Eyes Wide Shut, Scientology, & Vivian Kubrick - The Conspiracy

a reply to: trisvonbis

The thread isn't dead. Not sure what you mean by that.

And I should have the rest of it up later today.

Brilliant. Looking forward to the rest of your insights into this fantastic work of art by Kubrick.

Very intriguing analyis. Excited for last post.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Patience isn't one of my best assets, sorry

Really looking forward to this.
Definitely hard to wait.

I came back to read Part 7, but the gate was locked, and this creepy old man drove up and handed me a note that said:

"Give up your inquiries which are completely useless, and consider these words a second warning. We hope, for your own good, that this will be sufficient."

a reply to: ColdWisdom

The rest of the thread should be up by Monday.

Wednesday now...waiting...waiting...
sigh

I wan't more!

there is a saying getting caught between sixes and sevens. Please let us know when the next part is up. What is the delay about?a reply to: TheConstruKctionofLight

Part 7 in its entirety is about 17 posts long.

If I want to share it with you, I have to strip it of all still frames of the film (of which I had used about 40).

I don't think I can even host them and link them out on ATS.

The only solution that I can think of which I have proposed and am awaiting a response to is:

Remove all pictures of the film from Part 7 and let you (the readers) go out and buy a copy of the film and connect the dots for yourself.

No matter what the outcome of this deliberation may be, I want to be clear that this is not a conspiracy against me on behalf of the mods. Many of the mods wanted to see this thread come to fruition. They are just the messengers and their job is to enforce the T&C. The mods didn't write the T&C, Google did.

My other option is to just host the whole thing on my own webspace but even then I am told that I cannot link anything that goes to a website that violates the T&C of ATS.

Tricky, I know. But it's the rule of the land I'm afraid.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

Remove all the pictures and replace it with a time and brief one or two sentence description of the scene being talked about? Or something like that? Would take time. We can look the visuals up in our own, I say.

a reply to: geezlouise

So one suggestion I had was to host all the still frames I want to use on my own web space and include a link in the OP to a 'key' page.

Then I would just go back in and replace all the pictures with something like 'see #14 & #15 on the key page posted in the OP.'

But even if I am allowed that option, I still cannot link to any pictures of nudity, drug use, etc and anything that is prohibited in the T&C. That part I am totally ok with.

But if that suggestion isn't allowed the only other option I could see would be to go in and replace all the pictures with timecodes so I could just say 'see timecode 1:15.32 in the film.'

I've brainstormed enough, my brain needs a break.

a reply to: ColdWisdom

thank you for all your hard work

Ok guys this is what I am going to do:

I am going to take what I have written and go back in and rewrite it so that the piece flows more cohesively without frame by frame stills of the movie.

I don't know how long it will take but probably not very. When it is ready I will dump it here in this thread.

Where is the next part I was with you thus far...

Not the first time I have read this however not a completely original viewpoint, but I am enjoying your ideas and your presentation!

PART VII: Scene By Scene Analysis Of Conspiracy Theory

The symbolism starts from the from the very beginning. The very first image Kubrick presented to us in Eyes Wide Shut is of Alice undressing.

00:35

Alice stands in between two columns in her bedroom, and her curtains are red. The curtains form a triangle that Alice appears to be standing directly beneath. Many believe this to be a reference to the Freemasons with the two pillars and the all seeing eye. Watching her slip her black dress down to ankles suggests that she is giving herself up sexually to this secret society, a form of self divination. It being the first shot we see in the film and the first shot we see of a woman, the objectification of Alice as a symbol for the female fertility goddess is a way for Kubrick to define all women in this film as objects of sexual desire.

This sentiment is echoed later in the film at the orgy when the master of ceremonies, Red Cloak, commands the female sex slaves to unclothe themselves by dropping their cloaks to their ankles. Red Cloak is of course red, and the female sex slaves remove their black cloaks at his command. This is parallel to the opening scene where Alice drops her black dress to her ankles while standing beneath a triangle in the negative space of the red curtains. And it reinforces the idea that Alice is somehow affiliated with the secret society, possibly as a victim of sexual slavery in her past.

The next thing we see is Bill standing in the dark looking for his wallet.

