Eyes Wide Shut, Scientology, & Vivian Kubrick - The Conspiracy

At some point in the conversation, Nick mentions that he has another gig to play later in the evening. Bill inquires about the gig and Nick reveals to Bill that he doesn’t even know where it is, as the gig itself is held at a different location every time. This piques Bill’s curiosity, he asks what is the big mystery? Nick cryptically replies, ‘I just play the piano’ while he holds up his hands.

Bill continues to press Nick about the gig. Nick tells Bill that he is hired to play the piano blindfolded, and goes on to reveal that one time he was playing and the blindfold wasn’t on so well. He tells Bill that there are women at the party, women like he has never seen before. Before Nick can continue, he is interrupted by a phone call. While on the phone he gives a few confirmatory yeses and reaches to write something down on his drink napkin. While trying to write on the napkin, Bill holds it down to keep it steady, demonstrating that Bill is eager to know more.

59:57

Nick writes the word Fidelio on the napkin and ends the phone call. Bill asks what the word is and Nick replies, ‘It’s the name of a Beethoven opera, isn’t it?’ Bill smirks and Nick tells him that it is the password. Before Nick leaves Bill insists that he take him to the party. Nick informs Bill that he wouldn’t even be able to get in because everybody there is in costume and says, ‘Where the hell are you going to find a costume at this hour of the morning?’

The scene ends and we see Bill exiting a cab, telling the driver to keep the change. He steps out in front of a store called Rainbow Fashion.

1:01:36

Remember the models at the beginning of the film? The two women trying to seduce Bill at Ziegler’s party? They asked him if he wanted to go where the Rainbow ends. Well it certainly doesn’t end here, but the words and actions of the two models are ever more significant in this scene.

Bill calls the storeowner on the buzzer at the front of the building. He believes he is paging an old patient of his named Peter, the former owner of Rainbow Fashion. The man that answers the buzzer and introduces himself as Mr. Militch. He finally makes his way down the stairs and confronts Bill through the window of the door, and informs Bill that the man who once owned Rainbow Fashion has sold the store and moved away. As an act of good faith Bill holds up his medical board certification in attempt to enhance his credibility.

Militch tries to turn Bill down but Bill insists he let him rent a costume and offers to pay $100 over the rental price. When Mr. Militch declines, Bill raises it to $200 over the rental price. Militch accepts and lets Bill in.

Again, we see Bill bribing his way into the secret society, and he is much closer than he realizes. We will see evidenced later in the film that Rainbow Fashion is actually involved in the secret society, both as a supplier for their costumes and as a supplier for child sex slaves. Rainbow Fashion is actually a front for the secret society. The fashion/entertainment industry is also involved in the secret society. Gayle & Nuala, the models from Ziegler’s party, are high fashion models. They are a representation of goddess worship in society, they are also connected to the secret society, and it is possible that they are victims of Monarch/MK Ultra style mind control as well as victims of child sex abuse.

Rainbow Fashion, having the word fashion in the title, is also connected to the fashion/entertainment industry. Kubrick is trying to convey both a specific message about the Hollywood/Fashion/Entertainment establishment and a generalized message (derived from Schnitzler) about people in all different levels of society that define themselves unconsciously through their sexual inhibition both on an individual and on a social level. Kubrick is trying to tell us that people from various elite institutions find similarity in their sexual inhibition that is proportionate to their influence on society. These are people that presumably control the world, and in order to feed into that pathology they reinforce their desire for control over society by practicing sex magick. The way they sacrifice the flesh of the sacred feminine is a sexualized projection of their desire to dominate human civilization.

1:04:30

Immediately we see Christmas lights on the cage surrounding the door, and a Christmas tree on the floor. Bill tells Militch that he needs a ‘a tux, a cloak with a hood, and a mask.’ What happens next is very important. To the first time viewer of Eyes Wide Shut, one does not know from the first time watching the film that Militch is connected to the secret society, Kubrick offers no clues up front. Well, he does but it is only after having watched the film many times that one can come to the conclusion that Militch is connected to the secret society.

So Bill gives Militch the order. A tux, a cloak with a hood, and a mask. Militch repeats the order back to Bill, almost quizzically. This is because Militch just realized where Bill is going tonight, he is going to orgy being held by the secret society. Militch is now wondering whether or not this is for real, or if this is a test, if this man is attempting to infiltrate the secret society, or if he himself is an agent of the secret society. Playing it cool, Militch goes along with the charade, because that’s what it is, only Bill doesn’t realize it.

In the screenplay the dialogue is actually transcribed from Traumnovelle, almost verbatim, and Militch’s name is Gibson:

GIBSON
Okay, now let me get this straight. You
want a tuxedo, a black monk's cassock
and a mask that completely covers your
face?

BILL
That's it.

GIBSON
I have to tell you doctor, I've had some
very strange requests in my day and
this is certainly one of them.

BILL
It's for a good cause.

It is typical for directors to expand upon the screenplay and explore more creative freedom once on the set. But again, the film overlays Kubrick’s modern adaption with the symbolism of Schnitzler’s Dream Story. At some point along the way Kubrick deviated from the script and chose to go with Militch instead of Gibson. Militch takes the store owner in the novella to a whole new level in the film.

It is important to contrast what deviations and ad libs made it in the film versus what is in the screenplay. Because the next thing we see in the film, Militch replies to Bill:

I think we can find something for you.

Militch says we in the first person plural form. This is because we is a reference to the secret society.

He leads Bill into another room filled with mannequins & costumes, many wearing Domino masks and some wearing Venetian masks. Notice the white/golden Christmas lights in the store are the same from Ziegler’s party. Militch asks Bill what color cloak and says ‘red? brown? red?’ Militch says red twice, perhaps he believes that Bill could be the master of ceremonies for the orgy, Red Cloak. This sentiment is echoed later by Militch’s daughter when she whispers something into Bill’s ear.

Bill tells Militch that he wants a black cloak. Militch pauses for a moment to get Dr. Harfords professional opinion on his hair loss. After Bill explains that he is not that kind of medical doctor, Militch get short with him. This was Militch testing to see if he was really a doctor, after all he showed his medical license to him. Bill’s inability to provide Militch with a diagnosis for his hair loss only adds to Militch’s level of suspicion. He angrily reaches over to a rack of cloaks and we see at the front of the rack Militch starts to grab the red cloak for Bill.

1:06:29

The two are interrupted by a noise coming from another room in the store. Militch asks Bill if he heard the noise, Bill nods yes.

Remember this is a charade… Militch walks over to the window of the other room in the store and peeks through the glass.

We see for a brief moment the lower three points of an 8 pointed star on the wall in the room they are in, connecting the Rainbow Fashion to Ziegler and to the secret society of goddess worship. Even though the majority of the star is out of frame, one can see that the angles between each of the 3 points visible is 45 degrees, thus confirming through the use of extrapolation that the star hanging on the wall is indeed 8 points.



Militch turns on the lights and enters the room and finds a woman’s lingerie on the sofa. While he is examining the lingerie, he hears someone sneeze and pulls back costume hanging on a rack to find an almost naked Japanese man in women’s make-up hiding behind the costume.

1:07:13

Militch demands he tell him what is going on. The man replies and refers to Militch by name, telling him that he can explain everything.

Militch turns around to find his teenage daughter hiding behind the sofa. With the wig he just removed from the make-up covered Japanese man wearing a speedo, he smacks his daughter on the head, screaming at her telling her he promises that he will kill her for this. Suddenly another Japanese man arises from behind the sofa, this one is also wearing make-up, is fully naked except for the pillow he is clutching over his privates, and is also wearing a wig from the store. The two men obviously know Militch as they know his name. The first man tries to tell Militch that they were invited by the young lady. Militch exclaims that the young lady is his daughter, and reminds them that she is a still a child. Still enraged and yelling at the top of his lungs, Militch tells the men they will have to explain everything to the police.

Militch attempts to strike his daughter when suddenly she flees from behind the sofa into the other room and uses Bill as a human shield to protect from her livid father.

1:07:51

The first Japanese man insists again that they were invited to the store by the young lady. Militch replies by telling them that she is deranged. He locks them into the room and returns to tend to Dr. Harford, whom is still shielding Militch’s daughter behind him. Militch begins to ask Bill what color cloak he wanted again, but he stops before he can finish to yell at the two Japanese men who are now screaming from inside the locked room demanding he lets them out. Remember this is all a charade… Militch goes back to the rack of cloaks and turns to tell his daughter she is a depraved creature, and that she must go to bed at once for he will be dealing with her in the morning.

