glance of “where the rainbow ends” and the dark truth about the elite starts.
Bill meets Ziegler in his gigantic bathroom who is dressing up when he arrives and is with a naked unconscious woman who, OH DEAR!!! is not his wife. Bringing back to my memory the time both Bill and Alice were entering this very elegant and is attended by highly cultured people party, they were welcomed by Ziegler and his wife in a room filled with Christmas lights. We saw two respectable couples talking about respectable things in room full of enchanting lights. Where is Ziegler’s wife by the way? When the woman gains consciousness, Ziegler talks to her in an odd, paternal matter, highlighting the fact that he’s the master and she’s the slave. The luxurious setting of this scene is Kubrick’s way of saying that extreme wealth does not necessary equal high morals.
We all recall the scene where Bill meets his old friend Nick Nightingale at a jazz café and where Nick reveals to Bill that he is sometimes hired by mysterious people to play, blindfolded, during mysterious parties that are full of beautiful women. When upon return at home from Ziegler’s party, Alice almost confessed to Bill she could have cheated on him, highlighting the “Ishtar” side of Alice as she brings up in her husband feelings of jealousy, insecurity, betrayal and even humiliation, Bill appears to be looking for some kind of experience with Nick making the big mistake of revealing to his old friend all of the information needed to access the venue. A nightingale is type of bird that is known for singing at night, just like Nick Nightingale “sings” secret information at the start of Bill’s fateful night.
“Fidelio”, means “faithfulness” and is a main theme of the movie. More importantly, as Nightingale points out, “Fidelio” is the name of an opera written by Beethoven about a wife who sacrifices herself to free her husband from death as a political prisoner. The occult ritual takes place at Somerton, in Long Island. The building used to film the outside scene is Mentmore Towers in UK.
The location selected to film the elite scenes is quite interesting. Mentmore Towers was built in the 19th century as a country house for a member of the most prominent and powerful elite family in the world: The Rothschilds. By selecting this location, was Kubrick trying to show his audience the “real world” equivalents to the ultra-elite shown in the movie? Incidentally, the name of Bill’s connection to the elite, Victor Ziegler, is of German-Jewish origin, like Rothschild. It has been documented that the Rothschilds do actually partake in masked events very similar to those shown in Eyes Wide Shut. Here are rare images taken from a 1972 party given by Marie-Hélène de Rothschild.