Grain on the Brain: The Underground 35mm Scan of 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Examining an under-the-table copy of Stanley Kubrick's last film which some say is closer to his original vision

Jul 26, 2024

[Note: All images in this article are from public sources and have not been obtained through piracy. These sources include websites showing frames from 35mm scans of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ and its trailer. The images belong to their respective owners and fall under Fair Use.]

If you’re interested in cinema, particularly the films of Stanley Kubrick, you might remember Tony Zierra’s 2017 documentary Filmworker. It was a widely-acclaimed examination of the life and career of Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s right-hand man who put his heart and soul into innumerable tasks for the late director.

If you enjoyed Filmworker, as most people did, then you might also recall Zierra’s announcement that he was making a follow-up documentary specifically examining Kubrick’s last film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut. Kubrick’s controversial coda was released a few months after his death and featured the star couple of the day, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Furthermore, if you’ve been following Zierra’s progress, you might even remember attending a 2023 Q&A on Zoom with Zierra and his team, including producer Elizabeth Yoffe. There were several intriguing things brought up in that Zoom session. For instance, Zierra said he saw Eyes Wide Shut in cinemas twice during its initial run, but noticed that at least one shot from the film had been mysteriously removed upon his second viewing.1 The implication was that changes to Kubrick’s last picture may have been made without the master’s consent following his death, contradicting the narrative put forth by Warner Bros. executives back in 1999.2

Speculation has run rampant for years about Eyes Wide Shut’s state of completion. Some think it was altered after Kubrick’s death, while some regard the film we see today as Kubrick’s final cut. All sorts of oddities have added fuel to the fire. For example, a 2008 boxset of Kubrick films was reportedly meant to include a “scene-specific commentary” for Eyes Wide Shut by its late co-star, Sydney Pollack, and historian Dr. Peter Loewenberg.3 This commentary has never been released, leading a curious Redditor to muse “Maybe Pollack said something regarding the film’s state of completion at the time of Kubrick’s death which WB didn’t want people to hear?”4

I reached out to Dr. Loewenberg and he confirmed that such a commentary did in fact exist, but he couldn’t confirm the ruminating Redditor’s speculation. “I made my recording solo. Pollack also made his alone”, Dr. Loewenberg told me. “I do not know why WB [Warner Bros.] did not release them.”5

Zierra’s documentary on Kubrick’s swan song hasn't been released yet, and I’d encourage everyone to keep their eyes wide open for updates by following ‘SK13: Kubrick’s Endgame’ on Facebook and X. However, something else happened recently which should elicit a bit of light intrigue among those waiting for Zierra’s film. Although nowhere near as shocking as Zierra says his SK13 project will be, the rather under-the-table nature of this recent occurrence should nonetheless raise a few eyebrows.

In March 2021, around the 22nd anniversary of Kubrick’s death, someone on eBay started selling an original 35mm theatrical release print of Eyes Wide Shut. A theatrical release print consists of film reels delivered to cinemas to be projected there upon a movie’s release. The print of Eyes Wide Shut on eBay had been delivered to an Italian cinema back in 1999 for the film’s Mediterranean run. As one individual commenting on the sale explained, “People just don't send prints back to be destroyed. Studio doesn't have time to track down 1000's of prints”.6 Hence, someone had managed to get their hands on this Italian cinema print of Eyes Wide Shut and wanted to make a buck by selling it online.

The print was eventually sold, but the buyer didn’t want to show it off or salivate over its smooth, spotless casing. He wanted to get the ball rolling and privately distribute a new scan of Kubrick’s last movie to film fans. A scan which would remain arguably more faithful to the Bronx-born chess aficionado’s creative vision.

You see, people lucky enough to have caught Eyes Wide Shut in cinemas in 1999 say it was far more visually striking than all of its subsequent home media releases on VHS, Blu-ray, Netflix and the like. The ‘90s cinemagoers recall things ranging from sharper contrasts between light and dark, deeper color tones and a distinct “grainy” texture throughout the film. Besides the obvious differences in screen size, aspect ratio, acoustics and such, the audio-visual discrepancies between most movies’ theatrical and retail releases are not particularly noticeable. But the differences between both “versions” of Eyes Wide Shut stuck out like a sore thumb for numerous Kubrickians.7

So, one day I opened up Taschen’s book The Stanley Kubrick Archives and perused still frames scanned from Eyes Wide Shut’s original 35mm film reels. Judging from those stills alone, the ‘90s audiences’ assertions seemed to be true. While every scene in the Eyes Wide Shut DVD copy I first watched well-nigh a decade ago is stunning, the 35mm scans in Taschen’s book did appear to be more colorful, “contrasty” and, well, grainy. Further evidence comes from the fact that recent 35mm cinema screenings of Eyes Wide Shut have clearly demonstrated the grainy, highly-saturated color palette described by 1999 audiences.8 Unfortunately, cinema re-releases of Eyes Wide Shut are far from common. You’ve got to be in the right continent at the right time to catch them. Beyond a few screen grabs smattered across the Internet here and there, it’s difficult for a lot of people to see the differences for themselves.

One film enthusiast linked the visual discrepancies to the fact that media like DVDs are fundamentally data storage devices. Some data, including visual data, must be sacrificed to fit a sizeable movie file onto a lone disc, for example. This fellow argued that whenever the nearly three-hour Eyes Wide Shut has been transferred onto DVD or Blu-ray, visual subtleties involving grain and color have consequently been automatically removed “by a software algorithm that BY DESIGN sacrifices picture quality to reduce the total data size”.9 That’s his emphasis, not mine. He must have been pretty excited when he wrote that.