Militch then turns back around to the rack, angrily thumbing through cloaks. What happens next is one of the most important parts of the film. Militch’s daughter whispers something in Bill’s ear.

1:08:33

Unintelligible to the audience listening in the theater, her words are revealed on the blu ray when you turn the subtitles on.

What Militch’s daughter actually whispers to Bill is:

You should have a cloak lined with ermine.

This is a simplified version of what it said to Fridolin (Bill) in Schnitzler’s Dream Story. In Dream Story the store owner’s daughter speaks aloud to her father in the presence of Fridolin and says:



In the novella, she tells Fridolin he should have a red cloak lined with ermine. Let’s take a moment to examine the symbolism of ermine.

Ermine: in heraldry is a "fur", or varied tincture, consisting of a white background with a pattern of black shapes representing the winter coat of the stoat (a species of weasel with white fur and a black-tipped tail). The linings of medieval coronation cloaks and some other garments, usually reserved to use by high-ranking peers and royalty, were made by sewing many ermine furs together to produce a luxurious white fur with patterns of hanging black-tipped tails. Due largely to the association of the ermine fur with the linings of coronation cloaks, crowns and peerage caps, the heraldic tincture of ermine was usually reserved to similar applications in heraldry (i.e., the linings of crowns and chapeaux and of the royal canopy).

Taken from The Symbolism of Purity in the Christmas Scene by Marian Horvat:

It is quite appropriate that the Three Kings should have ermine-trimmed cloaks, for the ermine is a symbol rich in meaning and depth. Deep calleth unto deep, as the Psalm says. In this case, the ermine is a symbol with one layer after another of meaning, each one calling to the next with a more profound sense.

Because of its pure white fur the ermine became a symbol of moral purity and innocence. Even more marvelous, the medieval bestiary tells us, is that the ermine, with its beautiful white coat, would rather die before soiling its fur. According to Aelian, the ermine, falling into a mud puddle, would immediately die of sorrow.

What Militch’s daughter is telling Bill, is that he should be in the secret society. And not only should he be in it, he should be ruling it as Red Cloak. Remember this is a charade. They either don’t know that Bill is clueless about the secret society or they believe he is sent there to test them. If we assume that Militch & his daughter believe Bill is testing them, it would reinforce the idea that they should respond with flatter, suggesting that he should be the secret society’s king.

Bill is back in another cab on his way to the party.

1:08:42

We see the cab driver take Bill over the Long Island Bridge and eventually through the countryside of a small town. On the way Bill is of course looking down in the cab doing his thousand mile stare, imagining his wife with the Naval Officer. His visions of the two grows more explicit throughout the film. The driver takes them down a long secluded road surrounded by woods until they arrive at the entrance of Somerton estate, the sign just says Sumerton.

The gate is blue, the jeep on the other side is red, there is a security camera perched at the top of the gate, and there are two official looking men standing guard at the gate.

The cab pulls over and Bill settles up the meter with the driver. He pays gives the man $80 for a tab of $74.50, and for the $50 over the meter that Bill promised the cab driver, Bill pulls out a 100 dollar bill. With the bill in hand Bill tears the bill in half and hands the man one half telling him he’ll give him the other half when he gets back, plus whatever the meter is. The driver agrees and Bill steps out.

The gentlemen greet Bill, who is standing at the gated entrance unmasked (and on camera). One of the two men ask if they can be of any help to him tonight. Bill replies with the password, Fidelio. One of the men thanks him and offers to take him up to the house in the red Jeep.

Ok pause.

Before we continue there are some critical facts that you must be aware of before we delve into the orgy scene.

First off, the mansion at Somerton in real life is Mentmore Towers:

Mentmore Towers, historically known simply as "Mentmore", is a 19th-century English country house built between 1852 and 1854 for the Rothschild family in the village of Mentmore in Buckinghamshire. Sir Joseph Paxton and his son-in-law, George Henry Stokes, designed the building in the 19th-century revival of late 16th and early 17th-century Elizabethan and Jacobean styles called Jacobethan The house was designed for the banker and collector of fine art Baron Mayer de Rothschild as a country home, and as a display case for his collection of fine art. The mansion has been described as one of the greatest houses of the Victorian era.

Mentmore was the first of what were to become virtual Rothschild enclaves in the Vale of Aylesbury. Baron Mayer de Rothschild began purchasing land in the area in 1846. Later, other members of the family built houses at Tring in Hertfordshire, Ascott, Aston Clinton, Waddesdon and Halton.

That is correct, the famous mansion where the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut takes place is in real life a Rothschild palace in Buckinghamshire, England. What’s more, apparently the Rothschilds own the majority of land in Buckinghamshire and in one part of Rothschild owned territory there can be found this venetian mask on a statue:



But it doesn’t stop there. You also need to know that in 1972 the Rothschilds had something similar to the orgy in Eyes Wide Shut, a Surrealist Ball at their chateau in Ferrières, France.

An article at sobadsogood.com describes the party in some detail:

There have been few dinners parties quite like it.

It's December 12 1972, the night at which Marie-Hélène de Rothschild held her famous Surrealist Ball at Ferrières. As you can probably guess by her surname, she was a member of the ultra-wealthy Rothschild banking family. Few made the guest-list but if you did, it was the ultimate seal of approval from Parisian high-society.

Salvador Dali was brought in for the art direction:

Even the great Salvador Dali was in attendance that evening, no doubt being bewitching and entertaining in equal amounts. This is just an account from just one of her parties - she had many. But whatever the date, whomever attended, she was meticulous in planning every finite detail, making sure each gathering was an intriguing (and clearly intoxicating) blend of art, literature, haute couture and dance.

Here are some pictures of the event:











Not quite venetian masks, but you get the idea. The theme and decorations for the party were intended to be disturbing.

And there is of course the fact that Rothschild is taken from the German name Rotshild or ‘rot schild’ which in German means red shield. The use of red symbolizing sex & power throughout the film is overwhelming. And the Rothschild references just keep popping up.

Here is a picture of the Rothschild coat of arms:




Taken from an article at truthcontrol.com:

"The coat of arms of the Rothschild banking family. Their family's insignia is strikingly similar to the Royal Arms of England, and we do not think this is mere coincidence. Suggestively, their surname means "red shield." The red background of their family shield is identical to that found on the heraldic arms of the Byzantine emperors and Vatican. Although the Rothschilds are not of royal blood, they have served the Venetian and Hanoverian royals from whom their power is derived. Above his door, Amschel Mayer Rothschild displayed the solar eagle of Aton, with five arrows in its claws, nearly identical to that seen on the US one dollar bill." -- Michael Tsarion

Taken from Vigilant Citizen:

The location selected to film the elite scenes is quite interesting. Mentmore Towers was built in the 19th century as a country house for a member of the most prominent and powerful elite family in the world: The Rothschilds. By selecting this location, was Kubrick trying to show his audience the “real world” equivalents to the ultra-elite shown in the movie? Incidentally, the name of Bill’s connection to the elite, Victor Ziegler, is of German-Jewish origin, like Rothschild.

Also don’t forget that Tom Cruise in real life is a Scientologist. And that L Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, was a member of a Crowleyian Occult order (OTO) that practiced sex magick. In particular, L Ron Hubbard had performed the Babalon Working with fellow sex magician and rocket scientist Jack Parsons. They sought after the scarlet woman (see Part V).

Next, you need to know what Fidelio is. From Wikipedia:

Fidelio (originally named Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe; English: Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love), Op. 72, is a German opera with spoken dialogue by Ludwig van Beethoven, his only opera. The German libretto was originally prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly and the work premiered at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805. The next year Stephan von Breuning (de) helped shorten the three acts to two. After further work on the libretto by Georg Friedrich Treitschke a final version performed at the Kärntnertortheater on 23 May 1814. By convention both of the first two versions are referred to as Leonore.

The opera tells how Leonore, disguised as a prison guard named "Fidelio", rescues her husband Florestan from death in a political prison. Bouilly's scenario fits Beethoven's aesthetic and political outlook: a story of personal sacrifice, heroism and eventual triumph (the usual topics of Beethoven's "middle period") with its underlying struggle for liberty and justice mirroring contemporary political movements in Europe. Some notable moments in the opera include the "Prisoners' Chorus", an ode to freedom sung by a chorus of political prisoners, Florestan's vision of Leonore come as an angel to rescue him, and the scene in which the rescue finally takes place. The finale celebrates Leonore's bravery with alternating contributions of soloists and chorus.

