Stanley Kubrick died six days after showing his final cut of Eyes Wide Shut to Warner Bros. That timing alone fueled three decades of conspiracy theories. But if you actually sit down and watch the eyes wide shut ceremony scene, the reality of the filmmaking is honestly more unsettling than the myths. It’s not just a spooky movie moment. It’s a masterclass in spatial dread.
Most people remember the masks. They remember the haunting, repetitive piano notes. But they forget how long the scene actually breathes. It’s a slow burn. Tom Cruise’s character, Bill Harford, enters Somerton—the country estate—and we’re stuck there with him. We feel his pulse. We feel the "you don't belong here" energy radiating off the screen. It’s probably the most analyzed sequence in 1990s cinema, and for good reason.
What's actually happening in the Somerton ritual?
Let's be real: the ceremony isn't just about a secret society having a party. It’s a liturgical inversion. Kubrick, being the obsessive researcher he was, didn't just throw people in capes and call it a day. The music you hear—that chanting that sounds like it’s being played backward? It literally is. Composer Jocelyn Pook used a recording of a Romanian Orthodox liturgy and reversed it.
It’s called "Backwards Priests."
The effect is visceral. It creates a sense of "wrongness" that your brain picks up on even if you don't know the technical trick behind it. The Red Cloak figure sits on a throne, surrounded by masked figures in a circle. This isn't just random blocking. Kubrick is using the circle to symbolize a closed system. Bill is the outlier. He’s the jagged edge trying to fit into a smooth, terrifyingly organized loop.
The masks themselves weren't just cheap plastic. They were based on the Venetian Bal Masqué tradition. Specifically, many were inspired by the work of artist Jocelyn Pook and the actual masks used in the historical "Ball of the Victims." They represent a loss of individual identity. Once you put on the mask, you aren't a doctor or a lawyer anymore. You’re just a part of the machine.
The technical genius of the eyes wide shut ceremony scene
Kubrick spent months on this. Literally months. The scene was filmed at Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, and the lighting is almost entirely "diegetic"—meaning it comes from sources visible within the scene, like those massive chandeliers and flickering candles.
He used a very specific film stock. Kodak Vision 500T 5279.
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By pushing the film (underexposing it and then overdeveloping it), Kubrick got that grainy, dreamlike texture. It makes the red of the cloaks pop in a way that feels like fresh blood. It’s gorgeous. It’s also deeply stressful to look at for too long.
The movement is what gets me. The way the women stand in a circle and slowly disrobe isn't portrayed as "sexy" in the traditional Hollywood sense. It’s clinical. It’s ritualistic. It’s a display of power, not passion. Bill watches from the balcony, and we watch with him, feeling that same voyeuristic guilt. You’ve probably noticed that the camera rarely stays still. It’s always slightly drifting, like a shark circling its prey.
The Mystery of the Masks
One of the coolest, most overlooked details is where those masks came from. They weren't just props made in a studio workshop. They were mostly sourced from a shop in Venice called Mondonovo.
- The "Bauta" mask: This is the one with the protruding chin that allows the wearer to eat and talk without removing it.
- The "Doctor of the Plague" mask: You know the one—the long bird beak. It’s a grim reminder of death amidst the excess.
- The "Volto" mask: A simple, ghost-white face that erases all emotion.
When the Red Cloak points his staff at Bill, the sound design drops out almost entirely. It’s a vacuum. Then comes the demand: "Remove your mask." In that moment, the eyes wide shut ceremony scene shifts from a mystery to a nightmare. The tension isn't about what they’ll do to him; it’s about the fact that they already know who he is.
Why this scene still sparks conspiracy theories
You can't talk about this scene without mentioning the "elite" theories. Because Kubrick filmed so much of his work in the UK but set it in New York, there’s this weird, displaced feeling to the whole movie. Some people think Kubrick was trying to blow the whistle on real-life secret societies like the Illuminati or the Hellfire Club.
Honestly? It's more likely he was commenting on the banality of power.
The people in that room are the "masters of the universe." They’re the same people Bill treats in his medical practice. The horror isn't that they’re demons; it’s that they’re bored billionaires who have turned human interaction into a cold, scripted performance.
