viewed it, he would’ve considered it a third rate comic book sexual romp void of imagination, without even the most simple student of psychology finding it of interest. Nevertheless, the other branch of the paradox is what I know for sure, and why I truly believe to be the truth about Kubrick coming to certain conclusions about occult forces in our society. Back to “A Clockwork Orange” to understand the aforesaid as to what I find positive about Kubrick and his “Eyes Wide Shut”. I saw the film in Manhattan when it first came out in 1971. It fascinated me at the time for I was quite young. I went to see it again some months later in 1972 with my father, and I remember him commenting that the most important line in the film is when the Anglican minister exclaims “This boy has no choice.”, or similar words, subsequent to being present to observe Alex who has undergone a rehabilitation mind control treatment. When in Italy, the film was released in 1972 at the Venice Film Festival to great applause, receiving praise from practically everyone. But something eerie took place I believe beginning from the Winter of 1972 into 1973: Arancia Meccanica Bande / A Clockwork Orange Gangs. These organized individual criminal groups were attacking persons in various parts of Italy just as one views said criminal acts in the film. Quite interesting that this was also the epoch of the Anni Di Piombo / Years Of Lead and the Strategia Di Tensione / Strategy Of Tension. I definitely do not believe there was any relationship between these psychotic thugs and the political strife and terror occurring at that time. These insane delinquents were eventually taken care of by law enforcement and their life span could be defined as ephemeral. Years later I find myself in England and I learn by chance that “A Clockwork Orange” had been banned from being screened in Britain in all venues, whether cinema or on television. Interestingly enough, there had also been a similarity of a gang or two as in Italy committing crimes in England which brought about a polemical debate with Kubrick that the film was or wasn’t responsible for these heinous actions, such as the rape of a young Dutch woman. Kubrick cut the film which interestingly hadn’t been censored by the British Board Of Censors. In 1973, two years after its release, the film is pulled from circulation and so it remained banned until December of 1999, three months after the release of “Eyes Wide Shut”, keeping in mind that Kubrick passed away just after completion of this, his last film in March.
B.I One of my best and closest friends had performed in Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon”, of 1975. He was in the scene of the aristocrats gathering one evening at a noble estate. Being a highly cultured man and aware also of the society and world we live in, my friend like a number of us encounters those of our same culture milieu. He is also from a most elite family himself. He discovers that the reason why Kubrick agreed, so to speak, to ban “A Clockwork Orange”, was because he was threatened that if he did not, his wife Christine Harlan and daughters Anya Renata and Vivian Vanessa would be murdered. Why? Refer to what I compose above about the cinema as opposed to other arts in having a broader and more overt reach into the public’s life, hence the example I give with “The Bad Seed”. The powers that be, albeit, indeed powerful with their principalities are greatly paranoid. And anyone, even by default or indirectly who touches upon what they conceive as an exposure and revelation of their plans is seen as a serious threat. And this is just what certain inner sanctum personages at the Tavistock Institute Of Medical Psychology feared about the film, not the novel, “A Clockwork Orange”. What I relate herein is the truth.
C. Doctor Griffin I respect your difference of opinion concerning the duologue between Bill and Mister Ziegler, at the latter’s home, but I find it to be excellent. It is ever so realistic and truthful. Such discussions can occur and do, as there are persons like Mister Ziegler and others of great wealth and social standing who gather for their ritualistic ceremonies of perversion and, God help us, whatever else. Actually I should say God help the innocent lured to them or even abducted or taken to these encounters unaware of what is to play out. Some of you may not believe what I state. I cannot force you. I leave you with this final anecdote. Another intimate friend of mine is a Homicide Detective, the youngest and most honored in the history of the New York Police Department, Hank Cinotti. Famous as having been the detective yet never publicly reported of The Son Of Sam Case. This was not the story of one man, Mister David Berkowitz, but that of him and others. Homicide Detective Cinotti had even discovered that a number of the members of Son Of Sam had associated at one time of another with The Manson Family. Another investigator of this case was the journalist Mister Harry Daley. One night he and Cinotti following a lead found themselves on a high hill like ground of the Woodmere Golf Course, in the New York village of Woodmere. They both observed fascinated a most eerie scene of a number of limousines driving onto the lower grounds of the golf course. Disembarking from the vehicles were persons dressed in costumes and masks, and to put it in Mister Daley’s words, “Not one of them was worth less than fifty million.” Persons like Zeigler and his ilk do exist. They are indeed dangerous, and it is this and other factors of darkness that Kubrick was aware of that make for me his “Eyes Wide Shut” of interest although an artistic foul up.