One other cinema whiz argued that Eyes Wide Shut’s grainy, saturated quality would never have come out the way it did in cinemas were it not for the fact that “Mr. Kubrick did not supervise the release prints, due to the fact he was - dead”.10 So this character connected the more mellow visual style of Eyes Wide Shut’s retail copies to Warner Bros. rectifying what they perceived to be glaring mistakes in its theatrical prints.

However, another film buff posited that the unusual texture in Eyes Wide Shut’s cinema release was due to the chemical quality of 35mm film stock, which retains most of this quality after being scanned and projected in theaters. Think of old Westerns and those flickering black dots jittering across the screen and you’ll get the idea. However, the texture of Eyes Wide Shut’s film stock was apparently exaggerated during its production. Several scenes were filmed in extremely low lighting conditions, with Kubrick specifying that he wanted to shoot beyond the recommended exposure speed. This overexposed film stock was later force-developed during post-production, a practise usually undertaken as a last resort to make scenes brighter and more visible.11

However, as Director of Photography Larry Smith later told American Cinematographer, this was actually part of a deliberate strategy by Kubrick “designed to get a special look” for the film. “If you look at the night scenes in particular, they have terrific exposure and depth, as well as very good blacks”, Smith told reporter Stephen Pizzello a few months after the film’s premiere.12 So the production’s strange celluloid procedures at least contributed to the film’s saturated, painterly quality as seen in its 35mm theatrical prints.

Which brings us back to the surreptitious sale of an original Italian cinema print of Eyes Wide Shut, a relic of late ‘90s cinephilia. The print’s eventual buyer quickly found a film scanning service and sent the print there. Film buffs donated a substantial sum of money to his endeavor while he received technical assistance from another forum visitor to boot. This particular helper attended a few cinema re-releases of Eyes Wide Shut, taking extensive notes on the color contrast, hues and chromatic variations of the film’s other existing 35mm prints. He did this to ensure he and his friend would remain faithful to Kubrick’s vision. Once the scanning service completed its task, both folks either received a hard drive with files containing the new 35mm scan or ran a remote downloading application to receive these files via cyberspace. Either way, the two busybodies indicated they’d already started sending the new scan privately to eager forumgoers who’d donated funds to their project.13

Then the scan got leaked.

Yes, someone managed to nab the new 35mm scan of Eyes Wide Shut before uploading it to the web so it could be downloaded, watched and compared with its home media releases. The public’s appetite was definitely there to begin with. Many Kubrick fans have periodically called for a brand new Blu-ray or 4K release of the film maintaining its original visual style, including its dreamlike grain quality. After all, the picture’s atypical filming and developing procedures indicate that Kubrick wanted it to look that way in the first place. Anyone fond of the director’s last monolith would want to see the movie as it was intended, an opportunity usually reserved for its sporadic theatrical re-runs.

When comparing scenes from the new 35mm scan of Eyes Wide Shut with the film’s DVD release, the differences are certainly striking. See for yourself below. First here’s a shot from a scene in the DVD copy:

…and now take a gander at the scene’s 35mm equivalent:

Quite a difference, ain’t it? Not only is the visual contrast enormous, but the sides of the shot are wider too. As far back as the film’s 2000 VHS release, Warner Bros. has stated that Kubrick intended for Eyes Wide Shut to be shown “in the full aspect ratio of the original camera negative”.14 In other words, roughly equivalent to an uncropped frame like the last one above. The key word here is roughly, as I’ve definitely seen more uncropped material in screenshots of the new scan compared to the 2000 copy.

In other ways, though, fidelity to Kubrick’s vision might just be the verifiable kicker in this new scan of Eyes Wide Shut. We’ve already discussed the quirky tweaks made in production to give the film its striking texture. As Larry Smith described, the crew “basically left the negative in the developing bath for a longer amount of time than usual…at first we were all surprised that he [Kubrick] wanted to do it. However, once we began seeing the results and the quality of the negative, we understood what he was trying to do.”15 With this in mind, here’s another frame from a scene in the new scan:

And below is the same scene in the film’s DVD release:

Alas, it seems we can’t entirely see what Kubrick was “trying to do” in any official retail or streaming release of Eyes Wide Shut. What’s more, in the run-up to the film’s recent 25th anniversary, Kubrick’s daughter Katharina revealed that Warner Bros. have no plans for a 4K edition of her father’s last picture.16 As a result, some Kubrickians have resorted to this under-the-table 35mm print floating around the dark corners of the Internet right under Warner Bros.’ noses. Other 35mm prints of the film have occasionally sprung up for sale online. A print of its trailer even landed on eBay recently before being bought by persons unknown.

All ethical and legal concerns about unsanctioned film scanning and distribution aside, analysing the odd differences between Eyes Wide Shut’s cinema and home releases can broaden our minds in preparation for Zierra’s SK13 documentary. If such noticeable differences like those described here occurred, consider the potential reasons how and why. That way, we can at least approach the idea that there may be more to Eyes Wide Shut’s state of completion than meets the eye, beyond the alterations discussed in this piece.

On that note, last year I stumbled across some astonishing unused shots from a rough edit of Eyes Wide Shut in University of the Arts London’s Stanley Kubrick Archive. Those discarded shots have still never been published publicly, unlike the oft-mentioned shot of Cruise, Kidman and their fictional daughter rowing a boat. No, the shots I found included a particularly beautiful one of Cruise trying on a mask in the creepy Rainbow Fashions costume shop, for example. However, I don’t recall finding any indication whether these shots were removed before or after Kubrick’s death.

To conclude, I’ll just leave you with a link below to the trailer for Tony Zierra’s SK13: Kubrick’s Endgame. This will tickle your imagination about what may or may not be revealed in the near future about Stanley Kubrick and his mysterious final film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fhnf9wNWN7I&t=19s

Commendable Commotion

Discussion about this post