Nights of the Living Dead: Autonomy and Automatons in Eyes Wide Shut

By David Pratt-Robson
PO Box 206637
New Haven CT,06520
845.729.8715
Literature Major: Senior Thesis
Prof. Brigitte Peucker, Adviser (second reader unknown)
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If you men only knew!

-- Eyes Wide Shut
Foreplayquite literallyand a wake-up call both, the opening shots of Stanley
Kubricks Eyes Wide Shut test the spectators complicity and initiate a systematic series of jolting
disappointments to viewers who presume their expectations will be fulfilled, their assumptions
vindicated. The first shot is a fantasy twice-over: Alice Harford (Nicole Kidman) stands in her
bedroom with her back to the camera and drops her dress to the floor. After the shot is
interruptedin the first of many interruptionsby a title card, an establishing shot of an
apartment building briefly pops on, followed by an extended shot of the Harfords evening
preparations. The nearly-nude Nicole Kidman from the first shot has been displaced to the toilet,
where she wipes herself before pulling the dress right back up. Her nudity has been
contextualized within a scene; whereas before she stood apart from completely unrelated
surroundings and merely represented an ideasexshe now takes her place as a living
character that represents, if anything, anything but. But the opening shot is a fantasy not only
because it is something of an alluring icon severed, like its subject, from any practical context,
but because even the shot itself insists on the viewers imagination to conclude its meaning:
rather than offering up an image of a fornicating Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to forwardly
propose what the rest of the film will or will not be about, Kubrick offers only her backside, and
forces the viewer to imagine her real sexual attractions and allures. Likewise, a Shostakovich
jazz waltz, promising decadence and grace, plays over all three shots, as though it were the
extradiegetic remnant of the first shots fantasizing, before it is abruptly cut off when Dr. Bill
Harford (Tom Cruise) pushes a button on his speaker system. Like the image of a naked woman
on the cusp of copulation, Shostakovichs sounds are appropriated and contextualized into the

realistic diegeses of the scene by a character within it. How do I look? Alice asks her husband
in the same shot, and he responds, Perfect, as she notes, without even looking. His mistake is
in assuming her to be beautifulsince she is a beautiful womanwhen in fact, if he were to
look when she asks, he would see her on the toilet pissing. The third shot crushes all
assumptions. To lookto actually lookis to see that in reality, characters are in charge of their
appearance and the environment around them. Bill is the ultimate voyeur, and he will spend the
rest of the film doing little else but passively watching, but as Alice notes, his problem is that he
doesnt really look, and doesnt see that he can never simply watch a scene without becoming
part of it, and even accountable for the way it proceeds. His eyes are quite wide shut, and his
failure, then, is one of responsibility.
Bills journey is an internal one: not simply because he traverses his own fantasies, but
because he is questing for autonomy, though without a bit of it, he has no idea he is doing so.
After Bill has turned off the Shostakovich on his radio, he will rarely have such control over the
world again. For Bills nocturnal odyssey to avenge his wifes confessions of adulterous desires
through his own promiscuous affairs is one that is, in every possible way, well beyond his
control. As he discovers, to avenge her is merely to mirror her and admit her power over him in
the first place; even the journey itself is one that constantly mocks any possibility of autonomy.
Bill is almost only able to act mimetically, imitating the words and actions of others; and since
nothing along the voyage is committed to, and nothing consummated, Bill refuses to define
himself in relation to the world in any way. Though Bill, as we will see, is ostensibly sojourning
through his own subconscious, even his fantasies reveal that the more conscious desire to be
important in the world is not at all a desire to be in charge of it. Rather, it is the wish to be at the
worlds center as its victim, not leader. Conspiracy surrounds Bill, both in the films many

unsolved (and often unsolvable) mysteries, as well as in its pervasive fatalism: so many relations
are undefined, but death defines everything as both the fantasies sobering counterpart and, just
as frequently, their object. Like a tourist riding through a theme park attraction, Bill is steadily
pulled through a world that seems to target him as its center, even while in mimicking others and
watching along, he refuses to touch it in the least. Yet it is the same self-destructive fantasies to
which he is victim that will ultimately affirm him.

Though its trajectory is nearly the same, Eyes Wide Shut is much more subtle about Bills
desperate need to prove to himself his value to the world, yet the suggestion of an
inferiority complex is there. His first line is to ask where his wallet is, and this wallet turns out
to be the nights passport: not only does Bill generously tip nearly everyone he encounters, as if
to win their respect, but he flashes his doctors badge to assert his worth to the few menial
employees he doesnt tip.1 As Mario Falsetto says, his incessant flashing of his card is proof of
another way that Bills sense of identity and self-importance are tied to his status in society. At
Zieglers party, Bill tells Alice that they dont know anybody there, and have only been invited
because this is what you get for making house calls. Tim Kreider points out, For all his
flaunting of his money and professional status, Bill Harford is ultimately put back in his place as
a member of the serving class: he is the party doctor to Ziegler just as friend Nick Nightingale
(Todd Field) is the party pianist, and when Bill tries to infiltrate the orgy, hes given away by
telltale class markershe shows up in a taxi rather than a limo, and has a costume rental slip in
his pocket.2 Ziegler discloses this information late in the film; the entire conversation is built on
Zieglers assumption that he can bully Bill into keeping quiet by flaunting his own social
superiority. Youve been way out of your depth for the last twenty-four hours, Ziegler snaps, as

though Bills real transgression was in ever presuming himself worthwhile company to the elite.
Yet Bills response is his first truly defiant one in the entire film. It wasnt Nicks fault, he says
of his admittance to the orgy. It was mine. For the first time in the film, Bill insists that he is
responsible for anything; nevertheless, his reaction is automatic, in response to being told he
doesnt belong. If Bill has any gumption from the start, it is only the gumption of a man who
refuses to let society restrain him. As well see, refusal is Bills modus operandia means of
raising possibilities, without committing to any of them. For this is the source of Bills unsteady
pride, his drive for affirmation and self-importance: to have nobody tell him what to do,
including himself.
That Bills sense of self-importance is affirmed at every step is proof that Bill has
vitalized the world with half-dead emblems of his own simplest fantasy. The women of Eyes
Wide Shut, Alice excepted, live only to serve Bill sexually: they find him, summon him, and
seduce for no reason at all except that they cant resist. They are, in other words, ego-strokers. As
a number of critics have noted, the beautiful women unable to resist Bill not only allow for
adulterous possibilities, but are, in fact, fanciful projections of Bills spurning wife. In the
novella, Fridolin admits as much when he now realized with a shudder, his wife had been
incessantly hovering before his eyes as the woman he was seeking.3 Kreider provides ample
evidence to support the claim; he links Alice to Mandy (Julienne Davis) through their habits,
appearance, and mutual desire to be fucked by hundreds of men (according to Alices dream
and Mandys supposed participation in the orgy), and Alice to Domino (Vinessa Shaw) through
their purple sheets and conspicuous mirrors.4 Summoning him to their own homes, these women
tempt him with opposite modes of consolation: with both the savage possibility of adultery to
avenge his wifes fantasies and the more pleasant possibility that his wife actually finds him

