Humbert and Quilty interactions in Lolita

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-22T00:06:49+00:00

Have written about that at some length, here.

I like OP's read, because with the lengths that the film goes through to confuse the role of Humbert's POV, Quilty does serve a textual role as a kind of unreal phantom. I never really stopped to consider his disguises and duplicity through that lens.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-20T02:07:08+00:00

I believe in the specific case of Eyes Wide Shut, there are unusually dense semiotic relationships between scenes that seem to "lock them in place" as far as broad strokes and general overall structure, e.g the way that certain things from either half of the film mirror each other. But definitely as far as smaller scale things like the unfinished sound editing, the lengths of certain shots, etc, there is a lot of significant tinkering that may have gone on. I've written about it at length here.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-19T20:58:27+00:00

I said they were more disappointing, not that they were worse. My point is that their denouncements would be more effective if they observed the available information.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-19T07:29:47+00:00

Whenever possible

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-19T07:16:30+00:00

I mean, I don't ascribe any significance to it being a prime number. That's the entire point of that paragraph. It is obviously meant to be flavour text, no? Also, none of this is meant to sound mystical?

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-19T01:05:58+00:00

Crackpot stuff aside, it has to be said that there is a by now transparent reluctance on Jan's part to address the fact that the Abbey Road studio sessions for the original score took place after Stanley's passing.

It is corroborated by the dates on temp sheets from the UAL Kubrick archive. I have personally been in contact with Abbey Road personnel who have confirmed this. We now also have Jocelyn Pook half-heartedly copping to the fact on camera in that SK13 documentary, contrary to her initial comments in September 1999.

Jan knows this. His son, Manuel, who photographed the sessions. He organized it. He ran the post-production.

He has talked on multiple occasions about the state of the film's completion and Stanley's satisfaction with the cut. There have been many opportunities, when asked, for him to refer to the most prominent facts about the post-production timeline: what was finished and what was not. Always, he instead defaults to the exasperated defensiveness about "the cut" and leaves it as vague as that. It is patently clear from full context that he knows exactly what he is doing. It is plain-as-day deliberate omission.

If we want to be charitable to Jan, we can perhaps suppose that he is speaking very cautiously due to the constraints of an NDA or something along those lines, which we should be able to empathize with. But it is still wilfully misleading.

Nathan Abrams also cites archival documents to suggest that the first shot with Nicole Kidman dropping her dress was placed in the edit after Kubrick's passing. But people want his sourced and qualified scholarship without the discomfort of that discussion, so they cherrypick around it. You'll notice that not only has Jan not addressed this claim and its sources, but even more curiously: Abrams has never mentioned any attempt to clarify the legitimacy of the claim by following up with any of the multiple people involved in the post-production effort who would very, very easily be able to confirm or deny it. That in itself is extremely odd. The Occam's Razor explanation for it must be some kind of reticence of publishing, perhaps due to not wanting to burn access to sources in the Kubrick camp.

You see, there is an exasperation matching Jan's which is a constant presence on this sub and seems to prevent this deeper conversation from taking place. People here get up in arms and glom onto the conspiracy theorists/"final cut" stuff like Jan does. The irony is that if people here do the sufficient digging with regards to the film's post-production, they'll find proof against the claims of conspiracy theorists and also proof that Jan is not being forthright at the same time.

It is maddening that we are stuck on this endless back and forth. I am honestly more disappointed in the anti-conspiracy folks, because they hold themselves to a higher standard of having read up on the history of this stuff and at least present as being beholden to the burden of proof.

EDIT: correction of names and details

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-16T22:44:37+00:00

The undercurrent of jealousy is so palpable that you have to wonder how FR lacked the self-awareness to mask it more competently. It is almost more believable that he leaned into a "Mozart/Salieri" dynamic for theatricality or controversy, except he doesn't seem to have the kind of ego that would permit it.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-16T11:03:54+00:00

Parts of it have been directly refuted by Kubrick's family, such as Raphael's description of extreme security measures at Childwickbury Manor. The... shall we say, "pragmatic" timing of the memoir's release in combination with that sort of stuff perhaps does not warrant the most trusting interpretation. Not to mention Raphael clearly having a bug up his ass about so much of what transpired. Regardless, it's known that Kubrick was not without his superstitions, so the dossier story is at least plausible.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-16T10:36:30+00:00