Kubrick’s brilliance is back at it again with symbolic references to classical music & literature. Kubrick was indeed a very well read and very cultured person, having grown up in New York City he was fortunate enough to be exposed to a vast amount of culture. In Dream Story the password is Denmark. His choice to use the word Fidelio as the password takes on two symbolic meanings. Firstly, fidelio means fidelity, as in loyalty to one’s lover. Second, Beethoven’s opera is about a woman who sneaks into a prison disguised as a male prison guard to save her husband who is incarcerated for political crimes. That Leonore uses a disguise is a parallel to what we are about to see in the orgy scene.

One more thing you need to know before we can continue is that in the original screenplay the password was actually Fidelio Rainbow.

GATEMAN 1 (polite and well-spoken)
Good morning, sir.

BILL
Good morning.

GATEMAN 1
Can we be of any help you?

BILL
I suppose you'd like the password?

GATEMAN 1
If you wouldn't mind, sir.

BILL (slowly)
Fidelio Rainbow..

GATEMAN 1
Thank you, sir.

The gate is opened.

Ok.

Now we finally get to see where the rainbow ends.

Bill is escorted to the front of the mansion in the red Jeep.

1:11:41

He steps out, still unmasked. He is walked up to to door, notice the faces in the door. He now enters the mansion, still unmasked. This is the only setting in the film that Bill enters that doesn’t have any sign of Christmas in it. No Christmas trees or lights, therefor this is where the rainbow ends. Instead of Christmas lights, we see on both sides of the entrance doors, statues of Athena holding up a set of lights over her head. Lucifer means light bringer in Latin. Athena is the sacred feminine in this case, the one who illuminates. Remember that these people are practicing sex magick. They seek to achieve divination by means of harnessing their sexual energy.

1:12:06

Bill hands his coat to the doorman, places his mask on his face, and enters the main room. Every assistant to the secret society is in a tux and wearing the same Venetian mask.

Seen in the center of the main ballroom is the master of ceremonies, Red Cloak. Surrounding him are the sacred feminines, the objects of the ritual.

The women are wearing Venetian masks that resemble female faces and they are all covered in black cloaks. And surrounding them all throughout the rest of the room are hundreds of attendees all wearing Venetian masks, all wearing black cloaks, and all are standing motionless fixated on the ritual.

We see Nick in the back of the room playing keyboard blindfolded.

The vocals from the music heard in the background are of a Romanian Orthodox Catholic liturgy, and played in reverse. Being played underneath the vocals are the strings of a viola. Though we see Nick playing the keyboard which is meant to illustrate the sound coming from his instrument, in reality the strings heard are being played by Jocelyn Pook, the person who Kubrick hired to score Eyes Wide Shut when his daughter Vivian turned it down in favor of joining Scientology.

Taken from Eyes Wide Shut’s Wikipedia page:

Pook was hired after choreographer Yolande Snaith rehearsed the masked ball orgy scene using Pook's composition "Backwards Priests" – which features a Romanian Orthodox Divine Liturgy recorded in a church in Baia Mare, played backwards – as a reference track. Kubrick then called the composer and asked if she had anything else "weird" like that song, which was reworked for the final cut of the scene, with the title "Masked Ball". Pook ended up composing and recording four pieces of music, many times based on her previous work, totaling 24 minutes. The composer's work ended up having mostly string instruments – including a viola played by Pook herself – with no brass or woodwinds as Pook "just couldn't justify these other textures", particularly as she wanted the tracks played on dialogue-heavy scenes to be "subliminal" and felt such instruments would be intrusive.

Another track in the orgy, "Migrations", features a Tamil song sung by Manickam Yogeswaran, a Carnatic singer. The original cut had a scriptural recitation of the Bhagavad Gita, which Pook took from a previous Yogeswaran recording. As a result of Hindus protesting against their most sacred scripture being used in such a context,Warner Bros. issued a public apology, and hired the singer to record a similar track to replace the chant.

While Bill is observing the ritual he looks around the room and sees two guests turn and look directly at him. As if they know who he is already (remember the camera at the front gate). The guests are of course wearing Venetian masks, the shot is a long slow zoom to the balcony where the two guests are standing.

1:15:48

From Vigilant Citizen:

A couple wearing Venetian masks (more specifically “female jester” and “bauta” masks) slowly turn towards Bill and nod in a very creepy matter. Is this Ziegler and his wife? Perhaps. Kubrick likes to keep things mysterious.

Although it is never revealed, it is safe to assume that the two masked guests are Ziegler and his wife, and Ziegler nods to Bill to acknowledge his presence.

Now we see Red Cloak performing a something similar to a backwards Catholic mass. He is carrying the incense lantern and waving it around all of the women. With his staff he slams the floor beneath him to instruct the women to remove their cloaks. They do so and reveal that beneath the cloaks they are fully nude.

This is an echo of the very first image in the film, when Alice drops her black dress while standing in front of the red triangle. Red Cloak begins going around to each woman one by one and tapping his staff to the ground, instructing them to go out into the crowd of guests and select a mate at random.

One of the women walks directly up to Bill and places her mask up to his in a gesture intended to imitate a passionate kiss although their lips never touch. This woman has long red hair similar to Bill’s wife Alice. She escorts him out of the room, followed by the other women and their selected mates.

She whispers through her mask:

I’m not sure what you think you are doing. You don’t belong here.

Bill tells her she has mistaken him for someone else. The woman tells him not to be foolish and that he must leave now. Bill asks her who she is and tells him ‘it doesn’t matter who I am, you are in great danger.’ Before Bill can speak another word the two are interrupted by another masked patron who asks if Bill will excuse them for a moment.

The man and the woman ascend up a staircase. The woman turns and looks back at Bill and continues on up the stairs holding the hand of her knew handler.

By this time the song Migrations by Jocelyn Pook comes on. The main ritual is over and now the fornication can commence. Bill wanders slowly through the corridors of the mansion, seeing different people in different sexual positions in every room. And in every room there are more people standing watching than there are fornicating. Notice all the seating furniture is red. The carpet everywhere is red.

Bill finds his way to a room he finds interesting and parks it there for a moment or two when (presumed to be) Ziegler walks in with another one of the sacred feminines from the ritual.

Looking at this woman’s body and hair, one might assume she is the prostitute Domino. Notice the two of them enter the room from behind Bill, even though they are looking at him from behind and cannot see his mask, they already know it is him. There doesn’t appear to be any cameras inside the mansion (for obvious reasons) so we really don’t have an excuse for their omniscience except for… clairvoyance?

The woman asks Bill if he’s enjoying himself. He responds by telling her that he’s had an interesting look around. She asks him if he wants to go somewhere a little more private. He tells her yes, but before the two can wander off together they are interrupted by the red haired woman from before, the woman that tried to warn Bill. She intervenes and asks if she can borrow Bill for a moment and promises to bring him right back.

Once alone in a corridor the woman continues to warn Bill, telling him he cannot fool them for much longer. He asks her why she is telling him this, she insists that it doesn't matter. Bill asks her if she will leave with him. She tells him that is impossible. He tries to remove her mask and she evades his reach, turning and running away looking noticeably panicked.

Bill is approached by one of the assistants to the party.

This man in real life is Jan Harlan, Christiane Kubrick’s cousin. Jan Harlan’s father actually made films for Goebbels during the rise of the Nazi regime. He was tried for it after the end of the war and was able to prove that his films were altered by Goebbels to make them antisemitic. He was exonerated twice.

From Wikipedia:

Film critic David Thomson asserts that [Viet] Harlan, having just started directing in 1935, was only able to attract Goebbels' attention because so much directorial talent had emigrated from Germany after the Nazis had taken power. By 1937, Joseph Goebbels had appointed Harlan as one of his leading propaganda directors. His most notorious film was Jud Süß (1940), which was made for anti-Semitic propaganda purposes in Germany and Austria. In 1943 it received UFA's highest awards. Karsten Witte, the film critic, provided a fitting appellation for Harlan calling him "the baroque fascist". Harlan made the Reich's loudest, most colorful and expensive films.

The masked assistant asks Bill if he is the man with taxi cab waiting for him, he tells Bill that the cab driver is at the front door and would urgently like a word with him. Now we see Nick being led off blindfolded through a separate ballroom where there are men dancing with men and women dancing with women.