irresistible. Either temptation, however, represents his need to dictate his wifes feelings. And in
either case, this drive to self-affirmation is once again quite clearly precipitated by fears of
inferiorityfears prescribed by his wifes fantasies of betrayal. Simply, his fantasy is to put her
in awe where her fantasies have done the same to him.
In the orgy scene, Bills will to worldly-sexual importance becomes most obvious, and
most obviously a fantasy; even though Bill is wearing a mask and cloak so that he cannot
possibly be distinguished in any way, so attractive is his mere presence that a prostitute in the
pietistic bacchanalia, her holy whore status authenticated, goes out of her way to rescue him and
(ostensibly) offers her life up to save his. Sex is religion at the orgy, and it is assumedly his
sexual magnetism that makes him her sacred idol. He doesnt even need to reveal himself
physicallyhis fantasy is that he never needs to reveal himself at all. Or rather, his fantasy is to
be important without reason, for he knows he has no reason to be so.
Though his great fear, then, as the orgy also demonstrates, is exposing himself to the
judgment of the masses, even this fear serves to confirm his own significance. Bill is dangerous
enough to the orgy members that he must die (they too are afraid of being exposed); his fears,
now actualized, place him at the center of their attention. Similarly, he becomes the target of a
company of gay-bashing Yalies on the sidewalk when his obvious fear, simply an inversion of his
desires, that he is not attractive to all women materializes with this group of stereotypical fratboys whose attention is completely given to Bill nonetheless. When Bill retraces his steps in the
films second half, he finds himself at the center of a couple of sinister plots: the costume shop
owners newborn plan to prostitute his daughter, and, most significantly, a post-orgy conspiracy
that finds a servant waiting with a letter addressed to him, and a man shadowing him around the
east village. The somewhat inexplicable attention Bill receives is certainly not any he entirely

desires (as well see), and yet it is proof nonetheless that nearly everyone Bill meets lives their
life solely in relation to him. He is clearly living within his own cosmos; other worlds revolve
around him.
Yet his own cosmos is more akin to a black void. All fantasies are necessarily escapist,
however much they may expose about the fantasist, and if Bill acts superficially (or not at all), it
is because his quest for self-importance is also a quest to escape self-definition of any sort. Why
cant you ever give me a straight fucking answer! bemoans Alice in the fight scene that will lead
to her own confession, though, unlike the parallel scene in Traumnovelle, not to his. Im not
arguing. Im just trying to find out where youre coming from, she says, and when Bill defends
their marriage as faultless and secure (I know you would never be unfaithful to me), Alice
laughs at him and his platitudes, humiliating him, as she will do later in her own dream. You are
very, very sure of yourself, arent you? she asks before she sets out to crack the faade hes
ludicrously forged. Her first confession belies his false security, and he will spend the rest of the
movie trying to keep acting sure of himself in increasingly insecure circumstances.
The point of the scene, then, for both Alice and Bill, is not even so much the presence of
sexually transgressive passions within their marriage as it is Bills denial, which turns out to be
his defining characteristic. Unlike Ulysses, Bill is not trying to return home to his wife but, like
Leopold Bloom in Ulysses, to escape her; his problem, of course, is that he doesnt want to
escape her at all, for if she didnt matter to him, her confession wouldnt matter, and he wouldnt
have fled in the first place. Yet the resulta man who wants to leave and wants to stayis
indicative of Bills equivocations throughout the entire film, as he is both drawn to and repelled
by women who resemble his wife, and drawn to and repelled by the idea of cheating on his wife
with them. By unsatisfactorily displacing his wifes personality onto other women with whom he

is unable to consummate his desires, Bill once again reveals his inability to confront his fears and
desires directly (his wife is certainly an object of both), just as he is unable to give Alice a
straight fucking answer. Bills fleeing ultimately has as much to do with his fear of facing
himself as his fear of facing her: his entire journey is a journey to raise possibilities and to reject
truthful answers, to reject action, and to reject any recognition of who he is, what hes doing, or
that hes doing anything at all.
Most obviously, as a number of critics have demonstrated, Eyes Wide Shut is set up as a
series of temptations, each scene sexual foreplay to sex that never comes.5 Scenes are interrupted
at crucial moments as Bill raises possibilities, or his counterparts raise them for him, and he fails
to fulfill them. Only once does the couple possibly have sex in the film: and the sex occurs, if at
all, after a fade out on Bill and Alice groping one another while staring into a mirror, as if even
this act were one of narcissistic self-satisfaction rather than that of the mutual capitulation that
will come at the films end. Other interruptions likewise indicate a hesitation to touch the world
and its female inhabitants; Bill constantly pulls away or is pulled away from a partner when he
must engage her and expose himself. For example: Bill retreats from two girls at Zieglers party
to attend to his host, retreats from his wifes confession to attend to his patient Marion, retreats
from Marions confession when her boyfriend arrives, and retreats from a prostitute when his
wife calls. In the second half, Bill refuses the advances of a gay hotel clerk, another prostitute,
and the costume-shop owners daughter.
Only at the orgy does he refuse to flee, despite the entreaties of a woman set to save his
lifefor, as well see, this scene brings his deadening fantasies to life. It provides, if not quite
their consummation, then their culmination, as the scene itself stages Bills fantasy of both social
acceptance and retreat at once. More obviously, whether it is enacted in reality or Bills mind, the

scene represents someones sexual fantasy regardless: a ritualized theater piece staged by
hundreds of societys mutually complicit best. Supposed I said all of that was staged, that it was
a kind of charade? Ziegler asks at the end of the film, referring to the whores sacrifice. That it
was fake? The question is rhetorical. Whether or not the prostitute has been killed, the orgy is
clearly a charade, an elaborate ceremony of masked men and women dramatically acting out
their basest desires as high art, fashion, and religion. Bill will not leave, presumably, because the
orgy is a locus of pure fantasy.
It is, however, only the culminating act of deception in a series of disguises and lies Bill
wears and commits throughout the film in order to avoid confronting the truth of what he is
doing. Of course, every experience he has can be interpreted as a personal fantasy itself, but even
taken as realistic scenes many of them expose Bills fear of seeing the world soberly, as it is.
Before Bill sets off on his odyssey to escape his home, both Bill and Alice spend nearly all their
on-screen time under the influence, either drunk or high, constantly listening to music, as if
already they need to escape their outwardly simple, stable liveseven though the drugs enable
Alices confrontation with her husband. Bills own profession, however, I would never lie to
you or hurt you is itself quite a lie, as hes already taunted her with his flirting and, more
importantly, will spend the rest of the film lying to her and attempting to avenge her confession.
Ziegler will end up claiming that Bills questing has been in vain, since the premise for
his searchthat a woman died for himis false, but the real premise for Bills questing is false
from the start. Alices admissions of her fantasies, which Bill both recognizes and resists, are still
admissions of things that, as in Zieglers account of the girls death, could have happened but
have not. Yet when Bill takes up Alices fantasy as his own, imagining her having sex with the

