Go to Table of Contents of the analysis (which has also a statement on purpose and manner of analysis and a disclaimer as to caveat emptor and my knowing anything authoritatively, which I do not, but I do try to not know earnestly, with some discretion, and considerable thought).
Gloria as Eurydice and Davey as Orpheus
Davey's Dream and his Crash through the Window
Davey has lost his boxing match and returned home. Following a phone conversation with his uncle, in which he is invited out to Washington state for a visit, he falls asleep. Davey's dream (shots 139, 140, 141 and 142) has the city streets in negative as a heckler's voice berates him as a flop, telling him to go home. He wakes from this to the scream of his apartment building neighbor, Gloria, and through their opposing windows sees Vincent, Gloria's dance hall boss, in her room, assaulting her. Davey rushes over to rescue her.
Streets in negative in the dream sequence
Gloria and Davey entering a romantic relationship, Vincent kidnaps her when she tells him she's quitting her job. Davey now must rescue Gloria a second time. He hires a taxi to follow Vincent's car, and the journey takes them through the early morning, empty streets of the Dumbo district. These shots remind very much of Davey's dream though now in positive rather than negative.
Davey pursues Vincent's car in the Dumbo District
Davey is taken prisoner by Vincent and his men. When he escapes and leaps through the window in shot 399, we are again returned to the dream. The lighting is such that we have the same sense of positive and negative reversal on Davey's body. It is as though he is split between the dream world (negative) and the real world, but we are unable to tell which world is which due the ambiguity of the early morning light.
Davey crashes through the window.
Some people make notice, thinking it a goof, that Davey is wearing dark socks before he plunges through the window, then when he lands on the street outside he is wearing white socks. I wouldn't be too sure it's a goof. It could very well be a reference back to the dream negative inversion, consolidating a relationship to the plunge through the window. My belief is that Kubrick is making a nod to Jean Cocteau's Orpheus (1950), and will return to the mundane matter of the socks after exploring how Cocteau works with negative and positive in Orpheus with transitions between the "real" world and the underworld.
The plot of Orpheus is based upon the myth of Orpheus' futile endeavor to rescue Eurydice from the underworld, but there are considerable differences in Cocteau's film, such as that in the end Orpheus and Eurydice has both returned to the land of the living.
In Cocteau's version, Orpheus is a poet, which will be given as the reason he is able to cross from the world of the living into that of death, as the artist straddles both realms. At the film's beginning, he is present at a cafe when a younger rising poet, who has threatened Orpheus' eminence, is killed by Death's motorcyclists. This younger poet had caused Orpheus some consternation, he feeling challenged by this other poet's brilliance and popularity. Death, disguised as a princess, had arrived at the cafe with the younger poet and after he is hit by the motorcyclists she has him put in her car. Orpheus doesn't know yet that she is Death when, stating she needs a witness, she calls upon him to accompany her, transporting the youth who Orpheus believes only to have been injured. In the car, he realizes the youth is dead. After they are briefly stopped by a train, Death instructs her chauffeur to take the "usual route" to her mansion. It is at this point that the normal landscape viewed outside the window switches to a negative view.
Cocteau's "Orpheus" street scene with landscape in negative
In Killer's Kiss, Kubrick uses a negative effect for the dream/nightmare from which Davey awakens when he hears Gloria screaming. The nightmare follows Davey's defeat in the boxing ring. Our impression is that his career is over. He is suffering a kind of death, aimless, wondering what will come next, when who steps into his life but Gloria and he is given the mission of rescuing her. They plan to go to Washington state together. This dream/nightmare anticipates Davey's descent into the warehouse area later to search for Gloria, who has been kidnapped. Both in the myth and Cocteau's film, the tale of Orpheus involves his rescuing his wife, Eurydice, from Death and the underworld, and one can look at Davey's journey in Killer's Kiss as possessing some of the same elements, he having to rescue Gloria from Vincent, and descending into the underworld in order to do so. A twist here is that Davey is also experiencing death with his failure at boxing, just as Cocteau's Orpheus' position as a famed poet has been threatened to be usurped. One might even view Gloria as a kind of Orpheus in that her entrance into Davey's life rescues him.