A question I ask myself, and I do not know of Kubrick’s whole life, did he have a problem being Jewish, and despised Jewish culture, the non-religious specifically, and was he anti-Christian? The sacrilegious depiction of Christ Our Lord in “A Clockwork Orange” could be an example of the dystopic world of the evil personified Alex. Kubrick’s first two films were very respectful of Christianity, Roman Apostolic Catholicism: his first “Day Of The Fight” is about the Cartier brothers, boxer Walter and his twin brother Vincent who helped him train. After their early morning pre-dawn workout they attend an early week day Mass and receive Holy Eucharist. His second short also a documentary is about a priest who pilots a plane to take the sacraments out West to Native Americans: “Flying Padre”. Interesting that of Kubrick’s seventeen films,, Mister Jan Harlan omits only this one from his documentary about his brother-in-law’s life. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Best comment, ever! In my opinion, the anti-Christ imagery of Clockwork Orange was there to make the typical gay, Jewish, Christ-hating film reviewer or film student uncomfortable. Because they like that kind of art and so does this psycho, Alex. And also, Kubrick shows that Alex gets his ideas from “lovely pictures”, that is, Hollywood movies that program him to think like he does before the government ever gets their mitts on him. I don’t know about his early movies, but I think he was an ally of Christians in Clockwork Orange and EWS. Mandy = Christ. No one wants to go there.
Dear SS,
I should love t hear what you have to say about Mandy = Christ. I’ll go there; I am sure you have an interesting contribution to make. Also why do you hold the opinion that Mister Stanley Kubrick was an ally of Christians in “A Clockwork Orange” and “Eyes Wide Shut”? God Bless, Aristo Boho
First, let me say that from the first time I saw The Shining, and every time after that, for decades, I had the uncomfortable feeling that the doctor’s exam of Danny had child sexual abuse “messages” in it. It is now a common theory (in youtube video comments, anyway) that sexual abuse of children is a theme of the movie. In the same way, I had feeling from the first time I saw Eyes Wide Shut that Mandy looks like Jesus taken down from the cross once the view moves over to the side. (Despite the great tits.) Pieta. Then, during the ritual, Mandy says she will redeem Dr. Harford. And she does. Hence, her role is Christ-like. As to the ally of Christians part, it would take a comment longer than what you wrote to explain it. But I will point out one thing – I read a quote where Kubrick said that he wanted the woman art collector in Clockwork Orange to be violent because he was countering the message that sexual repression causes violence in that film. He showed characters who were not repressed but violent. And I am sure we all know that Christianity was the target of all those Jewish experts last century with their theories about how sexual repression and other Christian traits caused all our social problems.
Dear SS,
Thank you for sharing with me and others and the essayist,Doctor Robert S. Griffin, your interpretation I requested to know. Aside from You Tube which I nothing of, the uncomfortable feeling you have about the examination of Master Danny Torrance/Danny Lloyd by the physician/Anne Jackson could very well be spot on! Now I haven’t had the pleasure of reading the novel by Mister Stephen KIng nor do I I remember the scene despite my excellent memory, maybe because I did not care for the film other than the fact that author King has stated it is the only film version of one of his books he disliked. I did prefer what I saw of the first part only of the second film version by Mister Mick Garris more so. Permit me to say, you SS, seem to be a positive equilibrium of the intellectual and the sensitive The sexual child abuse messages that you discerned within your soul from your first viewing of “The Shining”, those that a child who has suffered due to a trauma sexually, and even an adult, mostly but not only young, who can and do experience beyond one’s control are both the adverse affects and effects from such brutality. A lady in her twenties when first married was sat down in a lovely garden by her mother who confessed to her that she had intended to abort her becuase her pregnancy had come so soon after the first born of three. She has never recovered, and has been a slave to the culture of psychotherapy for over fifty years and except for one man in her life has never had a proper sexual function. A psychiatrist also a surgeon, and a metaphysician, Doctor Rama Ponnambulam Coomaraswamy opened up to me once and had to inform me that one of his patients was a woman involved in sexual child abuse with a group of these evil ones. She sat back with a smile and said “You see, we do not want their bodies or minds, we want their souls.” Frightening! But for the traumatised child, other than the case of “The Three Faces Of Eve” brought to the screen by Mister Nunnally Johnson, or the first film to speak of multiple personality and superior to the Johnson one, released five months previous, “Lizzie” by MIster Hugo Haas from the novel by Misses Shirley Jackson, “The Bird’s Nest” , the destruction of a child’s innocence sexually can have lasting subconscious repercussions, or should I go darker and say unconscious flowerings into one’s conscious life.And let us not forget what Our Saviour exclaimed in The Gospel According to Saint Matthew Chapter 18 Verse 6, Who wasn’t a pacifist as those with no understanding believe Him to be and even condemn Him wrongly on this :”But he that shall scandalize one of these little ones that believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone should be hanged about his neck, and that he should be drowned in the depth of the sea.”
