Like a number of his earlier pictures—all of them, in fact, bar his debut feature (1)—Stanley Kubrick's masterful swansong, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), was adapted from a previously published source; in this case, Arthur Schnitzler's intoxicating novella, Traumnovelle (or 'Dream Story'), which was first published in Germany in 1926. Practically defying generic categorisation, Eyes Wide Shut, like it's source, is not only a compelling human drama, but a work of eroticism; a psychological thriller; a murder mystery; a road movie; a melodrama; and a romantic comedy (albeit as black as the night); alternating between each—and occasionally merging them together seamlessly—from one moment to the next.

Traumnovelle, with its extremely subjective narration, is an almost 'unfilmable' piece of literature, and indeed one of the most remarkable things about Kubrick's adaptation of it is the way in which he and his co-screenwriter Frederic Raphael were able to produce a piece that is at once both extraordinarily faithful to its source text and yet very loose in its modification of it at the same time. For example, although Kubrick has transposed Schnitzler's early twentieth century Vienna for a contemporary (though not necessarily modern) 'idea' of Manhattan, (2) and has altered a number of the character's names (Fridolin and Albertine become Bill and Alice respectively, for instance) his faithfulness to Schnitzler's narrative and plot—with only few (albeit very important) deviations (the addition of the Zeigler character and Alice's dance with the Hungarian millionaire, Sandor Szavost)—is remarkable. If at all possible, Eyes Wide Shut not only blurs the boundaries between genres, but also between modes of adaptation, managing at once to be both a literal transposition of the Schnitzler novella and a commentary on it.

Kubrick's aforementioned additions to and variations on the text are, of course, incredibly important to it—they're what set Eyes Wide Shut apart from Traumnovelle and allow it to stand on its own two feet (and in a typically Kubrickian fashion at that). As with the majority of Kubrick's films, Eyes Wide Shut is a film about the collapse of a seemingly flawless system through human error and interference—think back to the HAL 9000's murderous rampage of efficiency in 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) or the moral disintegration of the expertly trained soldiers in Full Metal Jacket (1987)—and in this case it's the institution or system of the so-called 'perfect marriage' that is to be so thoroughly examined by Kubrick's analytical eye.

However, this is only partly the case in Traumnovelle, which is very much a one-sided affair, focusing solely on one half—the male half—of the marital system. This carries across into Eyes Wide Shut as well (the film is primarily concerned with Bill), although Kubrick does give his female lead something that Schnitzler never really gives his: a moment or two of psychological autonomy from her counterpart. In Traumnovelle, Albertine is never really given a moment where she is seen separated from Fridolin; in Eyes Wide Shut, Alice is given several away from Bill, the most notable of which is her dance with Szavost at Zeigler's ball. (3)

Although I have discussed but one of Kubrick's 'alterations' to the text (and very, very briefly too), it is this one in particular—the development of the female character as an independent entity within the marital system—that ultimately allows Eyes Wide Shut to function as a work of art on its own term (and perhaps as a companion piece to Schnitzler's novella), and not merely as another dutifully faithful—and frightfully bland—literary adaptation.

Notes

1. Killer's Kiss (1955)
2. An expatriate American for the second half of his life, Kubrick lived in England from about the time of Dr. Strangelove Or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) onwards. Some film critics in New York took issue with Kubrick's depiction of a Manhattan that was clearly not the 'real' Manhattan, although as Michel Chion points out in his BFI Modern Classics monograph on the picture, a number of street names in the film are actually made up, and one can therefore assume that Kubrick's 'idea' of Manhattan is arguably not supposed to 'resemble' the real one. See also: 'In Dreams Begin Responsibilities' by Jonathan Rosenbaum (available online at http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/1999/0799/07239.html).
3. Also, as Chion notes in his monograph, earlier in the picture there are a number of shots that show Bill and Alice going about their days, separated from one another, two independent and fully functioning parts of a picture perfect marital system. Later on, while Bill is out on his sexual odyssey, Kubrick inserts a few cutaway shots to Alice's typically mundane evening at home, suggesting that the system's parts depend on one another to function correctly (Alice is left with nothing to do but eat chocolate biscuits and smoke cigarettes when Bill isn't at home), but—particularly in Bill's case—still susceptible to human failings such as jealousy, which jeopardise the system's apparent flawlessness. Importantly, there are no such 'cutaways' to Albertine in Traumnovelle; Schnitzler's themes are not so blatantly Kubrickian and dystopian.

Works Cited

Chion, M. (2002) BFI Modern Classics: Eyes Wide Shut. London, British Film Institute.
Nelson, T. A. (2000) Kubrick: Inside a Film Artist's Maze. Expanded and rev. edition. Bloomington, Indiana University Press.
Rosenbaum, J. (2003) ‘In Dreams Begin Responsibilities'. Chicago Reader. 1999. Retrieved on: September 26, 2004. Available online at: http://www.chireader.com/movies/archives/1999/0799/07239.html
Schnitzler, A. (1926) Traumnovelle. Trans. Davis, J. M. Q. (1999) In: Kubrick, S. & Raphael, F. (1999) Eyes Wide Shut. Penguin Books.