The plot centers on a doctor (Tom Cruise) who is shocked when his wife (Nicole Kidman) reveals that she had contemplated having an affair the previous summer.

In order to ensure a theatrical R rating in the United States, Warner Bros. digitally altered several sexually explicit scenes during post-production.

Nick describes a secret masked orgy at a mansion outside the city, where he will play piano blindfolded, and reveals the password to gain entry.

[6] For the following decade, Kubrick considered making the Dream Story adaptation a sex comedy "with a wild and somber streak running through it", starring Steve Martin or Woody Allen in the main role.

[7][8] Kubrick also considered Tom Hanks, Bill Murray, Dustin Hoffman, Warren Beatty, Albert Brooks, Alan Alda and Sam Shepard for the lead in the 1980s.

[9] The project was revived in 1994 when Kubrick hired Frederic Raphael to work on the script, updating the setting from early 20th-century Vienna to late 20th-century New York City.

[21] When Warner Bros. president Terry Semel approved production in 1995, he asked Kubrick to cast a movie star as "you haven't done that since Jack Nicholson [in The Shining]".

[22][23] Cruise was in England because his wife Nicole Kidman was there filming The Portrait of a Lady (1996), and the pair eventually decided to visit Kubrick's estate.

Actress Abigail Good could not do a convincing American accent, and Cruise and Kidman ended up suggesting Blanchett for the dubbing, which occurred after Kubrick's death.

Kubrick's perfectionism led to script pages being rewritten on the set, and he intentionally filmed many scenes multiple times to try to break down the actors involved and have them give a more authentic performance.

[43] This effect is evident in the Christmas party scene at Ziegler's house, with Smith noting that the push processing "made the lights appear to be much brighter than they were" and created a "wonderful warm glow.

Costume designer Marit Allen explained that Kubrick felt they fit in that scene for being part of the imaginary world and ended up "creat[ing] the impression of menace, but without exaggeration".

[46][47] Nicole Kidman revealed that her explicit scenes with the naval officer, played by Gary Goba, were filmed over three days and that Kubrick wanted them to be "almost pornographic".

It is classified as such in the book The Erotic Thriller in Contemporary Cinema, by Linda Ruth Williams,[63] and was described as such in news articles about Cruise and Kidman's lawsuit over assertions that they saw a sex therapist during filming.

[80] Historians, travel guide authors, novelists, and merchants of Venetian masks have noted that these have a long history of being worn during promiscuous activities.

As such, Nelson argues that the sex ritual is a symbolic mirror of the darker truth behind the façade of Victor Ziegler's earlier Christmas party.

[88] In the beginning of the film, as Bill and Alice are saying goodbye to their daughter Helena and the babysitter, a painting by Christiane Kubrick titled "View from the Mentmore" can be seen hanging next to the Christmas tree.

[93] During the same party sequence, Bill is talking with the two models as they walk past a small reproduction of Gian Lorenzo Bernini's sculpture Apollo and Daphne sitting on a table.

[94] When Bill enters a cafe towards the end of the film, two Pre-Raphaelite paintings can be seen hanging on parallel walls, Ophelia by John William Waterhouse and Astarte Syriaca by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.

[107] Shortly after its screening at the Venice Film Festival, Eyes Wide Shut had a British premiere on September 3, 1999, at the Warner Village cinema in Leicester Square.

[111] The original DVD release corrects technical gaffes, including a reflected crew member, and altering a piece of Alice Harford's dialogue.

Most home videos remove the verse that was claimed to be cited from the sacred Hindu scripture Bhagavad Gita (although it was Pook's reworking of "Backwards Priests" as stated above).

[117] In the Chicago Tribune, Michael Wilmington declared the film a masterpiece, lauding it as "provocatively conceived, gorgeously shot and masterfully executed ... Kubrick's brilliantly choreographed one-take scenes create a near-hypnotic atmosphere of commingled desire and dread.

Club was also highly positive, arguing that "the film's primal, almost religious intensity and power is primarily derived from its multifaceted realization that disobeying the dictates of society and your conscience can be both terrifying and exhilarating.

[121] Writing for The New York Times, reviewer Janet Maslin commented, "This is a dead-serious film about sexual yearnings, one that flirts with ridicule yet sustains its fundamental eeriness and gravity throughout.

One complaint was that the movie's pacing was too slow; while this may have been intended to convey a dream state, critics objected that it made actions and decisions seem laboured.

Hunter elaborates on his criticism, and states that "Kubrick is annoyingly offhand while at the same time grindingly pedantic; plot points are made over and over again, things are explained till the dawn threatens to break in the east, and the movie stumbles along at a glacial pace".

Who are these people played by Cruise and Kidman, who act as if no one has ever made a pass at them and are so deeply traumatized by their newfound knowledge of sexual fantasies—the kind that mainstream culture absorbed at least half a century ago?

Some have argued that the work that remained was minor and exclusively technical in nature, allowing the estate to faithfully complete the film based on the director's notes.

"[120] Although Ebert has been frequently cited as calling the standard North American R-rated version the "Austin Powers" version of Eyes Wide Shut – referring to two scenes in Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery in which, through camera angles and coincidences, full frontal nudity is blocked from view in a comical way[121][152][153] – his review stated that this joke referred to an early rough draft of the altered scene, never publicly released.