«Eyes Wide Shut». Schnitzler and Kubrick double dream

Abstract

The essay aims to analyze Kubrick's cinematic transposition of Schnitzler's short story Double Dream (Traumnovelle) through his latest film, Eyes Wide Shut. Rather than sticking faithfully to Schnitzler's text, Kubrick sees it as a cue from which to wedge himself - out of all psychoanalytic orthodoxy - into the labyrinths of consciousness, cracking, as a result, its supposed certainties, aimed at excluding the tangle of contradictions that, especially in erotic life, make every hypothetical transparency the mirror reverse of an indecipherable - albeit natural - drive. Just as Bill and Alice, the married couple protagonists of Eyes Wide Shut, are forced to experience.