00:54

The very first image of Bill in the movie is one of him aimlessly unaware and standing in the dark, also under a triangle. This is in contrast to Alice who was shown standing in the light, even the movie poster shows Alice looking back at the camera as though to say that she is aware of the reality around her:



Bill asks Alice if she remembers where he put his wallet. She tells him it is on the nightstand, which is where Bill eventually finds it. Alice is in the light, & Bill is in the dark. Alice knows, Bill is clueless. Bill’s eyes are wide shut. That’s the setup.

Bill turns the music off which up until this point was assumed to be part of the sound track and not actually being heard by the characters themselves. They make their way to the living room where their daughter Helena is reading with the nanny.

02:12

Here we see the first Christmas tree, an array of multicolored bulbs. Notice throughout the film that the only kinds of lights we see on Christmas trees are multicolored, or rather, rainbow colored incandescent. We do also see the use of traditional white incandescent christmas lights at Ziegler’s party and at the costume store (they actually look gold on film), however any tree or wreath seen in the film is decorated with rainbow colored bulbs.

Their daughter’s name, Helena, could be a reference to Helen of Troy, daughter of Zeus and the most beautiful woman in the world. Or it could be a reference to Helena Blavatsky, famous spiritual medium and philosopher responsible for the Theosophical movement. Blavatsky seems more significant and this respect, since she is a prominent figure in the Occult. Either way it is important to note that Helena has red hair. Notice Helena is wearing fairy wings, of the pagan variety. They are not the traditional angelic wings which we are used to seeing depicted in Christmas art. Fairies as you probably already know are a pagan mythos. Notice Helena and her mother both have red hair. This is important, because later in the film the woman who is sacrificed at the orgy has red hair, also. The use of red haired women in the film is symbolic to the Scarlet Woman, famously written about by Aleister Crowley and famously invoked by Jack Parsons & L Ron Hubbard.

Alice’s name could be a reference to Alice in Wonderland. In Lewis Carrol’s Through The Looking Glass, Alice goes on a journey in a far off land aided by psychic drugs and filled with all kinds of adult innuendo. Not to mention that Alice in Wonderland is rumored to have been used in MK Ultra mind control experiments, and so was The Wizard of Oz.

The Harfords arrive at the mansion of Victor Ziegler for his annual Christmas party. Ziegler’s residence is actually big enough to feel like a large mansion in the heart of Manhattan, and is lavishly decorated for the occasion. The Harfords greet the Zieglers in their foyer. Notice the 8 pointed star.

02:50
02:54

Directly behind the Zieglers can be seen a large Christmas tree with multicolored lights and the staircase has a wall of the white/golden Christmas lights. Later in the film we see this paralleled at the Rainbow Fashion costume store. Bill & Alice make their way to the main ballroom. In the hallway can be seen an upside down 5 pointed star wreath with rainbow christmas lights on it. This is an inverted pentagram no less.

03:25

And in the ballroom we see many more 8 pointed star wreaths decorated with rainbow Christmas lights.

03:28

The 8 pointed star is the symbol for the ancient Babylonian goddess Ishtar:




Taken from Wikipedia:

Ishtar (English pronunciation /ˈɪʃtɑːr/; transliteration: DIŠTAR; Akkadian:  ; Sumerian) is the Mesopotamian East Semitic (Akkadian, Assyrian and Babylonian) goddess of fertility, love, war, sex, and power She is the counterpart to the earlier attested Sumerian Inanna, and the cognate for the later attested Northwest Semitic Aramean goddess Astarte, and the Armenian goddess Astghik. Ishtar was an important deity in Mesopotamian religion which was extant from c.3500 BCE, until its gradual decline between the 1st and 5th centuries CE in the face of Christianity.

The 8 pointed star is also used to represent Chaos Magick:

Chaos magic, also spelled chaos magick, is a postmodern magical tradition which emphasizes the pragmatic use of belief systems and the creation of new and unorthodox methods.

The symbols in Eyes Wide Shut are vastly interconnected and often have multiple meanings.

Both Alice & Bill mention not knowing a single person at the party, when all of the sudden Bill spots an old friend from medical school, Nick Nightingale, who is playing piano on stage with the band.

4:02

Really quick, the name Nightingale is of German/Jewish origin, like Ziegler. Taken from ancestry.com:

Nightingale Name Meaning. English: nickname for someone with a good voice, from Middle English nighti(n)gale (Old English nihtegal, from niht 'night' + galan 'sing'). Probably a translation of German and Jewish Nachtigall, or cognates in other languages.