This brings us to your feeling when you saw “Eyes Wide Shut”. You know, honestly, I knew you were going to observe Mandy’s body like that of Our Lord’s as Michelangelo sculpted it for his Pietà. You jest, despite the great tits, but you have hit upon something: no one focuses on the soul, in Mandy’s case a pair of tits to be exploited by a degenerate like Mister Victor Ziegler/Sidney Pollack, and never loved for the person she is. I appreciate your analogy: others might think it crass or whatever negative, blasphemous even, but it isn’t: after all He accepted the chalice for all of us as an example of Spiritual Warriorship.
I must refer you to my COMMENT-REPLY to Right_On; please read point five. Yes, Christlike is the prostitute at the mansion as all of us should be. Very difficult.
What you relate about Mister Stanley Kubrick and sexual repression causes violence is the twisted mind of the secular Jew and his subversive nature. Non Jews can also be psychologically contorted also; just look at Doctor Alfred Charles Kinsey. I wonder if troubled Kubrick really comprehended Mister Anthony Burgess and his “A Clockwork Orange”. Remember there isn’t any Redemption in the film as in the novel. Eventually when the lives of his family were threatened and in the ensuing years he did in my opinion. Thank you very very much, you opened my mind to other avenues I have experienced in life. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Dear Aristo Boho, I have read all your comments and appreciate thoughts. There is no redemption scene for the Harford couple in EWS, either, in my opinion. No “Here’s to Mr. Zeigler and God bless us, every one!”. No joyous bells ringing. No hugs and kisses. No laughing child, as in the novella by AS. In fact, one theory (in youtube comments) is that the Harfords are going to find their daughter has disappeared when they go to look for her in the toy shop. Supposedly the two old men that she appears to follow down the aisle in her final scene were seen earlier at Ziegler’s party. Although I never thought of this interpretation myself, I did always think that it was dumb to let your little kid out of your sight in a crowded store. Americans by 1999 knew that was not smart. This Helena Disappears theory is popular with people who also believe that Kubrick was cluing us in to a Jeffrey Epstein type operation. Anyway, enjoyed talking to you and too bad you are not on youtube, there are many starving Kubrick fans there debating every detail of his movies. Not enough video makers to keep them happy!
Dear SS,
Likewise COMMENT-REPLY talking to you SS. Let me clarify the Redemption in a novel I refer to is in the original uncut first edition of “A Clockwork Orange” by Mister Anthony Burgess, and not “Traumnovelle” by Mister Arthur Schnitzler. I shouldn’t imagine any form of spiritual saving with the likes of Schnitzler and the man he influenced, Doctor Sigmund Freud. Only a dark never ending analysis of materialistic entrapment. I can understand those who have what you inform me is the Helena Disappears Theory, but I do not see it in the film. Although it’s not impossible: The hand Is Quicker Than The Eye.As if the predator was a pickpocket. I do go on You Tube yet not for Mister Stanley Kubrick. Perhaps one day. God Bless Aristo Boho
Dear Doctor Griffin
Thank you for the advice about posting a long COMMENT instead as an essay on this web site “The Occidental Observer”. And you have been most gracious to nevertheless post the entire REPLY-COMMENT of mine without any deletions. I should like to add two points: First I did not name the film I was alluding to by Mister Bernardo Bertolucci; it is “The Last Tango In Paris”. Second, and here I shall be succinct in bringing to your and others attention, Mister Stanley Kubrick like his peer MIster Samuel Fuller, could never handle well nor do we ever find tender romantic scenes between a man and a woman. Gone are the days of decency, true artistic creativity and a proper balance of values. What does it contribute to show Alice Harford/ NIcole Kidman drying her vagina on the toilet after doing pee pee? Nothing! It tells you a lot about Mister Kubrick and I assure you I’m not a Bible banging moralist. I hate to say it, but it is a definitive example of the expression even at times in common everyday discussions of the non-religious Jew. Misses Elizabeth Dilling did us and sincere religious Jews unaware, a great favour in her fourth and final work about The Babylonian Talmud, “The Plot Against Christianity” in pointing out legitimised sexual perversions in Judaism. God Bless, Aristo Boho
Dear Right_On