sailoran event which never happenedit becomes clear that he is basing his journey on a lie
he cant help telling himself.
And finally, of course, there is the social mask Bill wears throughout the film: that of a
small-talking big-confidence man, when, as weve seen, he is socially insecure and emotionally
traumatized, as is most evident in his compulsive imagining of Alices sailor fantasy, which
indicates he would prefer to masochistically submit himself to this fantasy than confront her
about it in hopes of moving on. It is no wonder that when he returns home after all of his
adventures, moments before he decides to confess himself to Alice, he finds his mask on his bed,
next to his wife, in his place. Paradoxically, the mask may reveal all. It is a synecdoche for his
outward emptiness, his refusal, once again, to define himself to the world.
Using masks, Bill moves about in a world without friction, as though, despite the films
rampant fatalism (to be discussed shortly), he is completely free to do with it what he will. In
Eyes Wide Shut, writes Michel Chion, all objectsevery lift, every telephonework,
perfectly; taxi drivers take you to your destination and everyone does their job properly, right
down to the humblest nurse or the desk clerk at the Hotel Jason6. Bills New York never gives
him trouble. Heroes are presumably heroes for engaging in conflicts and winning; Bill, however,
is a deliberate non-entity because he never faces any conflict with the world that would force him
to make decisions to define himself. When Milich (Rade Serbedzija) tells him that a hundred
dollars is not enough money to rent a costume, Bill simply offers more and Milich agrees. Later,
when Bill forgets to return the mask, Milich charges him without substantial consequences. In
fact, Bills wallet serves as something of a permit to do whatever he wants, even though he
actually does very little: he is able to charm, bribe, or intimidate cabbies, clerks, receptionists,
and hookers7 with his money and his doctors license, which, like a police badge, grants him

access to information and services from Milich, a waitress, a hotel clerk, and a hospital
receptionist. Information is never denied him, though the significance of much of the information
is increasingly uncertain. The wallet just oils the social machinerythe entire world is at his
disposaland yet Bills money and license never provide an end in and of themselves. They
simply provide him the means to explore deeper in the world without obstacles. They provide
him with options, with potential.
But these explorations are not unmarked by threatening uncertainties, which only raise
more unfulfilledor at least unknownpossibilities about Bills voyage. Most important are the
questions Bill himself asks. Chion also notes that much of the films dialogueespecially Bills
simply parrots previous lines; he counts forty-six examples, which are certainly far too many
to count and recount here. Nelson links Bills unresponsive responses once again to his inability,
per Alice, to give a straight fucking answer, and Chion concurs that parroting seems to make
it possible to be infinitely indecisive and to hold off the moment of decision: the moment when
everything definitively changes, when that which can never be repaired will be committed.8
Even Bills dialogue, mimetic, unoriginal, and entirely prosaic, serves the mighty task of holding
at bay those moments of revelation and exposure from which Bill is retreating during the entire
film. They are a means, once again, of refusing control of the world around him.
Yet the subtler effect of the dialogue is to raise hermeneutic possibilities about this world
Bill inhabitspossibilities that indicate, once again, that he is at its mercy. In questioning others
most banal declarations, Bill, wittingly or not, challenges the reality of a familiar world, as
though every trite discovery is, as Marion says of her fathers death, unreal. If Bill spends
much of the film as a sleuth, he frequently sounds suspicious. Throughout the film, his probing is
typically little more than skepticism calling attention to both his own fundamental squareness

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that every minor development takes him by surpriseand, more importantly, to the potential
unreality of the scene, that he cant quite believe whats happening. His questions endow the
dull, perfectly practical statements of reality with the slight anxiety of a nightmare.
More importantly, the film slyly poses its own unanswerable questions to propel such
anxieties. The film even ends with a moral that is doubly uncertain. Amam I sure? asks
Alice (Nicole Kidman), a wife who has just presumably heard the story of the entire film, and is
now being asked whether she is sure she and her husband should be grateful for having survived
the ordealboth the content of the story and its telling. Umonlyonly as sure as I am that
the reality of one night, let alone that of a whole life time, can ever be the whole truth, she says.
This moral, which Alice refuses to commit to, is one of the key conclusions of the film: that
nothing is conclusive, that nothing is the whole truth, that there are always alternate meanings,
and that all meaning is limited to sets and series and cannot necessarily be generalized.
Strangely, these gaps in logic are seldom noted, perhaps because theyre automatically,
and quite rightly, assumed to be part of the movies dream logic. Jonathan Rosenbaum, for
example, has noted that Zieglers explanation at the end of the film explains nothing conclusive,
apart from Zieglers Zeus-like access and power.9 Ostensibly, Ziegler explains that nothing has
happened, that there has been no conspiracy, that a girl overdosed on drugs on her own accord
and raises that persistent possibility that almost everything in the film, and everything Bill has
assumed, has been a product of Bills imagination. But the scene might just as profitably read, as
Rosenbaum suggests above, to the opposite end, as the last in a series of confrontations in
Kubrick films in which a lone maverick must square off against an enemy signaling societys
abuse and systematic oppressions: Col. Dax vs. Gen. Broulard in Paths of Glory, Spartacus vs.
Crassus in Spartacus, Captain Mandrake vs. Col. Ripper in Dr. Strangelove, Dr. Bowman vs.

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HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, Jack Torrance vs. Delbert Grady in The Shining, and Private
Pyle vs. Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. In this reading, Zieglers role is not revelation but,
quite the opposite, concealment, as he attempts to cover up a potential scandal. What actually
happened to Mandylike what actually happened to Nick Nightingaleremains a mystery. The
scene in its astounding ambiguity only emphasizes the need for real revelation, which will
ostensibly come in the following scene, although even Bills confession only occurs in an
ellipsis.
Other equally indecipherable scenes precede these two. Most obvious is Milichs turn
from the first half of the film, in which he stands ready to persecute and prosecute two Japanese
businessmen for sexual dalliances with his young nymphet daughter, to the second half, in which
he wishes the men a fond farewell as they depart from a closed room with his half-dressed
daughter. What has happened is not clear, but suggested strongly by the facts that the
businessmen leave in full suits, that Milich uses diplomatic, business language in explaining
(without an explanation) that we have come to another arrangement, and that Milich indicates
Bill is as entitled to the daughter as he is to a costume: Milich is quite clearly willing to prostitute
her out, and the money has ostensibly decided him. Once again, as in Zieglers pool room, an
opaque turn-around only hints at societal corruption.
Other laps and gaps in logic simply facilitate Bills journeying while suggesting that he is
at the heart of a conspiracy. Besides the visibly bizarre elements of the orgy, Bills admittance
and ejection at the scene make no sense. If Bill is given away by his ignorance of the second
password at the door, as Ziegler tells him, then theres no reason at all the guards would have let
him in the door to walk around and view the entire spectacle. If the girl who warns him knows he
doesnt belong, then presumably others do tooand yet an ominous masked man approaches