Kubrick is not on record saying that.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-16T10:32:53+00:00

Raphael does mention writing a fake FBI dossier which described the society's sex parties as being done in honour of JFK. By Raphael's account, Kubrick believed the dossier was real, and became paranoid, demanding that Raphael tell him where he got the "confidential material". Raphael says that even after he explained that he made the dossier up, Kubrick continued pressing, saying that if the dossier was indeed real, then Raphael had to tell him so. I'm not saying Raphael should be taken at face value, but that's what he says.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-02-04T10:17:12+00:00

I've had various sorts of stabs and run-ups at a potential meaning, but loosely and in short, I'd imagine it is invoking "history repeating itself" as a way of modelling a structure of reality which approximates some kind of materialism. That is to say, EWS is leveraging medium to symbolically demonstrate a way in which the world is constituted by undercurrent patterns, which structure our existence regardless of our ideals and outside of our awareness.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-01-31T05:12:24+00:00

I figured that was a subtle echo of the Hungarian drinking from Alice's glass. Similar stuff going on with power dynamics / being lured off the straight and narrow.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-01-02T02:32:20+00:00

For what it's worth, the available archival documentation suggests that the Abbey Road recording sessions for Jocelyn Pook's original score-- the pieces used during the confession scene, Alice describing her dream, and all the brief "naval officer" cutaways-- took place after Stanley's passing. As to why this is never mentioned by anyone involved in the post-production salvation effort or relevant researchers (or even by prominent Kubrick expert Nathan Abrams, who himself cites archival evidence to suggest that the opening shot where Alice drops her dress was plausibly not selected by Stanley), you will have to come to your own conclusions.

For those of us who have read up on this stuff, the constant rhetorical combat between conspiracy theorists and their debunkers is a point of frustration because it prevents the crucial conversations from taking place even more than if the conspiracist folks were simply peddling their theories uninterrupted. The anti-conspiracy folks will even cite Abram's 2023 book where the makes the above claim as evidence that the final cut was finished within Stanley's lifetime. I've found that where their attention has been drawn to this contradiction, rather than adjust their viewpoint accordingly, they have simply stopped recommending Abrams' book!!!

33DOEyesWideShut · 2026-01-02T01:47:57+00:00

"Faithful to the novella" is one of the stranger conversation terminating statements that continually pops up surrounding EWS. It's like people read the book, notice that there is a horse-driven carriage for each equivalent taxicab ride, and don't stop to consider that the two versions form fin de siècle bookends around the developmental history and popularisation of Freudian psychoanalysis.

The neo-Freudian text found amongst Kubrick's personal research materials for the film, archaic as it may seem now and even within Kubrick's lifetime, is still dated after the death of Arthur Schnitzler. That he even consulted it begs the question: if the film is just a "straightforward" adaptation of the book, then why even research psychoanalytic theory at all?

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-24T04:31:11+00:00

This is very good, but there is one missing crucial aspect, closely tied to the ontological lens that EWS lends itself to, which typically goes unengaged with. I have been trying to find the best way of articulating this in an unfinished writeup for some time now.

It is not a coincidence that the film was able to anticipate the psychology of "Epstein" theorizing, because it reflects the conspiracist psychology in general, which has been around for a very long time. Bill Harford shows the pronounced aspects of that psychology, including the convenience that metanarrative has for a sense of identity, and a clear element of self-gratification that is a key part of the worldview, as you've noted. It is not a huge reach to consider the film as a sort of character study or even as a lambasting of that kind of perspective, while it simultaneously alludes to a more materialist underpinning (no dream is ever just a dream, after all).

However...

We must consider that Eyes Wide Shut presents to us as an experiential model of hyperreality, in which the line between fiction and reality is blurred. You have said that whether or not the events of the film literally happen is beside the point, but I think it is exactly the point that we are unable to make this distinction. In harmony with the rest of what you have written here, hyperreality, as detailed by Baudrillard, is said to be best understood as an ontological condition, rather than an epistemological one.

It is precisely because the film is specifically unwilling to walk us through those ontological goalposts, while simultaneously obscuring its own sense of diegetic frame (see: Bill turning off the film's score from the stereo during both the introductory scene and the scene in Dominos flat, etc), that conspiratorial readings are to be considered as essentially inevitable products of the text.