1:23:58

This implies that homosexuality is acceptable to the secret society, maybe only behind closed doors, and definitely relegated to a controlled population. He leads Bill to the door, except that it isn’t the front door to the mansion. The man has led Bill back into the main room where the ritual took place.

The room is silent, Red cloak is seated on his throne in the center of the room and surrounded by hundreds of attendees all staring directly at Bill. Now we hear the creepy piano from the movie trailer.

Red Cloak asks Bill to come forward, which he does. When he does so, all the guests in the room surround him in a circle so that he cannot flee. Notice Red Cloak’s accent is British.

Red Cloak asks Bill for the password, Bill answers Fidelio.

Red Cloak acknowledges that is the correct password for admittance, but proceeds to ask Bill what the password is for the house. Bill pauses for a moment, he cannot come up with an answer. He reluctantly tells Red Cloak that he must have forgotten it.

1:26:34

While we are here take notice of the double headed eagle & crown on Red Cloak’s throne. Vigilant Citizen reports that this symbol is used to represent 33rd degree Freemasonry, but another user on ATS has since debunked that and informed me that the bi-cephalous (or two headed eagle) has only been used in the Scottish Rite to symbolize man’s duality contained in unity, both temporary & eternal. Either way, the double headed eagle appears on the coat of arms for many royal families and nation states. Even if not explicitly referring to masons, the double headed eagle convey’s power that is wielded by nations. [Insert Bilderberg/CFR rant here].

In heraldry and vexillology, the double-headed eagle is a charge associated with the concept of Empire.
The double-headed eagle motif appears to have its ultimate origin in the Ancient Near East, especially in Hittite iconography. It re-appears in the High Middle Ages, from ca. the 10th or 11th century, and was notably used in the Byzantine Empire, but 11th or 12th century representations are also known from Islamic Spain, France and Bulgaria, and from the 13th century onward it becomes more widespread, and is used in the Seljuk Sultanate of Rum, Mamluk Egypt in the Islamic sphere, and in the Holy Roman Empire, Serbia and Russia in the Christian sphere.

The crowd in the room starts rabbling, their words are muffled and impossible to interpret. Red Cloak orders Bill to remove his mask. Bill removes his mask, revealing his face to the crowd.

Embarrassed and ashamed, Bill stands before the congregation of a secret society that he knows nothing about beyond what he’s witnessed in his wild jealousy-filled escapade.

Red Cloak then orders Bill to get undressed. Bill hesitates and repeats the question back to Red Cloak. Big mistake. Red Cloak responds:

Remove your cloths. Or would you like to have us remove them for you?

But before Bill can succumb to the unglamorous fate of death by illuminati gang rape, there is an interruption.

’STOP!’

We hear the word come from the second level balcony. The camera makes a wickedly fast zoom from the wide shot of the room to the close up of the masked woman.

1:27:38

It is the same red haired woman who tries to warn Bill earlier. The other cloaked guests rabble some more. The masked woman speaks:

Let him go. I am ready to redeem him.

The entire room turns to face the balcony where this woman is standing.

Red Cloak asks her if she knows what she is taking upon herself. She replies yes, and we see a man in a black cloak with the Venetian mask shaped like the bill of an Ibis or a Flamingo. The man says no words and only reaches for the woman’s hand. His mask resembles the scythe of the grim reaper, implying that this woman is surely going to die. He escorts her into the shadows.

1:29:19

Bill inquires about the woman’s fate, Red Cloak assures him that it is sealed. And then he says to Bill:

If you say a single word to anyone about what you have seen here tonight, there will be the most dire consequences for you and your family.

The scene ends. The next thing we see is Bill arriving at his apartment. He walks into the office and hides the costume and the mask in a locked drawer.

He enters the bedroom where Alice lay asleep and dreaming, and he sits on the bed next to his wife who is now giggling in her sleep. Then the giggles turn into desperate gasps for air, so Bill wakes Alice from her hysteria. Awake and perturbed, Alice reveals her dream to Bill:

Alice
We… we were… we were in the deserted city. And… and our cloths were gone.
We were naked, and… and I was terrified! And I… and I felt ashamed.
Oh god… And I was angry with you because I thought it was your fault.
And you… you rushed away to go find cloths for us. And as soon as you were gone,
it was completely different. I… I felt wonderful. Then I was lying in a…
in a beautiful garden, stretched out naked in the sunlight. And a man walked
out of the woods. He was… he was the man from the hotel. The one I told you about.
The naval officer. He… He stared at me. And then he just laughed. He just laughed
at me.

Bill
But that’s not the end… is it?

Alice
No.

Bill
Why don’t you tell me the rest of it?

Alice
No it’s… it’s too awful.

Bill
It was only a dream.

Alice
He ugh… He was kissing me. And then… then we were making love. And there were
all these other people around us, hundreds of them everywhere and… everyone was
#. And then I… I was # other men. So many I… I don’t know how many I was
with. And I knew you could see me in the arms of all these men just… just # all
these men. And I… I wanted to make fun of you, to laugh in your face. And so I laughed
as loud as I could. And that must have been when you woke me up.

So was Alice there at the orgy? Or is this another example of her clairvoyance? Is she affiliated with the secret society?
It seems unlikely that she was at the orgy due to the fact that she was in bed asleep when Bill came home. What is more likely, given the evidence presented to us throughout the film so far, is that Alice is somehow telepathically linked to Bill. Remember Alice is in the light and Bill’s eyes are wide shut. She sees the world illuminated by truth while Bill is wandering aimlessly through the dark.

So the question now is whether she is merely just aware of the secret society because of her clairvoyance, or if she is also involved with the secret society. The plot thickens.

The next morning Bill exits a cab in the East Village and crosses the street to the Sonata Cafe, the cafe is closed.

1:38:47

Desperate to get more information, Bill walks into the cafe next door called Gillespies. Once Bill is inside we see that Gillespies is more of a diner than a cafe but no matter, it’s still decorated with Christmas lights. Bill sits at the bar and orders a cup of coffee from the waitress.

1:39:37

He asks her when someone will be in next door at Sonata Cafe, she tells him that there is usually someone there after 2pm. That isn’t good enough for Bill, and he asks her if she knows Nick Nightingale specifically. Bill makes up a story that he’s Nick’s doctor and even pull out his medical license again to show the waitress.

1:40:52

Bill tells her that Nick had some test results that he was waiting for and it’s urgent that Bill get in touch with him as soon as possible. The fact that the waitress knows Nick and where he is staying suggests that her and Nick were sleeping together. And the fact that Bill is smart enough to know how to manipulate her into giving him Nick’s address displays a level of cunning that we have not yet seen from Bill.

Next scene, Bill makes his way to the Hotel Jason, which was probably inspired by Washington Square Hotel in real life:



Notice the Christmas tree in the lobby. Inside he finds a rather happy fellow. One might say he is gay, and not just because he is happy.

1:41:36

The hotel clerk (played by Alan Cummings) eyes Bill from head to toe and looks back up at Bill with a subtle smirk, implying that he finds him sexually attractive. Bill asks the clerk if he could ring Nick Nightingale’s room, the clerk tells him that Nick had already checked out around 5AM that morning. Bill asks the clerk if he noticed anything unusual regarding Nick’s checkout. The man hesitantly repeats the work ‘unusual’ back to Bill, and then jokingly asks if Bill is 5-0 (police).

Bill tells him that he is an old friend of Nick’s, a doctor, and once again pulls out his medical license.

1:42:49

The man tells Bill that in fact, he did notice something ‘a little strange about the way Mr. Nightingale left.’ The man leans in closer to Bill and tells him that when he checked out he left with two big guys.



The man appears to have given Bill a Freudian slip in the form of a hand gesture. The gesture suggests the clerk is making a phallic reference, and he even concludes the gesture with another flirtatious smirk. The man goes on to tell Bill that he noticed Nick had a bruise on his cheek and that he thought Nick looked a little scared. He tells Bill that Nick went upstairs to gather his things with one of the men and on the way back down Nick tried to pass an envelope to the clerk. It was intercepted by one of the big men who tells the clerk that any mail or messages for him would be collected by someone properly authorized to do so, and then they just took him off in a car.

Is the hotel clerk an agent for the secret society? We know from before that homosexually is permissible to them.

Next, Bill goes back to Rainbow Fashion to return his costume.

