Eyes Wide Shut

Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 erotic psychological mystery thriller film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick, and starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. The plot centers on a Manhattan doctor who is shocked when his wife reveals that she contemplated cheating on him. He embarks on a night-long adventure and infiltrates a masked orgy of a secret society. It is based on the 1926 novella Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle) by Arthur Schnitzler, and transfers the story's setting from early twentieth-century Vienna to 1990s New York City. Kubrick obtained the filming rights for Dream Story in the 1960s, considering it a perfect text for a film adaptation about sexual relations. He revived the project in the 1990s when he hired writer Frederic Raphael to help him with the adaptation. An international co-production between the United Kingdom and United States, principal photography of Eyes Wide Shut began in late 1996 in England, with a detailed recreation of exterior Greenwich Village street scenes built at Pinewood Studios. The film's production, at 400 days, holds the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous film shoot. Following an extensive post-production process that began in early 1998, Kubrick submitted his final cut of the film to Warner Bros. on March 1, 1999, which was viewed by Cruise, Kidman, and studio executives. Kubrick died of a heart attack six days later. Some post-production was resumed the week after Kubrick's death, which led to some public debate over the film's state of completion. Warner Bros. began an extensive marketing campaign to promote the film in early 1999, though its publicity materials were vague in nature and marketed the film as an erotic thriller. Eyes Wide Shut had its world premiere in Los Angeles on July 13, 1999, before being released in the United States on July 16 and in the United Kingdom on September 10. It received generally positive reviews from critics, and was nominated for numerous awards, including the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score. The film was met with significant critical notice in France, receiving a César Award nomination for Best Foreign Film, as well as winning the award in the same category from the French Syndicate of Cinema Critics. It was also named the best film of the year by Cahiers du Cinéma in their annual top ten list. The film was a box-office success, earning $162 million worldwide, making it Kubrick's highest-grossing film in unadjusted dollars.