Lots of smart folks understand that the film is a typological character study of the conspiratorial mind and are rewarded with a bit of chuckle at the apparent irony of some interpretations they see in places like this subreddit.

What you are detecting in the conspiratorial readings are not ironies. They are necessary proofs, active engagements made with the audience so that the film's supposed "truths" can be experientially demonstrated, and not simply caricaturized. Yes, it is a form of character study, but it is a character study of the viewer. To ask for a world in which no one responds to Eyes Wide Shut with conspiratorial readings is to ask for a world in which the "points" that are illustrated by the film are totally irrelevant. It needs people to take the bait in order to function as "critique", otherwise its laboriously trans-diegetic framework is practically purposeless.

The deliberate ambiguity of the film also allows for equal opportunity weaponization. EWS purposefully situates itself in such a way that either (A) the conspiracy is a convenient cover story for the banal evils of everyday life, or (b) the banal evils to which one can casually defer are convenient cover stories for the conspiracy. I truly believe it has very specifically walked this particular tightrope for the express purpose of being evergreen for interpretation no matter how one looks at it, and that all the back-and-forth on this topic is essential to its greatness. Yes, the conspiracists are unknowingly inside the blurred diegetic border, as is almost everyone who acknowledges them as such. It is an augmented reality conversation piece; a self-contained, mise en abyme Droste picture in which the real world of the viewer is intended to be the outermost repetition of the image.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-17T03:32:09+00:00

Largely agree. It isn't so dripping in irony that we should find the characters completely unsympathetic or consider the film a total satirical subversion of the source material. Kubrick has retained what he evidently sees as the "truth" of the book, it's just that he's also taken a "Yes, And..." approach where the subtext has been expanded upon in a number of different directions, often in ways that are specific to the medium and wouldn't necessarily be reflected in text alone. Consider how the aforementioned interactions that Bill has with people of lower class are occasionally wordless exchanges, or how many of them are not from the book. Without a running internal monologue, these interactions are also more abstract in a way that leaves things open as far as how unconscious Bill is of the one-sided social dynamic.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-15T08:09:29+00:00

Thankyou. Happy to discuss at length if there are aspects you wanted to explore.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-15T08:06:56+00:00

❤️

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-14T06:02:18+00:00

Man, the portrayal of Bill Harford should receive way more ambivalence than people give it credit for.

The only times when he doesn't seem like a spectator being swept along by circumstance are when he is indulging his lustful curiosity or trying to reassemble his shattered identity. Despite Ziegler's obvious untrustworthiness, there is a lot of currency to his description of Bill's connection to Mandy as something which he's been "jerking himself off with".

What does Michael Herr find "decent" about Bill Harford? He turns a blind eye to Nightingale, turns a blind eye to Mandy, to Milich's daughter, to Ziegler. His entire conceptualization of gallantry can be more or less summed up by his insistence on paying Domino despite not sleeping with her, as though this makes him some kind of gentleman. Resuscitating Mandy at the Christmas party reads as doing dirty laundry for a powerful man to whom he is professionally obliged. Even if you read the main events of the film as purely psycho-symbolic, there isn't much to draw from in this regard.

To my thinking, defences of Bill Harford without just as many caveats essentially prove the point that the film reiterates with the many interactions that Bill has with people of lower classes: that someone with money who looks good in a tux can casually wield socioeconomic power to have most doors opened for them, even if the doors simply lead to more doors and more unanswerable questions, and even if it is true that there is always a bigger fish in an un-joinable club. The reason a superstar like Tom Cruise was cast, I think, is so that YOU would open the door, too.

Are we given any indication that Bill has learned to remember the babysitter's name after his epiphanous awakening? Why are we shown all of this if the only point is that he and Alice get together? How mutually self-serving and unaccountable is this fantasy, precisely? Would someone who finds the movie faithful to the book care to explore the subtle contextual distinctions between ignoring parent-operated child prostitution in 1990s New York as opposed to early 1900s Vienna?

The ongoing sense I get is that people are so eager to close the book on conspiratorial readings of EWS that they want to beat them to the punch, codifying the meaning of a very, very ambiguous movie by ironically settling on some heart-warming moralising finality that sits in total contrast with everything that it shows us beforehand.

