Is "Eyes Wide Shut" a good movie? Was Stanley Kubrick a good director?

And, they got to Epstein.

 

Wow. You really think “Traumnovelle” by Arthur Schnitzler is fairly blunt?

 

That’s a good question I’ve asked myself too. Has your question ever been answered?

 

Watch this take on the film:



Kubrick appears in the movie watch at 40 second mark in this video.

 

Is "Eyes Wide Shut" a good movie?
No

Was Stanley Kubrick a good director?
Yes.

 

The password was "Jeffrey Epstein". Not sure who the current host will be.
Typical Kubrick movie.

 

That's not Kubrick.

 

I always thought the idea of organized rituals as silly. And orgies framed around rituals seems absurd. "Yes, we must go through these motions first before we start pairing off or else it's not gonna work right. And be sure to wear this cloak and mask or it might anger "it" and we will be forbidden to engage in future pleasure at this house, and oh, just attractive people please, because that's what "it" wants. My opinion of the film? I've watched probably three times, usually at Christmas. Love the colored lights in almost every scene, could do without the whole orgy concept and instead replace it with something more realistic as far as infidelity goes. There is something about the whole film that is intriguing though and I especially like Nicole's fantasy monolog. Men, you have no idea...

 

Hard to tell, but that's Christiane at the table with him (per IMDB). His daughter Katharina has a cameo in a doctor's office scene. So it's not beyond the realm of possibility that Stanley would pull a Hitchcock.

 

20 facts regarding EWS:

20 Facts About <em>Eyes Wide Shut</em> On Its 20th Anniversary

 

"A man resembling Kubrick is seen when Bill meets Nightingale in the Cafe Sonata. You can see him at one of the tables, talking to a woman just as Nick sits down. This man wasn't Kubrick, a fact confirmed by his daughter Katharina Kubrick Hobbs on amk. However Katharina and Kubrick's assistant Emilio D'Alessandro both appear in the film. Katharina and her son are the patient and mother in Dr Bill's surgery and Emilio is the newspaper seller Dr Bill stops to buy a paper from when he is being stalked by the mysterious bald man."

Eyes Wide Shut Easter Egg - Kubrick Cameo

 

To answer your questions:

1. I thought it was decent but have to admit it's probably one of his weakest films.
2. He is hailed as one of the most influential director's in the history of film, so I don't know if there is really that much of a debate on whether or not he was a good director!

As an aside if you want to see a film with some interesting lighting choices possibly influenced by Kubrick's Barry Lyndon where there were many scenes with just candlelight and no artificial lighting, check out the film " The Favorite" by director Yorogs Lanthimos who used almost no artificial lighting throughout filming.

The Favourite - Wikipedia

 

As you may or may not know, the whole subject of aspect ratios and Stanley Kubrick can and does occupy many pages on the Internet. Mr. Kubrick was of a time when televisions were mostly 4:3 shaped, and he was one of those that didn't like black bars on the top and bottom of those kind of screens, so he generally shot his films with an open matte so as to be able to fill those 4:3 screens and yet close off some of the top and bottom of the picture for 1.85:1 movie screens. This also applied to EYES WIDE SHUT.

In fact, when his movies were being made available on VHS, LaserDiscs, and early DVDs, Stanley compelled the releasing entities to go with the "full-screen" option (a term I dislike), so that his movies would fill out the TVs of the day, largely 4:3 in shape. When EYES WIDE SHUT first appeared on DVD in 1999, it featured this legend:

[THIS FEATURE IS PRESENTED IN THE FULL ASPECT RATIO OF THE ORIGINAL CAMERA NEGATIVE, AS STANLEY KUBRICK INTENDED]

This was one of the old WB snapper releases of the day. It also was the R-rated version with the censored images during the masked-ball orgy scene.

Now I'm normally someone who loves widescreen images and I support original aspect ratios all the time. But with the reappearance of this thread, I did a little digging into the whole aspect ratio thing with regard to this film. When I got the later DVD and the Blu-ray, both were matted to fill the 1.78:1 flat TV screens common in the modern era. As I've watched the film a few times, I've sometimes felt that it was missing something. There's something about the vertical space in this movie that opens it up and gives a better feeling of some of the opulent settings in which the movie takes place.

Here's an example. Very early in the movie, Kidman and Cruise are walking down a corridor in their luxury apartment, getting ready for the party that evening. In the widescreen version, the scene looks like this:



In the fullscreen edition, the scene looks like this:



To me, the higher top and bottom give more of a feel of the bigness, the elegance of the place. Maybe Kubrick was onto something with his edicts.