This may imply that Nick is also an agent of the secret society.

Alice says he plays ‘pretty good for a doctor’ and Bill informs her that he dropped out of medical school. Notice the band plays no Christmas music. The band takes a short intermission and Bill takes advantage of this moment to approach Nightingale with salutations. Alice informs Bill that she has to use the restroom but when the camera follows her to the next room she grabs another drink and downs it all in one gulp, never making it to the bathroom. Bill & Nick catch up after having not seen each other for many years. Nick informs Bill that he will be in Manhattan for the next week playing jazz in the East Village at the Sonata Cafe. Their conversation is interrupted and cut short when a man representing the staff at Ziegler’s party approaches Nick and tells him that he ‘needs him for a moment.’

6:03

This is a very important part of the film, as it sets the stage for the Scientology references. The man who approaches Nick on behalf of Ziegler is actually Michael Doven, real life assistant to Tom Cruise. He has also worked as a producer on many of Cruise’s films. His character’s name in the credits for Eyes Wide Shut is listed ‘Ziegler’s Assistant’ and his own IMDB page has this to say about him:

CEO and founder of United Pictures Group, Producer Michael Doven is a 25 year movie industry executive. He has Producing Credits on: The Squeeze & In Search of Fellini and Associate Producer credits on The Last Samurai, Minority Report, Mission Impossible II, Collateral and Vanilla Sky.

He was the Production Associate on Mission Impossible, Eyes Wide Shut, Magnolia and worked assisting Mr. Cruise on Jerry Maquire, The Firm, A Few Good Men, Far And Away, Interview With A Vampire.

Michael Doven is a Scientologist. His character is the first ‘assistant’ to the secret society that we see in the film. And in real life Michael Dovan is Cruise’s personal assistant while Cruise is filming. And he is the eyes & ears for Scientology on the set to supervise Cruise. Kubrick did this on purpose to implicate Scientology, this is how he connects Scientology to the secret society.

Think that’s a bit of a stretch? Well let’s take a look at the original screenplay for Eyes Wide Shut:

BILL
You know how it is, once a doctor,
always a doctor.
NICK
In my case, never a doctor, never a
doctor. You _don't_ know how that is.
BILL
I never did understand why you walked
away.
NICK
No? It's a nice feeling. I do it a lot.

The BAND LEADER comes over and gives NICK a nod and BILL an
polite smile.

NICK
Okay, we're off again. Listen, if I don't
catch you later, I'm down in the
Village for the next two weeks, at the
Cafe Sonata. Come by if you get a
chance.

BILL (nods)
Cafe Sonata, right. Okay, and listen, it
was great seeing you again.

NICK
Same here. Take care.

The band starts up again.

Michael Doven’s part in the film as Ziegler’s Assistant (as credited on IMDB) isn’t even in the original screenplay! This is because Kubrick must have decided to add Michael Dovan into the film after he had his ‘ahah!’ moment where he realized his daughter was a Scientologist. We will see many deviations from the original script throughout the film.

Alice waits for Bill at the bar. Notice the many pentagram wreaths on the wall and notice they are decorated with multicolored/rainbow lights.

06:40

What happens next is commonly misinterpreted by the film critics who only took the film at face value. Alice sets her drink down eagerly close to a man who is standing next to her at the bar. She doesn’t turn around to see but she knows he’s there, she can see him in her peripheral vision. She flirts with the man by setting her glass down, he picks it up and finishes it as if to say I want to exchange fluids with you.

He introduces himself as Sandor Szavost, a hungarian. The name Sandor may be a reference to Anton Sandor LaVey, founder of the church of Satan and personal friend of L Ron Hubbard. Szavost is not a traditional Hungarian name and is possibly an anagram for something else, that something else still eludes me.

The Alice and Sandor begin to dance.

08:34

Keep in mind that this part of the film is not in the Schnitzler novel. Taking that into consideration, Kubrick’s brilliance shines with the creation of Sandor’s character. Sandor’s lines in this scene take the foundation of psychosexual symbolism that Schnitzler alluded to in the novella and expands upon that by adding more layers of symbolism and interpretation. This line in particular is a reference to a work done by Roman poet Ovid called Art of Love, when Sandor says to Alice:

ALICE (smiles)
I think that's my glass.