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them not to pull Bill aside, but to take her away instead (though, even more mysteriously, to little
consequence, since she returns). The fact of the girl knowing he doesnt belong is even more
suspicious, since there is, of course, little possibility that anybody could recognize him as an
imposter at a masquerade. And if they do recognize him as an unfamiliar mask, then theres little
need for masks: the party operates as though everyone knows who everyone else is (as Ziegler
indicates when he tells Bill if I told you their names) even though everyone wears disguises.
Similarly, Bills inquiry of a waitress is completely implausible. The waitress works during the
day at the coffee shop next door to the club where Nick Nightingale plays piano late at night. Yet
Bill asks her if she knows Nick, and specifically, if she knows where he livesand she does.
That she does is nearly as absurd as Bills suspicion that she might, though the factoid is
accepted as reasonable by both parties; her knowledge indicates either that both she and Nick are
part of a vast city-wide conspiracy Bill is tapping into, or simply (one might speculate halfhazardly) that she has been to his apartment, presumably to have sex. And finally, Bills
suspicion that a dead model he reads about in the newspaper might have anything to do with his
own adventures is itself completely suspicious. The only connection is that she is pretty and
dead, as he likely assumes his redeemer at the orgy to be; otherwise, the obituary gives him no
hint that she is related to anything he is doing.
Attributed to fantasy, the gaps once again indicate Bills drive to be able to have things all
ways at once, and to actually have things no way at allas in the confrontation with Ziegler, to
have power that must be suppressed, but little confirmation of consequential action, and as in the
confrontations with Milich, the orgy, the waitress, and the corpse, to go everywhere imaginable
and to do nothing there but watch. Attributed to empirical reality, the gaps simply indicate a mass
conspiracy about which Bill can attain every piece of information he requires without reaching

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any sort of conclusion. In either case, Bill is unable to see things as they are, though the
difference between fantasy and reality is whether this failure is one that is willed or one that is
not his fault, that he is attempting to remedy in his questing. It is extremely likely, of course, that
the gaps are to be attributed to fantasy. As weve repeatedly seen, the outside world in Eyes Wide
Shut mimics and mocks Bills inner fears and desires, and certainly the fact that the gaps indicate
dream logic (or illogic) itself indicates that Bill is navigating a world of his own creation. In
particular, Bills ability to penetrate the orgy, probe the waitress for information, and uncover the
mysterious nude woman by opening a newspaper seem like more quite simple examples of wishfulfillment. Yet Bills world is beyond him, one that he is constantly discovering at least as much
as he is vitalizing, as though it contains active realms hell never reach. But even if we are to
attribute the gaps to a looming reality, they nevertheless confirm his ultimate exclusion from a
world he is clearly desperate to join: everyone is in on the conspiracy except for him, which may
make him its only target. Put another way, if the gaps are the results of his fantasies, they confirm
his desire for pure potentiality, while if the gaps are the result of his reality, they confirm his
(reasonable) fear of total impotence. For reality and fantasy, fear and desire, impotence and
potentiality, are all evidenced by the gapsthe gaps, being gaps, allow for endless interpretation.
They are what one imagines them to be. The point, in any case, is that Bill, whether or not he
fantasizes the whole scenario, doesnt seem to imagine them to be anything particular at all. Until
Zieglers taunts of innocence force him to affirm his role in anything that has or hasnt happened,
Bill questions, if at all, without ever really posing possible solutions, even as he vainly searches
for clarification. He is a detective without a clue.
Yet even as Bill raises interpretative possibilities, the film depicts a world in which every
action seems to have been anticipated, and, as Martin Scorsese has put it, preordained.10 This

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latter effect is due at least in part to Kubricks fatalistic, Ophulsian Steadicam camera work,
which glides gracefully from room to room, as if untethered and free, even while it often traps its
subject within a predetermined trajectory of movement, often within long, endless hallways, and
frequently summons them forward, preceding them in their route.
Bill can ostensibly go anywhere, but nearly everywhere he goes he is anticipated, by
other characters and Kubricks camera alike. Again, like a detective figure attempting to solve his
own case, Bill has little control over the world around him. He is either following the calls of
those around him (such as Zieglers invitation to his party, Zieglers servant at the party, Marion,
Domino, or Ziegler at the films end), is following his own footsteps in retracing his night, is
following his friend Nicks footsteps in retracing his night, or, when he does refuse to follow
along with the calls of those around him, is, as weve seen, refusing to commit to any
conspicuous course of action that would reveal himself, as when he turns down the advances and
entreaties of Marion, Domino, Milichs daughter, and the woman at the orgy who urges him not
to stay behind his mask but to flee. Even when he takes the initiative to go to the party, he is
merely following Nicks path for the evening. Following or retreating, he is unable to take an
original course of action; the most initiative he can muster is to reject the one hes on, and find
another instead.
Yet a retreat from a fantasy threatens a return to reality, and Kubrick exposes Bill,
repeatedly escaping his escapist fantasies, as caught in a double bind. To fulfill his sexual
fantasies is to turn them into reality and lose them as possibilitiescome satisfaction, his
adventures for the night would be over with his libidowhereas to not fulfill them is to turn to
reality and still lose these fantasies as immediate possibilities, even though, as Bill proves, he
will always be able to fall into more fantasies later. Thus, while Bill repeatedly retreats from

15

women to prolong his fantasies, by resisting commitment to the opportunities they offer, Kubrick
subtly, brutally edits these interruptions to nevertheless indicate Bills necessary, ultimate
surrender to a reality he is trying to escape. At Zieglers ball, for example, a bravura display of
salty sweet talk, pulsating females, and endless waltzes matched perfectly by Kubricks fluid
camerawork, all is quite literally cut short when Kubrick punctures the drunken, rambling
romances with a steady, dead-on shot of Ziegler pulling up his pants over the body of a naked,
stupefied whore.
Kubrick nearly terminates the steady movement of the coquettish dance to show the
termination point it is moving towards: all this graceful flirtation is just a path to debaucherous,
wholly unholy sex, after which there is nothing left. Sex is death, if a temporary one. It
represents the end of his questing, of his need to fantasize. And these jolts, like the three wake-up
calls at the films beginning, are seen throughout.11 Milich and Alice are both woken up by Bill;
more substantially, Milich and Bill are interrupted from perusing Milichs costume collection by
his daughters mnage--trois, which echoes Bills own fears of exposure (as the men try to hide
behind Milichs clothes, not entirely unlike Bill will at the orgy) and explodes in Milichs death
threats of Ill kill you for this! I promise, Ill kill you!...Ill kill you!; Bill interrupts the reverie
and revelry with Domino by turning off her music, as he does in the opening scene; Bill is
interrupted from Dominos playful solicitations by a phone call from his wife eating Snackwells
and watching TV at home; Bill is interrupted from Sallys playful solicitations by her
announcement that Domino has AIDS; Bill is interrupted from his sojourn around the orgys
chateau to watch a woman die for him. The altogether fantastic orgy is cut with Bill arriving
home to his bedroom, as if coming home from a particularly exhausting day from work, just as
the swinging jazz and white graceful ambiance of the opening ball suddenly cuts from Alice