1:45:15

Now that the orgy is over and Militch has had time to speak with the secret society, the cat is out of the bag. Militch now knows Bill Hartford is not a member of the secret society. But what to do about it now? Red Cloak threatened Bill at the orgy never to speak a word of what he saw and never to return. But do they really want to let it end there? No. In fact, the secret society has new plans for Bill, and they involve his family. One does not simply find themselves where the rainbow ends by coincidence. And we shall see that this is all by design, it is merely a charade perpetrated on Bill by the society.

In the Schnitzler novella all of this is symbolic of a dream. In the film Eyes Wide Shut nothing is a dream, everything is real. Any critic that thought all of or parts of the film are a dream, they were wrong. Kubrick only uses the idea of dreams in the film as a symbolic metaphor. And like Schnitzler, Kubrick leaves enough room for doubt so as not to limit the story to one interpretation.

Bill enters the store. Now that it is daylight out and there is more light shining in the store through the windows we can see that the security cage in front of the door is actually red.

1:45:21

Bill greets Militch at the counter and returns his bag with the rental items, except the mask is missing. Bill remembers having put it in the drawer in the office, and is dumbfounded as to how it could not be in the bag. He shrugs it off and tells Militch to put the mask on his bill.

Militch tallies up the total and tells bill $375 is what he owes. At this moment the door to the other display room opens and out comes Militch’s daughter. She is still wearing her undergarments that we saw her in last night but this time she also has on a light evening blouse. She walks over to the counter and stands next to her father. The next thing we see is the two Japanese men from the night before, this time they are fully clothed and well dressed.

1:46:42

The two pause for a moment when they see Bill, but continue to tell Militch that they will be in touch with him again soon. On their way out the first man waves his fingers at Militch’s daughter with the same smirk that the hotel clerk had for Bill. The second man actually blows a kiss to Militch’s daughter. So much for being subtle.

Militch hands Bill his receipt and thanks him for the business. Bill pauses for a moment and reminds Militch that just last night he was going to call the police on those Japanese men. Before Bill can ask what happened, Militch tells him ‘things changed, we have come to another arrangement.’ Then Militch proceeds to pimp his daughter out to Bill. He tells Bill that ‘if the good doctor should ever want anything again,’ grabs his daughter, then continues with ‘anything at all… it needn’t be a costume.’ Now we are shown a closeup of Militch’s daughter.

1:47:33

We see that she is wearing make-up and she looks like a doll. She is an object to her father, a commodity to be traded.

End scene.

Now Bill is back at his office.

1:47:42

He’s frustrated again, staring at the wall imagining Alice with the Naval Officer. A nurse enters his office. Here we see a painting on Bill’s wall. This same painting is seen in Kubrick’s 1962 classic Lolita. See here. Bill tells his nurse to cancel his appointments and to bring his car down to the garage. Bill leaves work in the middle of the day to drive to Somerton.

1:4837

He arrives and exits his vehicle, looking up at the camera as it zeros in on his face. Suddenly a car approaches the gate and out steps an elderly man. The man hands bill an envelope through the gate and says nothing while giving Bill a stern look.

1:50:06

He hurries back to the car and drives back toward the house. The creepy piano music gets more dramatic as Bill examines the letter. The letter has his name on it, Dr. William Harford.

He opens the letter:



Cut to Bill’s apartment. It’s evening now and Bill is returning home from being out all day. Bill greets Alice & Helena at the table. Alice tells Bill that dinner will be ready at 7. Bill tells Alice to have it ready a little sooner because he has more appointments this evening. Bill goes into the Kitchen to grab a drink out of the fridge as he listens in to Alice helping Helena with her math homework.

He stares at them through the Kitchen, he zones out for a moment and in his head he remembers Alice telling him about her dream. He’s playing back her words in his mind and for the second time we hear Alice say (in Bill’s mind):

And there were all these other people around us, hundreds of them everywhere and… everyone was #.
And I was # other men.

1:53:59

Right at this time we see Alice glance seductively at Bill through the kitchen. She knows he is thinking about her. It’s almost if she is projecting her thoughts into his head.

Next we see Bill is back at his office, though it’s closed and he is the only one there. Almost all of the lights are off except for the rainbow bulbs in the Christmas tree.

1:54:28

Bill sits in his office and continues to imagine Alice with the Naval Officer. He wants to get off, remember he tried to get his freak on everywhere he went last night (including with his wife) and no success. He picks up the phone on his desk and calls Marion. Maybe she wasn’t just hysterical and maybe she really did want to leave her fiancee for Bill. He decides to call her to find out.

1:55:12

Oops! It’s her soon to be husband that answers the house phone, not Marion. Bill got his answer, he carefully hangs up the phone.

Bill hops in a cab and heads to Dominos in the East Village. He brings her a present but she is not home, instead her roommate answers the door.

1:56:14

Notice she has red hair. She tells Bill that Domino said he was really nice to her. She takes Bill’s gift for Domino and invites him in. Notice she has the same look in her eye that the two models Gayle & Nuala had at Ziegler’s party in the beginning.

1:57:35

Domino’s roommate wants Bill. And what she does next is a move right out of Bill’s own playbook. She goes on to tell Bill that Domino had some test results come in, turns out she’s HIV positive.

Of course Bill didn’t have sex with Domino and her roommate knows that. She’s pulling the same move Bill pulled on the waitress at Gillespies. And since Bill has pulled this move before, he knows her game. He could have sex with Domino’s roommate right there if he wanted, but he doesn’t. This is the first time in the film where we see Bill express some restraint since his wild journey for sexual conquest began.

Bill continues walking the streets of Manhattan, full creepy piano music in the background. He notices that he is being followed by a man in a trenchcoat.

2:01:55

He turns the corner, but the man is still following him. He tries to hail a taxi but is unsuccessful. He crosses the street and pauses to buy a copy of the paper from a news stand. He sees the man who is following cross the street, he is staring at Bill the entire time. It’s pretty creepy.

The man continues walking down the sidewalk out of view of Bill. Bill seeks refuge in a cafe called Sharky’s.

2:04:49

Notice the Christmas lights. In the restaurant we see white globe lights that resemble the magic crystal ball lamps from Cafe Sonata. Bill grabs a seat and opens his newspaper. We see the front page headline reads ‘LUCKY TO BE ALIVE.’ This seems fitting considering all the death threats Bill has received lately.

We see a closeup of the article Bill is reading. It’s about the death of a supermodel named Amanda.



The article reads:

A former Miss New York was
rushed to New York Hospital this
morning in critical condition after a
drug overdose, police sources said.
Amanda Curran, 30, was found un-
conscious in her room at the Florence
Hotel by security personnel after her
agent asked them to check on her be-
Hotel by security personnel after her
agent asked them to check on her be-

(lower part of the article cropped out of shot)

…any crime against Miss Curran, but
we would like to talk to these two
men to see what they can tell us
about her final hours” before she was
discovered, the spokesman said.
Officials decline to say what drug or
drugs Curran OD’d on. It was unclear
if there was anyone in the room with
her at the time she ingested the
drugs.
her at the time she ingested the
drugs.
Her sister, Jane Curran, told The
Post, “the overdose must have been
an accident. Mandy and I were as
close as sisters can get. We didn’t
have any secrets. If there had been
anything wrong, she would have told
me.”

(lower part of article cropped out of shot, but you see the words ‘emotionally’ & ‘teenager’)

She said that her sister was not to-
tally satisfied with her career, but
was still hoping to turn her beauty
pageant success into an acting gig.
“Things hadn’t gone as well as she’d
expected after winning the Miss New
York title, but she was considering
several television offers.
“She has many important friends in
the fashion and entertainment worlds
“She has many important friends in
the fashion and entertainment worlds
and she believed she’d break through
in the end. It was just a matter of
time.”
After being hired for a series of
magazine ads for London fashion de-
signer Leon Vitali, rumors began cir-
culating of an affair between the two.
Soon after hiring, Vitali empire
insiders were reporting that their
boss adored Curran - not for how
she wore his stunning cloths in pub-
lic, but for how she wowed him by
taking them off in private, seductive
solo performances.

So about the lines that were double printed. It is my opinion that Kubrick knew that no one would be able to read the entire article in the movie theater in just 7 seconds. By putting in these repetitions he is guiding the audience to the most important parts of the article by way of pattern recognition.