SZABO
I'm absolutely certain of it.

SZABO is a handsome man, in his mid-forties with a slight Central
European accent.
He drinks slowly from ALICE'S glass and looks directly into her eyes
as he does so.

SZABO
Did you ever read the Latin poet Ovid
on The Art of Love?

ALICE
Didn't he wind up all by himself, crying
his eyes out in some place with a very
bad climate.

SZABO
But he also had a good time first. A
very good time.

Oh, and Sandor’s last name in the screenplay is Szabo, not Szavost. But let’s examine Ovid’s Art of Love briefly, taken from a wonderful editorial analysis of the Eyes Wide Shut published in Vigilant Citizen:

During the party, Bill and Alice go their separate ways and are both faced with temptation. Alice meets a man named Sandor Szavost who asks her about Ovid’s Art of Love. This series of books, written during the times of Ancient Rome, was essentially a “How to Cheat on Your Partner” guide, and was popular with the elite of the time. The first book opens with an invocation to Venus – the planet esoterically associated with lust. Interestingly enough, Ishtar (and her equivalents in other Semetic cultures) was considered to be the personification of Venus.

An even more revealing line comes next, this does not appear in the screenplay but is in the film when Sandor says to Alice:

Don’t you think that one of the charms of marriage is that it creates a necessity for deception from both parties.

More commentary from Vigilant Citizen:

Sandor’s name might be a reference to the founder of the Church of Satan: Anton Szandor Lavey. Is this Kubrick’s way of saying that this man, who urges Alice to cheat on her husband, is a part of the occult elite and its decadent ways? The Hungarian man is apparently skilled in neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) as he nearly hypnotizes Alice with well calculated phrases about the futility of married life and the necessity of pursuing pleasure.

Meanwhile, Bill is discussing with two flirtatious models who tell him that they want to take him to “where the rainbow ends”. While the meaning of this enigmatic phrase is never explicitly explained in the movie, symbols talk for themselves.

Nearly… he nearly hypnotizes her. She cannot fall for his spell for she already knows who is, where he hails from, and what he represents. She knows all his tricks.

While Alice is dancing with Sandor, Bill is across the room being aggressively accosted by two supermodels.

10:13

One of the models introduces her friend as Nuala Windsor, both speak with British accents. Windsor is of course the name of Royal family of Britain as in the Royal House of Windsor.

Here is Prince Charles and Duchess Camilla of the Royal House of Windsor wearing Bauta masks:



Take note of how overtly seductive the models are with Bill, a distinct parallel to Sandor and his hypnotic attempts to seduce Alice going on simultaneously in the other room.

The taller model who’s name in the screenplay is Gayle, mentions to Bill that they had met once in Rockefeller plaza while she was doing a photoshoot. This reference to the Rockefellers is very significant, as it ties into the rainbow references.

What is said next by the two models in the film is taken almost verbatim from the screenplay:

NUALA
Do you know what's so nice about
doctors?

BILL
Usually a lot less than people think.

NUALA
They look so... knowledgable!

BILL
They are very knowledgeable - about
all sorts of things.

GAYLE
But I'll bet they work too hard. I bet
they miss out on a lot of fun.

BILL
You're absolutely right. Where we
going, girls?

NUALA (laughs)
Where the rainbow ends.

BILL slows down a little.

GAYLE
Don't you want to go where the
rainbow ends?

BILL
Do I want to go where the rainbow
ends?

Before he can answer, a big man who looks like he stepped right
out of _The Godfather_ walks up - HARRIS, Ziegler's _personal
assistant_.

Nuala Windsor asks Bill if he would like to go where the rainbow ends.

A brief moment on the Rockefellers and their connection to rainbows. The Rockefeller family famously owned a nightclub at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York City called, you guessed it, The Rainbow Room.

At some point after the financial crisis of 2007 the restaurant was sold to and renovated by the Capriani family. Here is a picture of the Rainbow room in the 1980s when it was owned by the Rockefellers:



Notice the black 8 pointed star at the center of the dance floor. This real life vestige of a NYC dynasty is what connects the Rockefellers to the secret society in Eyes Wide Shut. And notice the abundance of the color red… for a club called the Rainbow Room.

