Key Takeaways
- Release Date: The 4K release of Eyes Wide Shut is scheduled for November 25.
- Director: Stanley Kubrick directed Eyes Wide Shut, his final film before his passing.
- Film Features: The special edition includes new interviews and a digital restoration.
- Cultural Impact: The film has been continuously studied and reappraised since its release.
Eyes Wide Shut was the last movie directed by Stanley Kubrick, and the haunting film is finally getting a 4K release courtesy of the Criterion Collection. The film stars Tom Cruise as a doctor who is shocked when his wife (Nicole Kidman) reveals thoughts of infidelity, prompting him to embark on a surreal night-long adventure, during which he memorably infiltrates a secret society holding a masked orgy.
The film will be released by Criterion on November 25.
The official description from Criterion: “Stanley Kubrick’s career-capping Eyes Wide Shut unfolds in a dreamscape vision of New York City, where doctor Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) and his wife, Alice (Nicole Kidman), confront the unconscious desires, jealousies, and fears threatening their marriage. A Christmastime odyssey into a surreal sexual underworld whose hidden power structures are laid frighteningly bare, the film marks the fulfillment of the director’s decades-long desire to adapt Arthur Schnitzler’s novella Dream Story and the culmination of his obsessive interest in the relationship between institutional authority and the individual. Released in 1999, the film also serves as a fitting coda to a century of cinema, by one of its greatest visionaries—an endlessly tantalizing labyrinth whose myriad symbols, mysteries, and meanings are still being unraveled.“
4K UHD + BLU-RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES:
- New 4K digital restoration of the international version of the film, supervised and approved by director of photography Larry Smith, with 5.1 surround DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack
- One 4K UHD disc of the film presented in Dolby Vision HDR and two Blu-rays with the film and special features
- New interviews with Smith, photographer and second-unit director Lisa Leone, and Stanley Kubrick archivist Georgina Orgill
- Archival interview with Christiane Kubrick, director Stanley Kubrick’s wife
- Never Just a Dream (2019), featuring interviews with producer Jan Harlan; Katharina Kubrick, Stanley Kubrick’s daughter; and Anthony Frewin, Kubrick’s personal assistant
- Lost Kubrick: The Unfinished Films of Stanley Kubrick (2007)
- Kubrick Remembered (2014), featuring interviews with actors Todd Field and Leelee Sobieski and filmmaker Steven Spielberg
- Kubrick’s 1998 acceptance speech for the Directors Guild of America’s D. W. Griffith Award
- Press conference from 1999, featuring Harlan and actors Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman
- Teaser and trailers
- English subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing
- PLUS: An essay by author Megan Abbott and a 1999 interview with actor Sydney Pollack
Kubrick died of a heart attack just six days after screening the film for Cruise, Kidman, and executives at Warner Bros. The film was released three months later to polarizing reviews, but much like Kubrick’s other films, it has been continuously studied and reappraised over the years.
According to Bill Hunt of The Digital Bits, Warner Bros. has licensed Lolita to Criterion as well. When that film is released on 4K, Kubrick’s entire filmography will be available on the format, which is fantastic news for collectors.
Are you planning on adding Eyes Wide Shut to your 4K collection?
