I'm thrilled with any chance to collaborate with the Harvard Film Archive and to make use of Harvard's collection. I've taught several of Kubrick's films in different courses over the years, but never all of them together and never on the big screen. It is a unique opportunity. The HFA is one of Harvard's treasures. I'm really grateful to them for making this happen.
Criterion Collection has just unveiled its 4K restoration of the classic erotic odyssey starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, and it now looks better than ever, gloriously, at home. Though "Eyes Wide Shut" is very much one of IndieWire's favorite Christmas movies, we'll be unveiling over the Thanksgiving week conversations with director of photography Larry Smith, second unit cinematographer Malik Hassan Sayeed, editor Nigel Galt, set decorator Lisa Leone, and star and Kubrick mentee Todd Field, aka Nick Nightingale, blindfolded piano player to the sex-crazed
Eyes Wide Shut is a dreamlike odyssey where eroticism is everywhere. Stanley Kubrick's last film, adapted from Arthur Schnitzler's novella Dream Story, follows doctor Bill ( Tom Cruise) and his wife Alice (Nicole Kidman), who have what seems like the perfect life. But after they attend a swanky New York City Christmas party, they have a candid conversation about their desires. Bill can't fathom the idea of Alice being unfaithful, but she reveals that she's been fantasizing about a naval officer
The movie's premise is that a woman and her young child are trapped in a remote setting with a man who, from the outset, seems to resent and even hate them; their forced confinement together over a long winter puts the woman and child in mortal danger. The Overlook Hotel is, yes, sinister and even demonic, taunting Jack Torrance with bizarre visions that Kubrick manipulates to create a mounting sense of dread.