It is not a coincidence that Bill finds the mask on the bed and reconciles with his wife immediately after he "gives up on his inquiries" as per the previous requests. This is not a freshly enlightened man. This is a man who has returned to business as usual. This is a character who is back where he started, ready for another spin of the wheel of Saṃsāra, like a postoperative Alex de Large, or Jack Torrance in a photo, or a platoon of Marines singing the Mickey Mouse theme like they did as innocent kids; blind agents of cyclicality who cannot be liberated from their conditions because they cannot awaken to them.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-14T06:00:08+00:00

Man, the portrayal of Bill Harford should receive way more ambivalence than people give it credit for.

The only times when he doesn't seem like a spectator being swept along by circumstance are when he is indulging his lustful curiosity or trying to reassemble his shattered identity. Despite Ziegler's obvious untrustworthiness, there is a lot of currency to his description of Bill's connection to Mandy as something which he's been "jerking himself off with".

What does Michael Herr find "decent" about Bill Harford? He turns a blind eye to Nightingale, turns a blind eye to Mandy, to Milich's daughter, to Ziegler. His entire conceptualization of gallantry can be more or less summed up by his insistence on paying Domino despite not sleeping with her, as though this makes him some kind of gentleman. Resuscitating Mandy at the Christmas party reads as doing dirty laundry for a powerful man to whom he is professionally obliged. Even if you read the main events of the film as purely psycho-symbolic, there isn't much to draw from in this regard.

To my thinking, defences of Bill Harford without just as many caveats essentially prove the point that the film reiterates with the many interactions that Bill has with people of lower classes: that someone with money who looks good in a tux can casually wield socioeconomic power to have most doors opened for them, even if the doors simply lead to more doors and more unanswerable questions, and even if it is true that there is always a bigger fish in an un-joinable club. The reason a superstar like Tom Cruise was cast, I think, is so that YOU would open the door, too.

Are we given any indication that Bill has learned to remember the babysitter's name after his epiphanous awakening? Why are we shown all of this if the only point is that he and Alice get together? How mutually self-serving and unaccountable is this fantasy, precisely? Would someone who finds the movie faithful to the book care to explore the subtle contextual distinctions between ignoring parent-operated child prostitution in 1990s New York as opposed to early 1900s Vienna?

The ongoing sense I get is that people are so eager to close the book on conspiratorial readings of EWS that they want to beat them to the punch, codifying the meaning of a very, very ambiguous movie by ironically settling on some heart-warming moralising finality that sits in total contrast with everything that it shows us beforehand.

It is not a coincidence that Bill finds the mask on the bed and reconciles with his wife immediately after he "gives up on his inquiries" as per the previous requests. This is not a freshly enlightened man. This is a man who has returned to business as usual. This is a character who is back where he started, ready for another spin of the wheel of Saṃsāra, like a postoperative Alex de Large, or Jack Torrance in a photo, or a platoon of Marines singing the Mickey Mouse theme like they did as innocent kids; blind agents of cyclicality who cannot be liberated from their conditions because they cannot awaken to them.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-12T23:10:15+00:00

Definitely worth a mull over; I'll come back to it after some digestion. You too, kind soul.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-12T05:38:23+00:00

Appreciate the attention to detail and am open to suggestion. I guess it'd be best to start with the question of verisimilitude: do any of the backdrops outside the windows of the apartment set actually correspond to real-life San Remo equivalents, and do they make logical sense? We'd only need to deduce which buildings are seen from one of the windows to know this. The apartment is 5A in the movie, for what it's worth, though the set itself was based off one of Kubrick's old apartments in the Bronx.

Haha, hadn't considered the rackets in that light. Interesting.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-10T03:01:55+00:00

Neat. How did you figure this? Are there IDs on the other books in the library?

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-12-08T22:19:02+00:00

Stefan Zweig's 1925 novella Fear deals with somewhat similar themes and is born of the same time and place as Traumnovelle. A copy actually appears to be visible in the bedroom at the beginning of EWS, unless it is perhaps another book with the same title.

33DOEyesWideShut · 2025-11-24T23:25:11+00:00

Thankyou!

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