16

putting her finger to the Hungarians lips to Bill and Alice about to have sex and listening to
Chris Isaaks decidedly unclassy Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing. And despite the steady longueurs
of each scene, nearly every one cuts out abruptly.
In almost all of these examples, the scene snaps from drunken temptation to deadly
soberness, with the suddenness of an axe-blow: reality cannot be evaded, and in particular, the
one inescapable fact of reality cannot be escaped. Death is the destination which all Bills
questing leads to, both within nearly every scene, and in the film as a whole: whether or not
Mandy Curran was murdered, she is dead, and her death is the central gap in the film around
which the whole movie swirls. In individual scenes, in a number of the above examples, death
serves as a moral rebuke to his adulterous temptationsto have sex with Milichs daughter is to
incur her fathers wrath, to have sex with a prostitute is to incur the risk of AIDS, and even to
participate in an anonymous orgy is to risk being murderedor simply, in keeping with Bills
Kafkaesque paranoia, as a potential punishment for simply being alive, as when the Yalies nearly
pummel him bloody as they inexplicably assume he is gay. Romance may seem to be a relief
from the problem of mortality, as we see when Marion, in response to her fathers death,
desperately tries to initiate a fling with Bill in front of her fathers deathbed, while a clock ticks
steadily behind them, a memento of their own transience (and a grim homage to a similar scene
in Max Ophulss La Ronde).
But in all cases, as a number of commentators have pointed out, sex and death are
inextricably intertwined.12 Even an easily missed motif in the film, of nude female bodies in
ostensibly non-sexual positions, emphasizes how the idea of sex has been sublimated into
everything, and particularly the idea of death, while sex itself is rare. In the second shot, Alice is
seen nearly nude on the toilet in her bathroom; soon, a doubly fucked, half-conscious Mandy is

17

found naked in Zeiglers bathroom (while her own image is echoed by a painting on the wall);
Alice is seen during a montage putting on clothes and, later, in her lingerie, deodorant; Bill
examines a beautiful nude in his antiseptic office; Mandy lies naked in the morgue. Each woman
is objectified as little more than a bodyMandy is nearly dead or dead, and in their daily tasks,
Alice is concerned with her own body as Bill is concerned with the bodies of his patientsand
in unconsciousness or merely boredom, all appear fully stupefied. Kubrick even shows Alice and
Bills tasks in a montage, so that each image is nearly a still snapshot that practically freezes
them in place as part of a tableau. But eroticism permeates each of these still-lives. The halfconscious Mandy has just been raped by Ziegler, while he was waiting for Bill to arrive; the
images of Alice in her lingerie (accompanied by the music of the opening scenes, Shostakovichs
Jazz Suite, Waltz 2) all evoke the opening shot of Alice taking off her clothes, while one image
of Alice from behindthe only point in the montage in which the camera moves, to ogle her
from the bottom-upis a clear double of that shot; Alice will question Bills sexual relation to
his patients, and Bill himself will even suggest that his examinations of beautiful nudes are
tainted by the knowledge that what he discovers in their genitalia could decide their lives. A
hypothetical female patient, he says, is afraid of what I might find.13 But the most explicit link
between death and sex occurs in the culminating moments of the second half, as Bill must
restrain himself from making love to a corpse.
Both sex and death represent points of consummation, as weve seen, and yet both, the
antipodes of any siren song, invite Bill and pull him on in his explorations. Death is the flip-side
to fantasizing, but also every fantasys enabler and ennobler: the risk of death makes ones
actions valorous. These dual destinations, sex and death, must exist for him to have a journey and

18

adventurebut must not be reached if the journey is to continue toward them. A coming and
sexual attraction, death is what Bill heads for and retreats from at once.
Nevertheless, though Bill must force himself to risk death and live dangerously in a
continual effort to belie his essential cowardice, death has its own implicit appeal, the usual
attraction for Bill: a complete loss of autonomy. It is the ultimate obliteration of identity,
although, within the film, it must be imitated by the living through mimetic action and response
that undermine the possibility of organic spontaneity and originality. As Michel Ciment has
indicated (without elaboration), Eyes Wide Shut was undoubtedly influenced by Sigmund Freuds
The Uncanny, which Kubrick studied in preparation for The Shining. Freud offers a number of
examples of the uncanny in his brief essay, along with a digression on the eyes phallic
capacities14; nearly all of these examples are crucial to the film and serve as something of a
handbook to one of the films key formal devices: the double.15 The most prominent of those
motifs that produce an uncanny effect, writes Freud, involve the idea of the double (the
Doppelgnger), in all its nuances and manifestationsthat is to say, the appearance of persons
who have to be regarded as identical because they look alike.16 With the repetitions of doubling,
individuality quite naturally becomes an impossibility, and Bill locates himself in the outside
world once again, in a series of deathly counterparts.
A number of Eyes Wide Shuts commentators have pointed out various doublings and
repetitionsof characters, incidents, and inclinationsthroughout. Weve already seen, for
example, how the many beautiful women in the film are mirrored simplifications of Alice, and
how they often double each other in objectified, ostensibly non-sexual positions. Kreider cleverly
argues that the toys in the final scene as model reiterations of previous costumes, objects, and
events. Thomas Allen Nelson matches the attendees of Zeiglers Christmas party with those of

19

the orgy.17 And Lee Siegel, arguing that pairs proliferate throughout the film, reminders of our
double natures, finds doubles in a statue of Zeiglers, in symmetrical hallways and interiors, in
two pineapples in Zeiglers billiard room, and in frequent double entendres, as when Zeigler says
that hes been knocking a few balls around.18
As for Bills own doubles, Chion points out that in the scene at Marion Nathansons,
Bills movements anticipate those of fianc Carl (Thomas Gibson), while Kreider asserts that
Kubricks nearly symmetrical opening shot of the apartment suggests the identically costumed
Bill and the maid as mirror images of hired help.19 Kreider also links Bill, again as hired help, to
Nick Nightingale, as does Peter Lowenberg: Nick Nightingale, the piano player, is Bills
double who pursued the path not takenhe dropped out of medical school and lives an
apparently exciting bohemian life.20 Nelson matches Bills exploitation of his own professional
status, which he glibly trades on in the pursuit of nocturnal desire with that of Milich, who uses
his costume shop to itself mask the more illicit professional prospects of his daughter.21 And in
their noting that Eyes Wide Shut is constructed symmetrically, both Nelson and Michel Ciment
suggest what Ive attempted to demonstrate, that Bill is his own doublefor Bill spends almost
the entirety of the second half of the film retracing his steps, as he restages his journey and
revisits nearly every locale from the night before.22 It should be added that even of these
matching paths each has its own double. Bill follows the trail of Nick to get to the orgy; the next
night, a figure shadows Bill.
As this last example indicates, doubles suggest a completely fatalistic world of
connivances and complots. In another set of experiences, writes Freud, we have no difficulty
in recognizing that it is only the factor of unintended repetition that transforms what would
otherwise seem quite harmless into something uncanny and forces us to entertain the idea of the