In Cocteau's Orpheus, following his visit to Death's mansion, Orpheus' attention becomes focused entirely on messages from the underworld that come to him over the car radio, which he copies directly and gives as his own poetry, which is but an expression of no artist knowing the source of their inspiration. These are being sent by the poet who had been killed. So preoccupied is Orpheus, that he neglects his wife. Death has fallen in love with Orpheus, and he with her. Orpheus no longer paying attention to his wife, Death claims her in her sleep and takes to the underworld without permission from those who oversee her actions. Her chauffeur, Heurtebise, is the only one aware Eurydice is pregnant. Having fallen in love with her, he aids Orpheus in his underworld quest to retrieve her. Out of love for Orpheus, Death reverses time and returns Orpheus and Eurydice to the land of the living with no memory of their travails.
The below shot is the final one from Orpheus, Death is led off with Heurtebise who, due his love for Eurydice, has assisted her in transgressing the rules imposed on Death. Having been found guilty of breaking these rules, they are to be punished. One does not know what will happen with Death and Heurtebise, only that it will be "unpleasant" and harsh.
Death and Heurtebise are led away.
The shot of Death and Heurtebise being led off to their punishment reminds me of the below.
Albert's killers in the alley.
Before Gloria is kidnaped by Vincent, when she goes to the dance club to pick up her last pay check, he tells his thugs to dispose of him in some way. We don't know whether the intention is to kill or injure him as we don't hear the orders. Davey had arranged to meet his manager, Albert, in front of the dance hall while Gloria is picking up her last check. Two drunken fools steal Davey's scarf and while he's chasing them his manager arrives. The thugs mistake Albert for Davey, take him from the sidewalk before the dance club and kill him in an alley. The screengrab above is from when they leave the scene of the murder, having disguised the death to look like a robbery. They take money from Albert's wallet and toss it to the side, but as they don't check the identification they are still unaware they haven't killed Davey.
Davey had told his manager to meet him at the dance hall at 49th and Broadway, but New Yorkers will recognize that the dance hall is at 46th and Broadway. Kubrick may have determined that the flip of the 6 to a 9, 46th Street replacing 49th, was to be another demonstration of an inversion/reversal, this one coincident with Albert being mistaken for someone else when he arrives at an address different from the one Davey had voiced.
In Orpheus, mirrors are beautifully used as the means for transitioning between the world of the living and that of death. Sometimes the mirrors behave as water. In the scene in which Death steals away Eurydice, the mirror is instead broken.
First we see Death in her black dress. She stands before a closed three-paneled mirror in the bedroom of Orpheus and Eurydice.
Death in her dark dress.
Cocteau cuts away from Death briefly. When the camera returns to her, Death's dress has changed so it is white. The mirror having been opened, she faces it, and there is a brief flare of light that brightens her.
Death's dress changes color.
Death breaks the center mirror and the bright fill light is darkened. She steps through the broken mirror with Eurydice, out of the bedroom and into the underworld.
The lighting on Death as she shatters the mirror.
After they have passed through the mirror, it reforms with a reverse effect.
The mirror reforms.
The brief flare of the front fill light that darkens when the mirror is broken may be taken to understand that this is the moment of Eurydice's death. Kubrick may have played already with this idea in his first feature length film Fear and Desire. In that film, several soldiers find themselves stranded on enemy land, near an enemy encampment. A General having been seen at the encampment, two of the men plot to kill him and steal the plane at an adjoining air field, while another soldier provides a distraction as he escapes down the river by raft. The General and his Captain are played by the same two actors who also play the soldiers whose mission is to kill the General. Stephen Coit is both the Captain and Private Fletcher who kills the General. Kenneth Harp is both Lt. Corby and the General. When the General is shot by Fletcher, Kubrick employees a like effect of having a front fill light extinguished with the shooting. In Cocteau's film, the duplicitous mirror is shattered when Eurydice dies an unnatural death. We have a similar mirroring in Fear and Desire with Corby and Fletcher killing their mirror-image counterparts, and the fill light on the General going dark.