What’s more important, Amanda was a former Miss New York. She was a fashion model. And she was seeking a career in TV/Film. All are implications of Amanda being groomed to be a slave by the secret society of sex magicians. The references to drug use that are double printed are important because drug overdoses are a common practice among the elite when they want to stage a suicide and discredit the person all together.

And finally, we see that Amanda was the lover of Leon Vitali, the name Leon Vitali is printed in the paper Bill is reading. Leon Vitali is the real life name of the actor that plays Red Cloak. Leon Vitali also played Lord Bullingdon in Barry Lyndon (1975). By using the actors real life name, Kubrick connects Red Cloak to the murder of Amanda.

Taken from BlouArtINFO:

Revealed by Kubrick’s widow in 2010, the disappearance of Vivian into the hands of Scientologists takes on a special resonance after viewing “Eyes Wide Shut,” a film with a deeply lethal atmosphere. Vachaud mentions the disturbing scene where Bill Harford, shocked and upset, learns from a newspaper of the brutal death of Mandy, a young woman whom he was unable to save, while Mozart’s “Requiem” plays. Vachaud concludes that “after this moment, it is hard not to see all of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ as a father’s requiem for his lost daughter.”

Bill travels to the hospital where Amanda’s body was taken. He uses his medical credentials yet again to persuade the nurse that she was a former patient and that he would like to see the body.

2:06:53

Bill and the hospital mortician travel to the morgue to see the body. The mortician pulls out her cold corpse from the wall of trays.

2:08:10

Bill hovers over her body for a moment, and leans eerily close as though he is about to kiss her. Suddenly we hear Mozarts ‘Requiem’ playing in the background.

Bill walks through the corridor of the hospital feeling disgusted. He just realized that Amanda is the girl at the orgy that was sacrificed to redeem him. This was the woman that lay dead on the table in front of him. His cell phone starts ringing. He answers his phone, it’s Ziegler’s assistant summoning Bill to Ziegler’s mansion for a private conversation.

2:10:11

Bill travels to Ziegler’s house. He is escorted through the home to the game room where Ziegler is. We still see some of the Christmas decorations are up. Oddly enough the 8 pointed star and the pentagram star are the only ornaments without their Christmas lights on.

2:10:37

Ziegler looks up from a solo game of pool that he is playing and sets the cue down to greet Bill. Notice the felt on the table is red.

2:10:50

Ziegler tells Bill that the reason he called him over was to talk about something. Ziegler tells Bill that it is a little awkward, and that he has to be frank with him. Bill asks him what kind of problem he is having. Ziegler tells Bill that it isn’t a medical problem, and the it actually concerns him. He tells Bill that he knows what happened last night, and that he knows what’s been going on since then, and goes on to say that he thinks Bill might just have the ‘wrong idea’ about one or two things.


Bill stands there shocked for a brief second and tries to play it off like he doesn’t know, but Ziegler isn’t having any of that. Ziegler invited Bill over to give him a talking to.

Ziegler tells Bill that he saw what happened because he was there at the mansion. He said he wondered how Bill had even heard about it until he remembered seeing him talking with Nick at his Christmas party. With his head down, Bill tells Ziegler that it wasn’t Nick’s fault.

Ziegler insists that it was Nick’s fault, for if Ziegler had never recommended Nick to play music for the secret society then none of this would have happened.

Ziegler continues to tell Bill that he knows Bill went to Nick’s hotel looking for him. Bill asks him how he could know that.

Ziegler replies ‘because I had you followed.’ This kind of surveillance and harassment is a typical practice in Scientology. Any members who defect become the victims of a smear campaign and in most cases they are put on surveillance by private investigators hired by the church.

Ziegler tells Bill that he doesn’t realize how much trouble he was in last night. He tells Bill that the people at the orgy weren’t just ordinary people.

He goes on to say that if Bill knew the names of the people at the orgy he wouldn’t sleep so well at night. Bill asks him if it was the second password that gave him away.

Ziegler tells him yes, but it’s not because he didn’t know it rather it was because there was no second password. He tells Bill that most people arrive at those parties in limousines, the fact that he showed up in a cab made it suspect. When the man who took Bill’s coat checked the pockets they found the receipt for Rainbow Fashion with Bill’s name on it.

Bill tells Ziegler that there was a woman there that tried to warn him, and asks him if he knows who she was. Ziegler tells him yes, and that she was a hooker. Ziegler goes onto say:

Bill, suppose I told you that everything that happened to you there,
the threats the girls warnings, the last minute intervention, suppose
I told you that was staged, that it was a kind of charade, that it
was fake.

Bill, trying not to cry, asks Ziegler why they would do that.

Ziegler tells Bill that it was to scare the living sh!t out of him, to keep him quiet about where he had been and what he had seen. Bill pulls the newspaper clipping from his coat and hands it to Ziegler, asking him if he has seen it.

2:20:43

Ziegler examines the article and now we can see the parts that were cropped out of the shot before:

Workers at the Florence told police
she had not been seen since 4 a.m.,
when she returned to the hotel accom-
panied by two men. The staff said the
men seemed to be holding a giggling
Curran upright as they brought her
into the posh hotel.
Police have been unable to locate
the two men, but a police spokesman
said they did not suspect foul play in
Curran’s overdose.

And the other part we missed before reads:

Jane, a 26-year old perfume consul-
cant, said that her sister was emo-
tonally troubled as a teenager, but
had managed to put it behind her.
“She’d undergone treatment and had de-
pression in her teens….

The fact that Mandy was giggling suggests she was drugged up before she got there. And undergoing treatment implies Monarch/MK Ultra style brain washing.

Ziegler tells Bill that he has indeed seen the article.

Bill tells Ziegler that he saw her body in the morgue. He asks Ziegler if she was the woman at the party. Ziegler tells him yes. Bill asks him what kind of charade ends with somebody turning up dead.

Ziegler tells Bill the whole fake sacrifice had nothing to do with her real death and that nothing happened to her at the party that hadn’t happened to her before.

She got her brains # 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 junky, she OD’d. There was nothing suspicious, the
door was locked from the inside, the police are happy, end of story!
Come on. It was always just a matter of time with her, remember?
You told her yourself! The one with the great tits that OD’d in my
bathroom!

Ziegler tries to ease the tension with Bill by rubbing his shoulders.

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?

An interesting fact about Ziegler’s character is that Kubrick originally wanted Woody Allen for the part.

Taken from an article about Woody Allen from splitsider.com:

The role: Victor Ziegler
Who got it: Sydney Pollack
Stanley Kubrick considered Woody Allen to play a supporting role in his final long-gestating project, but for whatever reason, Sydney Pollack ended up taking the part. Kubrick may have intended to cast Allen before the whole Soon-Yi fiasco, and the 1990s weren’t exactly the best time to cast Allen in a project about sexual obsession. Starring in a psychological drama from another acclaimed director would have been a smart move for Allen, but he claims he was never offered the part.

IMDb and WENN have reported that Stanley Kubrick wanted Woody Allen for Tom Cruise’s role in the movie. This hasn’t been confirmed from outside sources, but given how long Kubrick was working on this one, it’s possible he envisioned Allen in the role during Eyes Wide Shut‘s early goings in the ’80s. Allen denies ever being approached, saying about Kubrick, “He never called me. Maybe in conversation he thought it was a good idea, but came to his senses somewhere along the line.”

That Kubrick had considered Woody Allen for the role of Ziegler (or rather Bill’s connect to the secret society) is very telling. Given the fact that Woody Allen himself is an accused pedophile, this little factoid reinforces the theory that Kubrick wanted to send a message about child sex abuse and the entertainment industry, including Hollywood. Kubrick & Allen were also good friends with Roman Polanski, another film maker turned pedophile.

Cut to Bill & Alice’s bedroom. The mask is resting on the pillow next to Alice who is asleep in bed.

2:24:18

Bill walks in and sees the mask on the pillow and looks shocked in horror, cue the dramatic & creepy piano music. He sits on the bed and begins to weep, waking Alice. She opens her eyes. Squinting, she looks confused.

Bill cries as Alice comforts him and says he will tell her everything.

The next thing we see it is morning, and Alice has a disgusted look on her face. Her eyes are red from crying and she is pissed.

2:27:48

Bill cries on the sofa. Alice tells Bill that Helena is going to be awake soon and that they are supposed to go Christmas shopping.

Ok, now we enter the final scene of the movie. If you were expecting it to end with a bang, you will be sadly mistaken. The ending does, however, contain a subliminal reference to Kubrick’s daughter.