20

fateful and the inescapable, when we should normally speak of chance.23 Coincidence betrays
conspiracy; Bill is completely doomed. Escape is never possible, as Bill not only sees his own
inner fears and desires doubled in the exterior world, but, even within this exterior world, sees
doubles that imply entrapment to the same endless journey. The outside world is a system, a web,
and Bill is its target. There is no possibility of progress in Eyes Wide ShutBills journey is to
no place in particularbut only repetition or termination. Already fatalistic just by virtue of
being repetitions, many motifs even repeat the same message in their content of diseased hookers
or life-threatening warnings: that all paths, even fantasies, must end in death. Just as Bills
retreats and the films gaps seem to posit countless possibilities, the film really, repeatedly, only
posits this one possibilityand it is one, as well soon see further, which Bill embraces.
For Bill welcomes death and doom, at least as a single concept representing conformity
and self-renunciation. This will to self-defeat finds its most pointed expression at the orgy
masquerade. We have, writes Freud, particularly favourable conditions for generating feelings
of the uncanny if the intellectual uncertainty is aroused as to whether something is animate or
inanimate, and whether the lifeless bears an excessive likeness to the living.24 Just as Mandys
barely living, catatonic body finds its double in a lifeless painting on Zieglers wall, and the film
will nearly end with the Harfords blonde daughter holding a Barbie doll, other bodies find their
doubles in masks and mannequins petrified imitations of faces and torsos. Looks like alive,
huh? Milich asks about his mannequins in a line thats both off-hand and essential. These
mannequins, somehow vitalized by masks that obscure the distinctive features of their face, are
the obvious doubles of the party girls. The point, literally and figuratively, is that those who
appear to live behind a mask may not be alive at all.
At the orgy, Bill appears to walk through a wax museum: with the exception of the nudes

21

thrashing about, in and out, like simply programmed automatons, everyone but Bill stands or sits
around in total stillness, and in increasingly contorted positions.25 Even more than in the rest of
the similarly filmed film, Kubrick stages each scene as a tableau, a still-life frozen in time, or,
given the thrashing of coupling bodies, an installation piece. People are nothing more than
bodies, here, if thatbehind the masks and capes, they may be nothing more than molded clay.

What Kubrick presents in the infamous orgy scene is, as reviewers pointed out, anything
but lively; it is an orgy of the dead, or at least the dehumanized. As Freud writes, An uncanny
effect often arises when the boundary between fantasy and reality is blurred, when we are faced
with the reality of something that we have until now considered imaginary, when a symbol takes
on the full function and significance of what it symbolizes.26 Nearly all of Eyes Wide Shut could
secure this description, of course. But the orgy, the only point in the narrative in which people
are seen having sex, 27 is the only time the fantasy culminates, even though Bill, like the viewer,
can only participate in it vicariously, voyeuristically. Nevertheless, the scene provides a mirror of
his mind better than any other: in it, we see both his desire to cheat freely on his wife without
consequence as well as his desire to suppress his individuality, to conform completely to societal
regulations. The desires for sexual liberation and social submission intersect perfectly in an
astoundingly ritualized ceremony, something like a slow-motion Busby Berkeley porno, in which
a body is nothing more than a body; the religious rites make it clear that the cults spirituality
provides not the possibility of sublime, godly heights, but rather presents the material body itself
as the ultimate object of worship. And sex and death are fully merged as a single drive to
objectify the body.

22

Because humans are treated only as cadavers in the orgy, they may as well be dead;
because their distinctions, facial and mental, go undistinguished, social conformity dominates,
even in a setting thats deeply elitist in both its ostentatious display of wealth and exclusionary
tactics. Bill, in other words, can finally attain his goal of both fitting into society and being singly
important. There can be no recognition, allegiances or betrayals here, though Bills presence
constitutes one of the latter anyway. His punishmentwhich importantly consists of his being
noticed and singled outfully asserts his actual individuality and fears of exclusion. But the
promise of the orgy, in any case, is one in which Bill can yield up self-control, both by finally
relinquishing his reservations that have till now kept him from committing infidelities, and by
doing so in submitting to a ritualized systemlike a conspiracy come to lifethat will control
him instead.
The fantastical diegeses, far removed from the opening scenes realism, demonstrate just
how much Bill has lost any control over the world around him. Besides a score that sounds to be
alternately from within the scene and not, reality and fantasy, the soundtrack of voices talking
only corresponds to an image of two figures walking or staring at each other; the characters
hardly seem to be accountable for what theyre saying. Kubrick fully exploits the disconnect
between voice and body in an extremely subtle case of doubling, indicated by Michel Chion, in
which one woman is completely replaced by another within the scene, even while her voice
remains.28 The bodies are visibly different

23

even while their masks are the same, and the effect is phantasmagoric, as once again a scene
exists uneasily on the threshold between reality and fantasy, but leans forcibly toward the latter.
And so, the whole scene works as a trance, not only in the endlessly repetitive music, but in the
various ways in which everyone seems to abandon responsibility for their actions, from the
bizarre ritualizations even down to responsibility for the sounds they seem to make. As nearly
everyone remains inertly placed or moves in simple mechanized rhythms, and Bill slowly walks
from room to room, as if moving in a circuit, the orgy presents the whole of the film in a
microcosm: Bill in his Inferno, seeing the same things over and over, going nowhere, doing
nothing, following some hidden line through a subconscious world of literally unconscious,
unwilled gestures and advances.
And yet with the dramatic development of a girl accepting his newly decreed fate as her
own, the scene also presents the sudden possibility of individual choice and consequence, even if
this choice isnt Bills own, but that of a harlot deciding to die in his place. The double, writes
Freud, was originally an insurance against the extinction of the self the meaning of the
double changes: having once been an assurance of immortality, it becomes the uncanny
harbinger of death.29 She becomes his double. In allowing Bill to displace his own mortality
onto her, the inquisitors have still emphasized the fact of his own mortality, of the constant
precariousness of his life if he is not to take responsibility for it. No one can change her fate
now, says the red cloak. When a promise has been made here, there is no turning back.
Fatalism prevails, but this time, there is no retreating from what has happened. That Bill feels
responsibility, guilt, allegiance, or all some combination of all three to the mystery girl and to
Nick Nightingale, whose lives he may have helped to end, will be borne out by his insistence in
the second half of the film in retracing Nicks steps, finding out what happened to them, and