The general is shot in "Fear and Desire"
Fletcher has shot the General, who is not his mirror double, and the fill light goes dark. He then shoots the Captain, who is his mirror double, and the fill light doesn't go dark. He shoots them both through a window, which is a kind of mirror. One may wonder why the fill light doesn't go dark on the Captain when shot by his double. But the General doesn't die, though shot by Fletcher. He is only wounded. He crawls outside onto a front porch, where he sees his own mirror image, Corby. It is Corby, his mirror image, who must kill him. Rather than taking the General prisoner, though the General is surrendering, he shoots him. If we're to understand how the mysterious darkened fill light works here, we need to look back at Cocteau's Orpheus, for when Death takes Eurydice it is an illegal operation, against the rules. She shatters the mirror and the fill light goes dark, just as Fletcher first shoots the General through the window, which are to assume has broken, and the fill light goes out, then the window already broken he turns the gun on his double. It is only when Death operates illegally in Orpheus that the mirror is broken. Otherwise, individuals pass through it as they would through water that absorbs their entrance and reforms rather than shattering. I can well imagine a young Kubrick, impressed by Cocteau, attempting to replicate some of his poetic metaphors, but not so boldly that anyone would say, "Hey, I see what you're doing there."
Kubrick employees the same effect when Albert, Davey's manager, arrives at 46th street (which should be 49th). In shot 277, Albert steps out of the taxi and Kubrick keeps the camera on the taxi as it pulls away, and as the taxi pulls away screen right there is a man who enters screen left and is pulling something, perhaps luggage on a hand truck. The fill light that was on Albert stays ever so briefly on this person then goes dark. With the lower screen going dark our attention is thus briefly drawn up to the bright lights of the Himberama sign above. Shot 278 then shows Albert standing in front of the doors of the dance club, the street presumably to the camera's rear. He stands next to Gloria, neither one knowing each other. Gloria had already gone up to get her check, had a fight with Vincent who refused to pay her, and went back down to the street to rejoin Davey, only Davey isn't there, he is off elsewhere chasing the fools who took his scarf. Inside the club, Vincent is giving his thugs orders to take care of Davey, who Vincent believes is down with Gloria in front of the club. The thugs go out, tell Gloria that Vincent has had a change of heart and wants to give her the money she's owed. She goes back upstairs and when she is gone the thugs take Albert, believing he is Davey as he was standing beside Gloria, and kill him in the alley.
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Street scene in "Killer's Kiss"
In Fear and Desire, the General had been shot at his table but isn't killed until he crawls out onto the porch, where he is confronted with his double in the Lieutenant, who kills him though he cries out that he surrenders. Albert, too, is a double of Davey in that he is confused with being him and killed in his stead, but he's not Davey and the killing is a mistake. Though this brief glimpse of the man pulling the hand truck, who looks directly at the camera, after which he immediately goes dark, may seem to be Kubrick playing around with showing something of the life of the city, I would argue against this and that it is instead Kubrick playing with the idea of this fill light, the extinguishing of it, and an illegal death, a mistake. This is a very peculiar shot and stands apart from other shots that show bits and pieces of the city. Kubrick, sensibly, should have cut before this extraneous individual looked at the camera.
In Orpheus, Death's illegal taking of Eurydice was accompanied with the shattering of the mirror and the extinguishing of the fill light. In Fear and Desire, Fletcher's shooting of the general had been accompanied with the breaking of the window, and the extinguishing of the fill light, but the general was still alive and was then shot by Corby, there had to be that face to face confrontation between the individual and his double. So, one could say, but where is the shattering of the mirror? I think we need to lok back at shots 241 and 242. In that scene, we see Vincent in his office when he learns Gloria is quitting and coming to get her check. We have a shot of him enraged, facing the camera, or so we assume. In shot 240 we see an illustration of two fools that appear to be looking at him through a window. In shot 241, we see Vincent again as in shot 239, facing us, looking at us, but then he take the object he's holding and pitches it at us, directly at the camera. Only then do we realize we are watching him in a mirror, as the object shatters the mirror. Cut then to shot 242 and Albert at the gym, where Davey is calling him to tell him to meet him at the dance club.
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Vincent breaks the mirror. Albert at the gym.