And the widescreen image is not just a center cut. If you try that with your zoom function on the fullscreen DVD, you'll end up with a lot of cut-off heads. In this particular frame, the widescreen cut is higher than the center, cutting off more of the bottom.



I don't know. I'm not going to be watching the old DVD in favor of the Blu-ray, but as we're discussing the film, it's at least a subject for discussion.

 

SK loved maintaining the vertical height of 1.33 Academy over wider imagery but eventually realized that he would have to learn to work with 1.85 for both the industry and most theaters. For The Shining, FMJ and EWS 1.85 is the intended ratio but he did make sure to protect for 1.33 keeping the eventual TV and video versions in mind. They are an interesting alternative visually but are not the intended way to see those respective films.
Ironically the two that should be discussed more in terms of their ratio are not. Both The Killing and Paths of Glory were 1.33 until their HD restorations released via Criterion where they became 1.66. Since both are after most studio had widescreen changeovers it is very likely they were shown matted originally but they work beautifully in both ratios.

EWS is the one title that cries out for a new transfer. Every video incarnation is a poor imitation but the outdated HD master is a HORRID completely incorrect rendering of the amazing, vivid and super grainy 1999 release prints.

 

I agree with Kubrick. Back in the early nineties, I had a 40" rear projection TV in my apartment. One day I was watching on of those "letterboxed" movies with large black bands across the top and the bottom of the screen.

The picture area itself was not very large vertically. I went and measured it and found it to only be 17" high.

I don't like to have a vertically reduced image on a regular TV set, just to "preserve" the original "wide screen" picture.

This is not how the movie was intended to be viewed.

In the cinema, when movies went to wide screen ratios, that meant that the screen was enlarged horizontally, and the vertical image height was maintained, the same as it was in a 4:3 ratio image.

Make a screen wider, but don't cut down the vertical size just so that the image can appear wider.

People had been watching movies on TV for years without looking at black bars at the top and the bottom of their TV sets.

Certain compromises are make to view movies at home on regular TV sets of the day. Everyone was aware that movies were adapted to fir the TV format.

"Purists" can see the movie in a movie theater, if they want the full movie experience.

Watching a movie on a 20" TV is not even close to a real movie theater experience, it is a TV set. Live with it.

 

I've never seen this movie before but from what I have read from a man's perspective, since there are some beautiful women in this movie, it is better that you have your "eyes wide open" when when watching it.

 

Of course it's a good film. It features a younger Nicole Kidman wearing next to nothing.

 

To me the opening shot of her nude with her back to the camera is at once completely arresting, teasing, darkly funny, sets the tone and is truly reminiscent of Kubrick’s Look Magazine early days.

 

Recent re-watch really brought that point from the movie home to me. The whole rich folks orgy scene/conspiracy actually became a bit superfluous - and gratuitous - to what I thought was the main theme of female sexuality and the societal repercussions caused by patriarchal dominance of such.

 

Indeed. The movie was promoted as Kubrick's take on an erotic movie, at least that's what the publicity machine led us to believe. So I love the fact that immediately after the title, we're given a nude shot of Nicole Kidman for a few seconds, as if Stanley were saying, "There - you got what you wanted - now pay attention to the movie."

 

It's not one of Kubrick's best films, but it's worth a watch.

 

Eyes Wide Shut is being re-released in the UK in November. It's the only Kubrick film that I saw on original release so may revisit for nostalgia reasons if nothing else.

 

Thanks for the heads up - EWS is my favourite SK film along with 2001. 2001 I’ve seen at the cinema in 35mm in the year 2001, and again last year in 70mm. I will happily drive to Liverpool, Manchester or Leeds to see EWS on the big screen. Time to start checking cinema listings, especially for FACT (Liverpool) & HOME (Manchester, formerly The Cornerhouse).

 

I think this film is Kubrick's equivalent to Lynch's Mulholland Drive. Both films have their fans as well as detractors, kinda what comes to mind when one says "mixed reviews". I applaud Kubrick for going as far as he did with this film. I remember going into a music store shortly after I saw it, and someone played one of the piano motifs from the film. I whipped around, and the dude gave me this grin. I was surprised that Cruise/Kidman/Pollack were all in on what I consider to be an art film. I think that the public expected a action thriller, and this film...wasn't that.

As for aspect ratios, supposedly SK saw 2001 butchered on so many screens that he abandoned 'scope shortly thereafter.



Dan