24

figuring out his own role in their lives. This role can not be denied. Bill has had some
consequence, the only consequence, death, which the film seems to ever allow.
Yet doubling provides self-affirmation as well in materially realizing ones unconscious
fantasies. These fantasies are ultimately what affirm Bill and Alices marriage, and each ones
sense of identity as contingent upon the other. As Freud writes, one may identify himself with
another and so become unsure of his true self; or he may substitute the others self for his own.
The self may thus be duplicated, divided and interchanged. Finally there is the constant
recurrence of the same thing, the repetition of the same facial features, the same characters, the
same destinies, the same misdeeds, even the same names.30 Their bond is ultimately the films
premise, point, and point of contentionAlice is Bills own doppelganger, and vice-versa.
Commentators such as Mattias Frey have noted that Alices fantasies seem to find their
realization in Bills life, though this crucial point requires some demonstration (and much
explanation).31 In Alices first confession, she relates a memory in which the glance of a sailor
both immobilized her physically and instigated a psychological fantasy. And I thought if he
wanted me, even if it was for only one night, I was ready to give up everything, she says. You,
Helena, my whole fucking future. Everything. The fantasy was left unconsummated, like Bills
fantasies throughout the film; the story receives no response, since, in one of the movies many
interruptions, Bill is called away to a dead patients family, and avoids confronting his wife
directly. On the road, he imagines her fantasy, unwittingly making it his. More conflation
follows. The dead patients family includes only Marion, and at her apartment Bill offers relief
from confronting her terrible situation directly, as he makes small talk about her happy prospects,
until she bursts out: I love you. I love you. I love you. I love you I dont want to go away
with Carl even if Im never to see you again, I want at least to live near you. Marion stages

25

Alices fantasy, but places Bill in the omnipotent role of the sailor, whose momentary glance
merits the instant love of a beautiful woman, but who finds himself under no obligation to return
the love beyond a quick physical fling to fulfill her desires. In other words, Bill seems to have
appropriated Alices fantasy and made it his sexist own: compensating for his humiliating
position as Alices potential toyif the sailor had done with her what he pleased, she would have
done with Bill what she pleasedMarion, like every woman but Alice in the film, lives only to
tantalize.
If Bills real adventure is taunting recompense for Alices doubly displaced one with
the sailor (displaced first through her imagination and then her memory), her own later fantasy
will provide little consolation to either of themonly more taunting. Everyone was fucking,
and then I I was fucking other men, so many I dont know how many I was with. And I
knew you could see me in the arms of all these men, just fucking all these men, and I I wanted
to make fun of you, to laugh in your face. Alices dream humiliates her, but appropriates the
events of the preceding scene, an orgy in which naked women slowly strut about serving men,
and partially reverses the sexist impulse: Alices subjugation at the hands (and other members) of
the many men paradoxically gives her some sort of domination over Bill, who is even more
helpless than she. Whereas the sailors glance previously asserted power and possibility, Bills
gaze is impotent; as he helplessly replays the scene in his mind for the rest of the film, he cannot
control what he sees. He is the true victim of this fantasy, even while Alice, in one of the few
completely spontaneous gestures of the film, clings to him for support. Of course, her fantasy is
an echo of the immediately preceding scene, in which Bill finds himself watching the orgy,
which, like the one in Alices dream, promises both complete sexual freedom and submission, as
weve seen. More humiliation is promised if we are to trust that Bill sees his wife in the orgys

26

holy whores, as he seems to encounter his wife in every other woman of the film, and in any
case, humiliation is duly delivered, as it is in Alices dream, when he is forced to expose himself
to the inquisitors scorn.
These doublings indicate that Bill and Alices marriage is one of the mind, even while
they mark the chasm between the couple: Alices latent desires, of course, are Bills worst fears,
but then, that is probably why they are her desires. As she admits confusedly in her first
confession about the sailor, and yet it was weird because at the same time you were dearer to
me than ever and at that moment my love for you was both tender and sad. And as we see in
her second fantasy, humiliation is a form of control; Bill can be humiliated only as much as he
loves her. Alices fantasies of other men, mirroring Bills fantasies of other women, exist only as
proof that she needs his love, or more precisely, needs to know just how much he needs her.
Even in confessing her fantasies, she is able to humiliate him and test his devotion, as her dreams
not only recall bad memories for Bill but presumably serve, once again, to make him
fantastically jealous. Still, in simply wanting to betray him, she is his double.
But what is fatalism elsewhere is liberation herethe final possibility, proposed in the
films final line, of fucking and moving on. Sex and love, as the ultimate acts of merging,
provide the final back door, the straight fucking answer, to escape the circuit of endless,
repeated frustrations, but the solution is also the ultimate in the films considerable paradoxes.
After his confrontations with Ziegler, in his mansion, and then with himself, when he sees his
mask sleeping next to his wife, Bill finally confronts his wife in confessing his journeys, and by
extension, his real desires to cheat on herthough, as has been pointed out, this confrontation
occurs in an ellipsis, so it is impossible to verify whether Bill tells the truth. Nevertheless, the
entire film has been building toward it. This confession is an obvious rebuke to his earlier

27

declaration that he would never lie to her or cheat on her; in place of his earlier, quite stale
guarantee of a vital marriage, he now vitalizes the marriage with his honesty. Still, this honesty
can hardly be an admission of realitya simple reversal of his earlier liessince even if his
voyages have been real, he has only imagined and anticipated his sins. Rather, his confession
must in any case be an admission of his fantasies. Yet even these fantasies of self-escape are not
likely to reveal much about him. So because Im a beautiful woman the only reason any man
wants to talk to me is because he wants to fuck me! Is that what youre saying? Alice demands
early in the film. But all Bills confessions could possibly expose is his stereotypical, nearly
universal, and entirely superficial male desire to be desired by womenthat this might be the
real reason they talk to him. Bills revelation, whatever it is, at best simply grants the couple the
ability to see their marriage as it is, but this is not much of a revelation, and not particularly
solacing. Bill still cant understand the outside world as anything but a reflection of himself
inwardly, and his marriage as an accumulation of lies, misgivings, and fantasies about adultery
and deception. And the best the couple can do is to recognize it as such.
Which is, of course, the point. Dont you think one of the charms of marriage is that it
makes deception a necessity for both parties? asks Szavost, the devilish Hungarian at the
opening ball, and his words may be the most revealing in the film. Just as Bill and Alices
mutually acknowledged flirtations at the ball seem to precipitate their sex back at home, their
confessions throughout the rest of the filmwhich only serve to humiliate each other, and
mostly fail to reveal anything embarrassing about themselves besides the fact that they are
somewhat embarrassingly attractiveare all that enable the supposedly happy ending. There can
be no exposure without sinful deceptions and temptations first to expose, and the marriage can