After the Capriani family renovated the Rainbow Room they kept the star on the dance floor. Except, now it has 10 points.



Let us also remember that Kubrick was born and raised in New York City. There is no doubt that he was familiar with the Rainbow Room and possibly had traveled there himself while living in Manhattan.

Their conversation is again interrupted (as interruptions become a recurring event for Bill throughout the film) when another one of Ziegler’s assistants approaches Bill and asks him if he could help him with something for Mr. Ziegler.

12:34

The man leads Bill upstairs to the master bathroom, but on the way they ascend up this magically lit staircase and in the shot we see a large statue of Cupid in the foyer.

12:58

More on Cupid for those unfamiliar:

In classical mythology, Cupid (Latin Cupido, meaning "desire") is the god of desire, erotic love, attraction and affection. He is often portrayed as the son of the love goddess Venus and the war god Mars, and is known in Latin also as Amor ("Love"). His Greek counterpart is Eros.

Bill enters the master bathroom where he finds Ziegler half naked and getting dressed while trying to revive a fully naked prostitute who has overdosed on a combination of designer drugs.

13:01

Ziegler never explains to Bill or to the audience what he is doing with a half dead and fully nude prostitute in his bathroom, let a lone while he is hosting his huge annual Christmas party. But it is presumed that Ziegler and the prostitute (who’s name is Mandy) were fornicating. Why would Ziegler, who is married, be having sex with a prostitute in his bathroom in the middle of a huge Christmas party? This suggests that what Bill is seeing is partly staged. This could be an elaborate charade being carried out by Ziegler and the secret society to slowly bring Bill closer and closer to where the rainbow ends. Mind you there are no Christmas lights in Ziegler’s bathroom.

The painting behind Ziegler is by Degas and depicts a bather/prostitute resting on a chair, a parallel to what is actually going on Ziegler’s bathroom.

13:35

I also want to take a moment to talk about Ziegler’s character. Ziegler’s own name carries a lot of symbolic weight to it. Taken from ancestry.com:

Ziegler Name Meaning German and Jewish (Ashkenazic): occupational name for a tiler, from an agent derivative of Middle High German ziegel ‘roof tile’ (Old High German ziagal, from Latin tegula), German Ziegel. In the Middle Ages the term came to denote bricks as well as tiles, and so in some cases the term may have denoted a brickmaker or bricklayer rather than a tiler.

Taken from Wikipedia:

Ziegler is a common German surname meaning "brick-maker" and may refer to the following people:

Ziegler is played by Sydney Pollack, who himself is of Ashkenazic Jewish decent. The name itself is German/Jewish and means stone layer, or brick maker, as in Freemason. Kubrick wanted Ziegler’s character to be Jewish by name and bear no other resemblance to the Jews. In fact, other than the name Ziegler and it’s etymology, and the fact that Pollack is Jewish himself, there is nothing about Ziegler’s character that would indicate he is Jewish. He’s not throwing a Hanukkah party, there are no 6 pointed Jewish stars anywhere in Ziegler’s home or in the film. Kubrick is making a very specific allusion to the Rothschild family, known for being the wealthiest family in the world, the Rothschild family created the first central banks and continue to oversee a dynasty of wealth. Despite publicly identifying with the Jewish faith, there is really nothing about the Rothschilds that would indicate they are in any way observant of Rabbinic law. More connections to the Rothschilds are revealed in the orgy scene but so far we have implications of 3 of the worlds most powerful families, the Windsors, the Rockefellers, & the Rothschilds.

Bill plays doctor and tends to Mandy and eventually she regains consciousness. Bill instructs her that she will need to go to rehab. Bill never asks Ziegler to explain the circumstances he is in, he only abides by Ziegler’s requests for help. Ziegler reminds him not to repeat anything about what happened. After leaving Ziegler’s bathroom, Bill reunites with Alice and they go home, concluding the scene.

The next scene is expositional, conveying the passage of time of the main protagonists throughout the day after Ziegler’s party. The new day starts with Bill going to work at his medical practice, notice the Christmas tree in his office.

21:02

The editing in this scene cuts back and forth between Bill’s day and Alice’s day. This foreshadows Alice’s clairvoyance. At one point we see Bill examining a topless woman, later in the evening Alice asks Bill a specific question regarding the examination of nude female patients, as if she was somehow aware of his medical itinerary for the day.