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There’s a famous rumor that 24 minutes were cut from the film by the studio or "hidden" because they showed too much. While it’s true that the theatrical version used CGI "sentinels" (those digital people standing in front of the sex acts) to avoid an NC-17 rating in the US, the idea of a massive "missing" ritual sequence is mostly just fan fiction. Kubrick’s estate has been pretty clear: what we see is largely what he intended, minus the digital censorship.
Breaking down the "Second Password"
"Fidelio."
That’s the password Bill uses to get in. It’s the title of Beethoven’s only opera. In that opera, a wife disguises herself as a man to rescue her husband from a political prison. It’s a story about loyalty and sacrifice.
By using that password, Bill is playing a role he doesn't understand. He thinks he’s being clever. He thinks he’s "in." But the ceremony reveals that his marriage—the very thing Fidelio celebrates—is much more fragile than he realized. The ritual is a mirror. It shows Bill that his world of high-society house calls and Christmas parties is just a thin veil over something much darker and more transactional.
The way the Red Cloak speaks is also worth noting. He doesn't scream. He doesn't threaten. He speaks with the calm, bored authority of someone who owns the air you're breathing. "Kindly step forward." It’s terrifying because it’s so polite.
Real-world influences on the ritual
While Kubrick was a hermit in many ways, he wasn't disconnected. He was fascinated by the Rothschild Surrealist Ball of 1972. If you look up photos from that event, you’ll see guests wearing stag heads and masks that look eerily similar to what ended up in the eyes wide shut ceremony scene.
Audrey Hepburn showed up to that 1972 ball in a birdcage.
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Kubrick took that real-world decadence and stripped away the "fun" parts. He turned the party into a funeral. He wanted to show that at the highest levels of power, there is no more room for spontaneity. Everything is a ceremony. Everything is a script.
The impact on modern pop culture
You see the fingerprints of this scene everywhere now. From American Horror Story to music videos by The Weeknd, the aesthetic of the "masked elite ritual" has become a shorthand for "something bad is happening in high places."
But nobody does it like Kubrick.
Modern directors often make these scenes too flashy. They use too many jump cuts. They make the music too loud. Kubrick understood that true fear comes from the silence between the notes. He understood that a man in a mask just standing still is way scarier than a man in a mask jumping out at you.
How to watch the scene with fresh eyes
If you're going to rewatch it, don't just focus on Bill. Look at the people in the background. Look at the way they don't move. They are like statues.
Notice the colors. The deep purples and golds. It’s the color palette of royalty and the Church. Kubrick is telling you that this group considers themselves a religion unto themselves. They have their own laws, their own priests, and their own sacrifices.
When the "Mysterious Woman" intervenes to save Bill, notice how the crowd reacts. Or rather, how they don't react. They just watch. There is no empathy in that room. There is only the ritual. It’s a coldness that stays with you long after the credits roll.
Steps for deeper exploration
If you want to go down the rabbit hole of the eyes wide shut ceremony scene, there are a few things you should actually check out to see the "DNA" of the film.
- Read "Dream Story" (Traumnovelle): This is the 1926 novella by Arthur Schnitzler that the movie is based on. Seeing how Kubrick updated the 1920s Vienna ritual to 1990s New York is fascinating.
- Look up the Jocelyn Pook soundtrack: Listen to the track "Masked Ball" on its own, in the dark. It’s a completely different experience when you aren't distracted by the visuals.
- Research the "Mondonovo" Mask Shop: Most of the masks were handmade in Venice. Looking at the craftsmanship helps you realize that these weren't just costumes; they were pieces of art designed to dehumanize the wearer.
- Analyze the spatial layout: If you have the Blu-ray, map out where Bill moves in the house. Kubrick famously used "impossible" architecture in The Shining, and some film scholars argue he does something similar at Somerton to make the viewer feel disoriented.
The ceremony scene isn't just a part of a movie. It’s a vibe that defined a whole era of "pre-millennial tension." It captures that 1999 feeling that something was about to end, or that something hidden was about to be revealed. Decades later, we’re still looking through the mask, trying to figure out what Kubrick saw that we haven't yet.