28

only seem meaningful in the face of trauma. Bills and Alices is a relationship truly built on lies
and the raising of false possibilities.
Still, Bills ultimate exposure and recognition of his fantasies finally indicates his own
acknowledgement that he has had motivations, has been acting out of his fears and desires, and
perhaps has even had some consequence on the lives of people around him, if not at all a
bettering one. If nothing else, by treating his odyssey as a subject worthy of personal confession,
Bill acknowledges his personal responsibility for his movements through the world, which are
never fully passive. Though his actions are unconsummated, and voyeurism is his only
transgression, the simple act of watching is one that is a consequence of Bills choices and itself
can have consequences for those watched as well: as the orgy proves, so much of Bills world,
rotating around him, exists for the sake of the spectator, which from his perspective, of course,
will necessarily always be himself. The actions of the watched, in other words, are enabled by
the watchers. The actions of those around Bill are enabled by Bill.32
Yet Bill is still not a particularly distinctive character, even by the films end, even while
he represents the ultimate need to expose oneself entirely. But this again is the point. Only by
exposing his most personal dreams, insecurities, and fears can he relate to his wifefor his most
personal dreams, insecurities, and fears are universal, or at least, are nearly hers. Eyes Wide Shut
may be the Kubrick film that finally proposes that there is an alternative to masks, that there is
truth in exposure. Yet just as masking makes people indistinguishable, love, sex, fantasies, and
storytelling all serve the exact same purpose in the film: they allow people to relate to each other
and to obliterate their totalizing sense of solitude and independence. All are means, like masks,
of retreating from the real world, and of assuming roles that one would never assume openly. The
difference, however, is that while masks are institutionalized from without, these more

29

constructive delusional forces must arise organically out of some genuine, mutual sentiment.
Masks are depersonalizing, but fantasies, in Eyes Wide Shut, can be both revealing and
revitalizing.
In the end, even Bills fantasies of self-annulment and self-importance define him: they
mark every step of a voyage that may change his life, and that certainly changes his marriage. At
the very least, Bill is now able to humiliate Alice, and, in wanting to do so, demonstrate just how
much she means to him and how much he wants to mean to her. What his confession really
reveals, then, is the significance he holds in her eyes. With it, he finally gains a sense of his own
autonomy and responsibility in the world even as he ties himself tighter to her. He is important at
last; yet he and Alice can obviously love each other only as long as they need each other, and can
only prove their need by taunting one another with confessions. Its the last paradox in a film of
paradoxes: Bill returns home, confronts himself, and still ends the film, as he spends most of the
film, moments away from sex, from the consummation of his desires, a balm that is at best a
temporary solution. The point, of course, is that for Bill and Alice to really love each other, they
must desire both each other and each others total lovethat they must always want something
that they dont quite have, but, even in the final moments of the film, must fantasize.

30

Mario Falsetto, Stanely Kubrick: a narrative and stylistic analysis (Westport: Praeger, 2001), 139.
Tim Kreider, Introducing Sociology, in Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of History, ed. Geoffrey
Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 292-293.
3
Schnitzler, 90.
4
Kreider, 288.
5
See especially Nelsons comprehensive cataloguing of such incidents; Nelson, 271-273.
6
Michel Chion, Eyes Wide Shut, trans. Trista Selous (London: BFI Publishing, 2002), 23.
7
Kreider, 289.
8
Nelson, 284; Chion, 75.
9
Jonathan Rosenbaum, In Dreams Being Responsibilities, in Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of
History, ed. Geoffrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 249.
10
Martin Scorsese, Introduction to Michel Ciment, Kubrick: The Definitive Edition, trans. Gilbert Adair (New York: Faber
and Faber, 199), vii.
11
All of which are detailed, to repeat the point(s), by Nelson; Nelson, 271-273
12
See, for example, James Naremore; James Naremore, On Kubrick (London: BFI, 2007), 225.
13
Though Bill says the line in an attempt to explain why his relationship isnt sexual. As he explicitly demonstrates with
Mandys corpse, however, hes just lying to Alice once again: the idea of death throughout the film is completely titillating.
14
Incidentally, this metaphor of the eye as penis itself hangs over the film, from the opening insinuation that the couples
marriage is in trouble because Bill will not look at Alice, to Alices fantasy of a mans glimpse, to the films coda, in which
Alice declares that they are awaketheir eyes are openand thus they finally can, and must fuck.
15
Ciment, 260; see also Naremore, 230-231.
16
Freud, 141.
17
Nelson, 275.
18
Siegel, 81.
19
Chion, 66.
20
Peter Lowenberg, Freud, Schnitzler, and Eyes Wide Shut, in Depth of Field: Stanley Kubrick, Film, and the Uses of
History, ed. Geoffrey Cocks, James Diedrick, and Glenn Perusek (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1996), 267.
21
Nelson, 286.
22
Nelson, 275; Ciment, 260.
23
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny (1919), in The Uncanny, trans. David Mclintock (New York: Penguin, 2003), 144.
24
Freud, 141.
25
Even more than The Shining, the debt, no doubt, is to Last Year at Marienbad, another film about high society and culture
hermetically sealed from the outside world and turning into the statues they collect, as the world is recreated out of a mans
imagination of it, and the boundaries between reality and fantasy dissolve altogether.
26
Ibid. 150.
27
Aside from Bills stag film fantasy of his wifes fantasy having sex with a sailor, which is replayed over and over in black
and white, but doesnt take place within in the narrative; it is the one unambiguous fantasy in the entire film, so removed
from the films narrative in its subject, mise-en-scne, and context that the rest of the film appears to be reality in contrast.
28
Chion, 8.
29
Freud, 142.
30
Freud, 142.
31
Mattias Frey, Fidelio: Love, Adaptation, and Eyes Wide Shut, Literature/Film Quarterly, 34.1 (2006), 40.
32
To see is to act, in the film, and in taking responsibility for his life, Bill must take responsibility for his visionsit is they,
if nothing else, that make him unique. It is here that we see the most conspicuous parallels with another film about a hero
who discovers voyeurism to be an active force dictating his life and impelling him to dictate the lives of those around him:
Alfred Hitchcocks Vertigo. Like Vertigo, also maligned at its release, Eyes Wide Shut features a detective protagonist
following the paths of others, doing little but watching, yet ultimately seeking to objectify the world to match his sexual
fantasies. Scottie is doomed when he is abandoned to a more complicated reality that refuses to support these fantasies;
Eyes Wide Shut is a presumably more frustrating film, since Bill remains in the same realmreality or fantasy, it is unclear
for the entirety of the film, even while both the opening and closing shots demonstrate the inadequacies of a complicated
reality to allow for any sort of simple-minded sexual fantasy.
2