21:12

Their day comes to an end and the two decide to let loose a little bit and get intimate. Alice goes to the bathroom to retrieve a small bag of the green stuff and some rolling papers.

Seemingly, Bill & Alice are smoking as an aphrodisiac and yet, it is inevitably blamed for the argument that is about to take place.

23:05

Alice asks Bill if he was ‘with’ the two models from the party last night. This banter devolves into a dissertation given to Bill by Alice about the genetic and hormone driven mating ritual of men as a product of human evolution.

Bill doesn’t seem to be getting it. He tells Alice that he’s never been jealous of her and then seems flabbergasted when she asks why. She believes that the absence of jealousy in a relationship that’s lasted more than a decade is a sign of marital indifference to one another. Bill explains that he could never be jealous of her because she is his wife and the mother of their child.

This sends Alice into a tizzy. What she does next is an attempt to provoke a sense of jealousy in her husband, jealousy for her. She proceeds to tell him that on the previous year during their vacation to Cape Cod, she fantasized about a Naval Officer that she saw in the dining room of their hotel (remember L Run Hubbard was a Naval Officer who stole Jack Parsons’ wife). She goes on to tell Bill that she fantasized about the Naval Officer the entire time they were on vacation, and that part of this fantasy included thoughts of leaving Bill & their daughter Helena forever to be with this perfect stranger that she hasn’t even actually met (only seen).

Bill leans in and in a moment of harsh contemplation is interrupted by a phone call.

36:17

It’s a client/patient of Bill’s, Marion, and she is calling to inform Bill that her father has just past away. As their family physician, Bill is tasked with the duty of giving a medical diagnosis and a legitimate death certificate. Bill travels by cab from his residence to Marion’s.

On the way there Bill is locked into what many cinephiles now refer to as the Kubrick stare, except where traditionally the Kubrick stare is done by looking directly into the camera lens (looking directly at the audience through the screen) this time Bill is looking down away from the camera.

37:27

This is to convey the fact that Bill’s eyes are wide shut, and even though he is slowly becoming more enlightened and more aware throughout the film, he is still ignorant of the forces at work that control his reality (unlike Alice). He obsessively imagines the Naval Officer making love to Alice. If she wanted to make her husband feel jealous, Alice has succeeded.

Bill enters the lobby for Marion’s apartment building.

37:53

The wrought iron gating is of the art nouveau style, very intricate. Bill is greeted by Marion’s maid, who takes his coat and directs him to the bedroom where Marion and the body of her father are residing. Bill knocks, Marion tells him to come in.

38:41

Notice the Christmas tree, the lights are rainbow colored. Notice the chair to the right of Bill as he enters the room, and the two that they are sitting in by the bed. They look very Egyptian. If anybody knows where I can buy this chair please send me a U2U.

Bill walks up to Marion’s father’s corpse and places his hand over his forehead.

39:36

He confirms that her father is indeed deceased. Marion begins to ramble on about the burdens of being a fiancee to her soon to be husband. She confesses that she isn’t sure she really loves him and that she wishes she could just run away with Bill forever, and then the two lean in and kiss dramatically.

42:46

Yes, the two of them kiss, an act of adultery for both, with Marion’s father’s corpse laying just four feet away from them.

Marion’s revelation to Bill is a parallel to the story Alice tells Bill about the Naval Officer. Here, we see Marion try to purge the emotional grief of her father’s death by fantasizing about leaving her fiancee and running away forever with Bill. This is eerily similar to the story Alice tells Bill, don’t you think?

What’s more, when Marion’s fiancee Carl arrives at their apartment, we see he looks almost identical to Bill Harford, reinforcing the parallel between Alice/Marion. Same haircut, same hair color, same facial features, similar mannerisms. Bill greets Carl, after just making out with his fiancee, and then bids the two farewell for the evening.

Instead of heading home, Bill begins to wander the streets aimlessly, walking & looking down with a thousand mile stare while he continues to imagine Alice with the Naval Officer.

45:37

Slowly Bill begins to awaken to the dark sexual underbelly of society, witnessing two vagrants lewdly copulating on the street. He is approached by a fraternity who presume him to be a homosexual and go on to shove Bill into a parked car while shouting homophobic taunts to him before they continue walking by.