Whereas in Fear and Desire, Kubrick had used the used the extinguishing of the fill light in conjunction with the breaking of the glass, in his own way imitating Cocteau, in Killer's Kiss he separates the breaking of the mirror from the extinguishing of the fill light. Vincent, in shot 241, enraged at losing Gloria, breaks the mirror, looking directly at the camera, thus also breaking the fourth wall. Kubrick goes immediately next to Albert, in shot 242, who receives the call to meet Davey at the club. In shot 277 we see Albert arriving at the club, then he steps out of the camera's frame, and the black individual steps into the camera's frame from screen left. He looks up at the camera, breaking the fourth wall as Vincent had done, and the fill light goes dark. I do think this is Kubrick separating the broken glass from the extinguishing of the fill light, and through consecutive shots, as in 241 and 242, associating them both with Albert. In this way, shots 241 and 242 anticipate both the deaths of Albert and Vincent, for it is only because Albert is mistakenly killed in place of Davey that Vincent can then be killed by Davey.Vincent later tells Davey that it's all gone wrong, that he thought he was dead, but that he hadn't wanted murder.
Now, having looked at how Cocteau handles positive and negative inversions, in particular with how Death's dress turns from dark to light when she faces the mirror, just before she breaks it and enters the underworld with Eurydice, let's look at the goof of Davey's socks changing color.
Davey, attempting to rescue Gloria at the warehouse in the Dumbo District, has been supposedly knocked unconscious. But he's not unconscious, he is only feigning that he is. We have a close-up that shows he is wearing dark socks.
Davey's dark socks.
Davey then escapes, jumping through a window. When he leaps through the window we are reminded of the negative effect had in his dream. We have seen how Davey's dressed in dark clothing, including dark socks, but in this shot of him breaking through the glass, the way light is used gives the illusion of his clothing being both light and dark.
The light on Davey as he crashes through the mirror.
Landing in the street, Davey's socks are now white, which to me seems like a "tell", the changing color of the socks from dark to light comments on the earlier inversions of negative and positive. Kubrick is still thinking of Cocteau's Death's dress changing from dark to light as she goes through the broken mirror, but this is a naturalistic film. The story is not presented as poetic fantasy or myth, though Davey has indeed entered the underworld in pursuit of the kidnapped Gloria. Kubrick can't and wouldn't want Davey's entire outfit changing color. Indeed, in all of Kubrick's films there is an entry into the underworld, but it isn't separated off as a distinctive place so much as being a state of magical relationships that coexists with the everyday world.
Davey lands in the street.
Because it is associated with death, I'll go ahead and mention a noticeable black/white shift that occurs in Eyes Wide Shut. The bedroom of Bill and Alice, when first observed before Victor's party, has a white phone beside the bed, screen left, and the bedside lamps have slim gold-toned bases. The next night, when Alice and Bill fight and Lou Nathanson dies, the phone has been moved to the screen right of the bed, it is black and the lamps now have thick dark bases. The scene just previous the fight involves Alice looking into the mirror of the medicine cabinet from which she removes the weed they will smoke. Her earlier complaint in the film, which occurred when Bill was looking in the bathroom mirror prior to their leaving for the party, was that Bill didn't really see her anymore. She had asked him how she looked, and while continuing to examine his own reflection in the mirror he told her she looked perfect, great, which had upset her. In a sense she is lost to him with his no longer seeing her, just as Eurydice was lost to Orpheus.
Changes on the bedside tables in "Eyes Wide Shut"
Alice has just informed Bill about an event in which she would have left him for a man she didn't even know, when Bill gets the call that Lou Nathanson has died. He and Alice are now, emotionally, in a state of traumatic separation, and a death physically separates them as he must go attend to it. Bill spends most of the rest of the film periodically imagining Alice with this other man, those scenes pictured as if occurring in a monochromatic other world in Bill's mind, and though Alice disrobes the man with her is a naval officer always attired in his dress whites.
Just as in Cocteau's Orpheus, Eurydice, as Gloria, is returned to Davey/Orpheus and the film ends with a happy moment of reunion for them. The most important take-away here is that in all of Kubrick's films there is an entry into the underworld, but it isn't separated off as a distinctive place so much as being a state of magical relationships that coexists with the mundane everyday world.
July 2018. Approx 3341 words or about 7 single-spaced pages. A 25 minute read at 130 wpm.
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