Taken from BlouArtINFO:

Vivian Kubrick’s membership in Scientology was in the news again at the end of July when a 29-minute video created by the site Gasface and titled “Kubrick & The Illuminati” appeared on the web (see below). With images showing most of Vachaud’s theories (Vachaud narrated the film), this web documentary recalls the importance of mind control techniques in Kubrick’s films and mentions the scene with Mozart’s “Requiem.” Vachaud adds something new that didn’t appear in his article: in the last scene of “Eyes Wide Shut,” when the Harfords discuss their marriage in a toy store, their daughter seems to be kidnapped in a disturbing scene in the background.

Indeed, one of the film’s last images shows the child at the end of a store aisle surrounded by three men. Vachaud points out that they were already present early in the movie at the party thrown by Victor Ziegler (Sydney Pollack), an influential member of the secret society that Tom Cruise discovers. The cult thus seems to be shadowing the Harford family, and it’s possible that the daughter will be kidnapped by them — another echo of Vivian Kubrick’s fate, since she disappeared after becoming a Scientologist. Vachaud even suggests that Alice Harford is an accomplice to the kidnapping and that she purposely distracts her husband during it. This seems a natural explanation for Kidman’s anxious, guilty look during the scene.

Taken from an article at sensesofcinema.com:

Kubrick’s film ends in a toy shop, a place of artifice unlike Schnitzler’s Dream Novella which ends in the conjugal bed room with a beam of sunlight streaming in with bird song mingled with the child’s laughter enhancing the happy resolution of marital conflicts. I think the film ends there for the same reason that the orgy is mechanized and for the same reason that the film as a whole is shot on a set (all be it a Symbolist New York). They are perfectly controlled environments of late capitalism where all things and relations are under the reign of standardized exchange of commodities as signs.

So we enter the toy store, and Kubrick wastes no time with the pagan symbolism. There are inverted pentagrams on the wall in the form of Christmas stars, and a magicians trick set called The Magic Circle.

2:29:12

We also see the final Christmas tree in the film. The Magic Circle is in fact a real magician’s trick set called The Magic Circle Deluxe Box Of Tricks.




On the cover we see the pagan astrological signs. This is odd considering the deluxe box of tricks has nothing to do with the Occult and everything to do with stage magic. Of course modern stage magic did evolve from the Occult, but I digress. Helena frolics through the store checking out toys. At some point she picks up a giant stuffed teddy bear. She runs away from her parents for a moment which allows them to continue talking about last night. Bill asks Alice what he thinks they should do. She repeats the question back to Bill when Helena holds up a barbie doll and says ‘look mommy!’

2:30:20

The barbie doll toy is a perfect symbol for the objectification of woman, but even more cryptically it foreshadows what is about to happen. Alice, Bill, & Helena turn the corner into another aisle when Helena looks up at her two parents and walks off.

She turns and looks back at her parents one more time before walking out of frame behind two men.

2:30:41

Remember Ziegler’s Christmas party? Let’s reexamine the shot where Ziegler’s assistant escorts Bill upstairs to Ziegler’s bathroom.



The two men sitting at the table beneath the Cupid statue are the the same two men who appear to be escorting Helena away from her parents.

Is Bill & Alice’s daughter Helena the bounty to be paid for Bill’s unlawful intrusion into the secret society? It’s hard to tell. There’s nothing explicit about this part in the scene and it all takes place in the background of the frame. The biggest indicator to suggest that Kubrick was trying to tell us something subliminally is the appearance of the same two men from Ziegler’s party. Not to mention the repeated and continuous references to Scientology, mind control, kidnapping, & child sex slavery that we have seen throughout the film.

Alice tells Bill that she thinks they should be grateful. Grateful that they’ve managed to survive through all of their adventures whether they were real or only a dream.

The movie ends with these three lines:

Alice: But I do love you. And you know there is something very important that we need to do as soon as possible.

Bill: What’s that?

Alice: #.

The End.

PART VIII: Kubrick’s Use of Color as Symbolism

Kubrick was a photographer before getting into film. One of his greatest attributes as a film maker is that he has an in-depth understanding of how the camera works, and how different film stocks synthesize color differently in the lab. Kubrick borrows his visual style heavily from Ingmar Bergman & Federico Fellini.

Fellini in particular is known for creating compositions using light & color by emulating renaissance paintings. You can see this in Kubrick’s films as well, in more ways than one. It isn’t just Kubrick’s experience as a photographer that makes him visually intuitive. His wife (now widow) Christiane Kubrick is an oil painter. In fact, every painting in the Harford’s apartment and even some in Bill’s office was done by Christiane.

Painters from the renaissance period used primary colors (red, blue, yellow) dominantly, both as an aesthetic quality, and a symbolic quality. Kubrick sees film as the art of moving paintings, and this sentiment of color in film is one that is appreciated the most by those that are from the golden age of cinema. Kubrick also possessed this traditionalist view of film.

Many reviews and analyses of Eyes Wide Shut try to focus too much on the use of color in the film. While color does play a critical role in understanding the deeply complex nature of the film, Kubrick’s use of color is really a ‘less is more’ sort of thing. He was a minimalist, and he intentionally sought to use only as much color as he needed to. This is why we see Kubrick attributing color to various symbols in the film.

For example, some people say that Kubrick’s choice to use the color blue to represent the night light shining in through the windows is to convey that these scenes are part of a dream. It’s an interesting idea, but the reality is that Kubrick was using primary colors to achieve an aesthetic quality first, the symbolism and deeper meaning was attributed to the colors later.

We see for instance very little references to color in the screenplay. No mention of blue light shining in through the window, no mention of red carpeting at the mansion, no mention of rainbow christmas lights on the Christmas trees. As I mentioned above in Part 7, it is typical for directors to have a burst of inspiration come to them when they are on the set. In Kubrick’s case, he spent years working on the screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut and by actually seeing the set and actors up close it allows for a moment of reflection to add or remove something to make it fit his vision.

Taken from sensesofcinema.com:

As Tim Kreider said, “critical disappointment with Eyes Wide Shut was almost unanimous and the complaint was always the same; not sexy.” True, it didn’t show Tom and Nicole making love nor was the orgy orgiastic. But the film’s colour and light left me breathless, wanting more and more. My encounter with the behaviour of colour (and I insist on the activity of colour rather than its meaning which seems to me a more art historical concern) drew me into the film. Eyes Wide Shut is strangely animated by the colours of the vegetal/floral paintings done by Christiane Kubrick (the director’s wife). Strange because these colours seem to jump out of the frames on the walls, strewn with these paintings, creating an ornamented garden of artifice in the couple’s affluent New York apartment.

In November of 2016 the actress that played Mandy (Julienne Davis) did an interview with HeatStreet to talk about her experience filming Eyes Wide Shut. Here she talks about Stanley’s meticulousness and his attention to detail:

Stanley was concerned with everything from the lighting to the timing of the camera movements, and even down to my exact shade of lip color and the tone of my skin for the morgue scene.

He was meticulous about the mask scenes in Eyes Wide Shut. I recall waiting for the paint to dry on the main mask with the feathers which I think was painted at least 3 times until the exact shades and tones and right color combinations were reached to Stanley’s approval. Oh, and the feather mask?… I chose it. Stanley liked my choice.

EPILOGUE: A Final Conclusion

Just like our unconscious sexual urges are always present even when we are not aware of them, Schnitzler & Kubrick make sex omnipresent throughout the story. Bill/Fridolin’s ignorance of the layer of sexuality that is inherent in every behavior, every though, and in every aspect of society symbolizes the unconscious mind. Schnitzler tells the story with his words, Kubrick tells the story with imagery. By allowing the audience to see Bill’s ignorance, he opens up the possibility for multiple interpretations. While watching the film for the first time, you would never be able to interpret all of the symbolism. You (the audience) would be just as ignorant as Bill is in the film, with eyes wide shut.

Tony McKibbin sums it up rather nicely in his piece Eyes Wide Shut - Imagining Reality:

We wouldn’t want to deny that the film is full of connections, mirrorings, and echoes, but at the same time how far can we go into the interpretive without finding ourselves just as easily making counter-readings that cancel the other one out? Let’s propose there are two ways into Kubrick’s film without simply taking it at face value. The first is the interpretive one offered by Kreider, Ager and to a lesser degree Chion; and the other is our own and that we will call speculative. Both respond to the hermeneutic impulse, but one insists on reduction, the other, we can argue, expansion. Where Kreider believes the American Empire “at the end of the millennium, is one in which the wealthy, powerful, and privileged use the rest of us like throwaway products, covering up their crimes with shiny surfaces and murder, ultimately dooming their own children to servitude and whoredom,” do we have to agree?