Yes, that is my whole point and you’ve clearly agreed with me. A prostitute only performs what she has been paid to do, ergo during the staged drama, that is why she intervenes stating she will sacrifice herself for him. That is what point 4 in my COMMENT-REPLY to you is all about. As far as Bill/Tom Cruise’s character believing them to be the same personage,well, what can one say? Is he bewildered and in a daze? In shock? Convinced by Mister Victor Ziegler/Sidney Pollack? Or a physician who is an imbecile who should easily be able to perceive the different bodies of the women, as I have? First, once again the scene falls flat because of Mister Stanley’ Kubrick’s insistence on a certain type of obsession of filming perfection. This actually is a very amateurish element psychologically about the man, or something missing, definitely about Mister Kubrick as an artist with human relations. Observe how discomforted Mister Cruise is in that scene: he bends over with his body to express what should just be done with the meaning of the dialogue. That is an actor’s trait of not knowing what to do. And the stupid grin, full of not one egg but several on Mister Ziegler’s mug at its end. No assistance from the film director. It is as bad I am sad to say, as the one between Spartacus/Kirk Douglas and Varinia/Jean Simmons when free from slavery they realise they knew each other at the gladiator school.Teenagers at a picnic; as I said to Doctor Robert S. Griffin, like Mister Samuel Fuller, Mister Kubrick couldn’t direct male female relations well unless they were of a disturbed nature. A great pity in an otherwise excellent film. Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” is cold yet aesthetically attractive, technically well-done, but never conveyed as well as the author of its source material does: “The Luck Of Barry Lyndon” by Mister William Makepeace Thackeray. I hold steadfast that he and his co-screenplay writer, but above all him, did not know how to adapt the novel by MIster Arthur Schnitzler together with what Kubrick had come to realize in the ensuing years of his “A Clockwork Orange” experience.
Interesting about the course that life took for the film actress Julienne Davis. Sad she never had a family. Far too brutal occurrences that by the nineties and going back to the seventies had become common to the mean of our society. Thank you Right_On. God Bless, Aristo Boho
By the way Aristo Boho, some viewers have suggested that when Cruise says to Ziegler at the denouement “Was she the girl at the party?” – referring to the now-dead hooker – Cruise is thinking of the orgy. Ziegler agrees as he misunderstands Cruise as referring to Ziegler’s own party (at the movie’s start), when the good doctor helped her recover from an OD. When he clicks that Cruise believes the orgy girl was the one who has just died he decides to play along.
That doesn’t invalidate your account, of course, just another intriguing puzzle to leave us all scratching our heads!
OK, this is extremely indelicate, but I have to say, to my eyes it appears the main difference between Mandy and the girl giving the warning at the party is different colored pubic hair. Mandy is a natural redhead, as we see in her full frontal nudity shot, and so is the girl at the morgue. The girl in the black feathered headdress has dark pubic hair. I personally think this screws up the story line completely, but that’s how it looks to me.
Dear Right_On,
Those viewers who”… have suggested that when Cruise says to Ziegler at the denouement “Was she the girl at the party?” – referring to the now-dead hooker – Cruise is thinking of the orgy.” in my firm opinion are mistaken. Let us ask the question would Doctor William Harford/Tom Cruise say, “…at the party?” instead of at the mansion gathering? The latter certainly is not a party. His psychological perturbation and shock that nevertheless inculcate him to investigate what he has experienced in Glen Cove wouldn’t be referred to as a party which was the Christmas festivity at Mister Victor Ziegler’s/Sidney Pollack’s luxurious Manhattan home. Mister Ziegler deliberately wants him to think they were one and the same woman which they weren’t to make him desist his probing into affairs that aren’t any of his business. Remember that at the morgue the girl is Mandy. And this is a troubling part of a defective screenplay: the Beauty Queen reported dead isn’t Mandy. Perhaps she was the prostitute at the mansion Hell Fire Club, and instead of being fucked to death was literally killed. It just doesn’t work for me, even though the awakening in Bill of a realisation that dark forces are at work in and around our lives could induce him to go to the morgue and discover the cadaver of a fatality from drug addiction, who is Mandy. I, personally, never believe that Mister Stanley Kubrick, or almost most film directors play with our minds. They successfully or not create what might even come spontaneously to their own minds, it becomes a part of the given film with true meaning without ever having intended to have the audience guessing or wondering. Notwithstanding, a viewer upon receiving the story and images of the motion picture will indeed think and think of the significance which for him is a mystery or perplexing because he isn’t the artist who has made the film. for this latter clarity of his creation is a matter of a final creative fact. One thinks of a number of filmmakers Messers Federico Fellini and David Lynch to name two. Like Messers T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound as poets they demand one to be more consciously intellectual than most other poets the lucidity is all there and if truly successful all is coherent even if it may not seem to be. And in stating this I am not embracing the pseudo-intellectual derangement of a great deal of Modern Art supported by financiers especially of the Post Modern. God Bless, Aristo Boho