Bill continues walking the other way, he is now in the East Village. He approaches a crosswalk and while waiting for the light to turn he is approached by Domino, a twenty-something young prostitute living in the Village. The name Domino is a reference to domino masks:

47:10

A domino mask (from Latin dominus, "lord", and Medieval Latin masca, "specter") is a small, often rounded mask covering only the eyes and the space between them.

The light turns and they cross the street together. While never actually revealing that she is a prostitute, she’s giving Bill all the right hints and goes for broke when she asks him if he wants to have a little fun. When he asks where, Domino tells Bill that she lives in an apartment around the corner. The two approach the entrance to her apartment building, two red double doors. Bill & Domino go into her apartment. Bill compliments her Christmas tree, this is the first time in the film where a character even acknowledges the presence of a Christmas tree.

48:50

The two of them make it to Dominos bed. A slow dissolve is used to convey the passage of time. While the two of them are together, the film cuts back and forth to show Alice is still awake and smoking a cigarette in their kitchen.

51:02

Her clairvoyance kicks in, and has an instinctive urge to call Bill, who is of all things making out with a prostitute he met on the street. Their momentary embrace comes to an end as Bill answers his phone.

52:27

In the shot we see the book An Introduction to Sociology on the shelf next to Bill. A review of Eyes Wide Shut would later be done by film critic Tim Krieder, the review was called Introducing Sociology. An excerpt from the review:

There is a moment in Eyes Wide Shut, as Bill Harford is lying to his wife over a cellphone from a prostitute's apartment, when we see a textbook in the foreground titled Introducing Sociology. The book's title is a dry caption to the action onscreen (like the slogan PEACE IS OUR PROFESSION looming over the battle at Burpelson Air Force Base in Dr. Strangelove), telling us that prostitution is the basic, defining transaction of our society. It is also, more importantly, a key to understanding the film, suggesting that we ought to interpret it sociologically—not as most reviewers insisted on doing, psychologically.

Bill tells Alice he is still at Marion’s and that he is going to be a while. He tells her not to wait up. After he hangs up the phone, Bill sits down next to Domino and offers her $150 for her time even though all they did was kiss. Domino reluctantly accepts, informing Bill that he doesn’t need to pay her. Bill insists, and places the bills in her hand and folds her fingers shut. By now we are starting to see the development of Bill’s character as being that of an individual who defines himself by his money. Starting with the end of this scene, Bill makes his way through the evening with consistent bribery.

After leaving Domino’s apartment, Bill continues walking through the East Village until he finds himself standing right in front of the Sonata Cafe, where his pianist friend Nick is playing Jazz.

55:09

Bill enters the cafe and descends down a staircase that is ornamented with wreaths and multicolored Christmas lights. The staircase is actually a hall of mirrors, symbolizing his entrance into a world of illusion.

55:39

The fact that Bill is walking down into the cafe is significant, he is descending into the underworld, something Ishtar does in the film Intolerance. Isis, the Egyptian equivalent of Ishtar, is the goddess of magic and ritual ecstasy. And what do we have here in this scene that would indicate the presence of practicing magick? Low and behold when Bill reaches the end of the stairs and enters the cafe, every table in the room has a glowing crystal ball placed at the center.

55:57

Kubrick actually makes a cameo in this scene, he is sitting in the corner of the room and actually glances directly at the camera from the background. What is Kubrick trying to tell us with this cameo? Apart from accidentally being caught in the side frame of the opening sequence to Lolita, this is the only time Kubrick has placed himself in front of the camera in one of his films. To me, this symbolizes the personal attachment he has to this film. As I’ve conveyed through this entire piece, there are many elements of Kubrick’s life sparsely scattered throughout the film in the form of subtle allusions.

Once inside Bill gets a table and watches Nick finish his set with the Jazz band. When the band finishes, Nick sits down at the table with Bill and the two continue to catch up on their lives post medical school.

In this scene Kubrick makes the only intentional cameo in one of his films. He can be seen in between Bill & Nick, he is leaning up against the wall in the background.

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This cameo by Kubrick reinforces the significance this film has to Kubrick’s own personal life. And even more so, by choosing to stage his cameo in this scene he is trying to tell us something about himself, but what is it? This is after all the scene where Bill becomes magically enchanted by Nick.