And here we have Julienne Davis speaking about how Kubrick & his actors would improvise on the set:

You could contribute and get him to see your way of thinking but not by telling him, ‘I think it should be like this’ which would bring up the brick wall. It had to be thinking out loud with no ego attached.

That was how the second bathroom scene was totally rewritten and re-blocked with me thinking out loud that “I’m feeling like Mandy would want to say and do this…” to which Tom and Sydney would interject. The entire scene was rewritten by the three of us on the spot. Because everyone else around him was excellent, that made his ideas even greater.

Stanley over-estimated the intelligence of his audience, and because of this, audiences would look on in awe.

This confirms that much of what made it into the final cut of the film was indeed improvised on set.

Somewhere along the lines during production, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter Vivian Kubrick had joined the Church of Scientology via the Celebrity Center in Los Angeles. Faced with the tragic reality that his daughter had gone off and joined a celebrity cult, he turned to the only available medium he had as a means of expression, his film. Stanley Kubrick wove into the film some very personal and very subliminal allusions to his own life.

There appears to be a large gathering of conspiracy-minded folk on the internet who get their kicks out of entertaining the idea that Kubrick was murdered for revealing Illuminati secrets in the film. While fun from a fantasy fiction sort of perspective, the idea that Kubrick was murdered by some kind of Illuminati or Scientology cabal has little weight to its credibility.

A more realistic and possibly more intriguing scenario is that Kubrick suffered a fatal heart attack due to the stresses of losing his daughter to Scientology. He lived just long enough to finish his final film. He died four days after submitting the final cut to Warner Brothers.

Eyes Wide Shut is the first and only Kubrick film to be released on Blu Ray that features Kubrick’s original cut. And the cut that was shown in theaters was chronologically identical to Kubrick’s cut, the only difference is Warner Brothers used CGI to cover up some of the nudity in the orgy scene to get an R rating.

Eyes Wide Shut went on to gross more than $150 million worldwide, making it the highest box office turn out for a Stanley Kubrick film.

Visually, the cinematographic power of Eyes Wide Shut makes it almost as cosmic a film as 2001: A Space Odyssey.

There is something to be said about how the success of Eyes Wide Shut has been growing each year since its box office debut. Despite being originally panned by critics following its release, Eyes Wide Shut (via the new information age and the internet) has grown into a very self sustaining cult classic. Whether it be a youtube video, blog, magazine review, college thesis, or a book, the amount of literature & content devoted to the film and its interpretations is literally overwhelming.

Thank you ATS, for allowing me to take you where the rainbow ends.

BONUS: Echos Of Other Kubrick Films In Eyes Wide Shut

This part has no direct relation to my hypothesis but I figured it would be fun to throw in for those of you who are cinephiles like myself.

Lolita (1962) - Militch’s daughter at Rainbow Fashion






Apart from the theme being centrally focused on a pedophiliac relationship between Humbert Humbert and Lolita, the film’s main character Lolita (played by Sue Lyon) bears a striking resemblance to Militch’s daughter. In Lolita, Sue’s character is the victim of a child pedophile ring run by Claire Quilty. In Eyes Wide Shut Militch’s daughter is the victim of a child pedophile ring run by the secret society.




2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - Marion’s dead father in bed




In the final scene of 2001, we see Dave Bowman in his old age die while resting in the bed in the Interdimensional hotel room. This is echoed in Eyes Wide Shut with the shot of Marion’s father laying dead in bed. The headboards, although from two completely different design styles, share some similarities also.



A Clockwork Orange (1971) - Sexualized poses, emphasis on the nude female figure

The opening shot of Alex & his droogs at the Moloko milk bar features the statues of women in sexual poses. This is echoed in the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut when Bill is wandering through the rooms watching all the action. The nude female figure and the objectification of women are prominent themes in A Clockwork Orange, as are they in Eyes Wide Shut.



Barry Lyndon (1975) - Bill’s mask, Leon Vitali, & use of lenses



The mask that Tom Cruise wears in the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut (and yes it is actually Tom Cruise behind that mask in every one of those shots) was modeled after real life actor Ryan O’Neil’s face. Ryan O’Neil played the lead role in Barry Lyndon, Kubrick’s historic Irish period film.

Also acting in Barry Lyndon is a young Leon Vitali as the late teenage version of Lord Bullingdon. Leon Vitali plays Red Cloak in Eyes Wide Shut and his real name is used in the newspaper article that Bill reads about Mandy’s death.





Also, in Barry Lyndon Kubrick used a Zeiss f/0.7 lens that he obtained from NASA. This lens has the widest aperture of any lens ever created, made specifically for NASA’s low lighting deep space photography. This lens made it possible for the first time in cinema history to film a scene lit entirely by candle light and actually have it look on film the way the lighting would have looked in the 18th century. Kubrick used this lens to film some of the scenes in Eyes Wide Shut, particularly the orgy scene. Notice some of the the shots in the orgy scene are more grainy than in other parts of the film.

[The Shining (1980) - Alice’s Clairvoyance



Alice’s Clairvoyance in Eyes Wide Shut bears a resemblance to Danny Torrence’s psychic ability in The Shining. Both are able to see things going on from a distance via the use of Clairvoyance. Kubrick himself had expressed an interest in psychic phenomena and the paranormal.



Full Metal Jacket (1987) - License Plate



Supposedly, the license plate number on Bill’s SUV in Eyes Wide Shut reads 9987 to connote the years Kubrick’s last two films were released, Full Metal Jacket in 1987 and Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.

Links & References

Videos:

Eyes Wide Shut Official Trailer
Gasface Documentary
Illuminati Watcher Documentary
Martin Scorsese & Christianne Kubrick Interview
The Guardian Interview With Christiane Kubrick
Vivian Kubrick On Infowars
Traumnovelle (1969 German TV Movie)
Working With Stanley Kubrick - Frederic Raphael
Stanley Kubrick Accepts D.W. Griffith Award


Articles, Theses, & Reviews:

Notes on Arthur Schnitzler’s Dream Novella and Stanley Kubrick’s film Eyes Wide Shut
Kirk Douglas on Stanley Kubrick
Kubrick on A Clockwork Orange
After Stanley Kubrick - Guardian interview with Christiane Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick’s Lost Daughter
Is “Eyes Wide Shut” a Requiem for Stanley Kubrick’s Estranged Scientologist Daughter?
The Occult Origins of Christmas
Eyes Wide Shut Screenplay
The Hidden (And Not So Hidden) Messages in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut
Extraordinary Photos From A 1972 Rothschild Surrealist Dinner Party
The Symbolism of Purity in Christmas
Welcome to Sumerton: Kubrick connections and the mystery of Eyes Wide Shut
The Ornamentation of Nicole Kidman (Eyes Wide Shut)
Eyes Wide Shut Analysis
20 Years on Mandy’s Memories of Kubrick
Notes on Eyes Wide Shut by J. S. Bernstein (very in depth analysis)

Books:

Dream Story by Arthur Schnitzler
The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud
Eyes Wide Open by Frederic Raphael
Stanley Kubrick Das Schweigen der Bilder by Kay Kirchmann
Sex and Rockets the Occult World of Jack Parsons by John Carter
Esoteric Hollywood: Sex, Cults, & Symbols in Film by Jay Dyer
Hollywood Babylon by Kenneth Anger


ATS Threads:

Elijah Wood Hollywood Elite Pedophile Ring
Goldman Sachs is Sponsoring a Scientology-based jail ‘re-education’ program
Corey Feldman: “Pedophilia is Hollywood’s Biggest Problem”
Illuminati Wife Tells All

Tada!

Ok now give me your questions ATS.

Thank you

a reply to: ColdWisdom

This is a Magnum Opus my friend!

I so *love* threads/OP's like this. They have become few and far between of late...

I will read/ingest all the new info you've posted then I will be back to give you my thoughts if you'd like.

Thanks for all the hard work, ColdWisdom.

a reply to: Riffrafter

This is a Magnum Opus my friend!

Thank you my friend.

Although, next time I decide to do one of these film conspiracy threads I think I'll try to pick a movie that isn't bordering on NC-17.