Which Stanley Kubrick film is based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella Dream Story?
Answer
Eyes Wide Shut
Answer
Eyes Wide Shut
Which Stanley Kubrick film is based on Arthur Schnitzler's novella Dream Story? Eyes Wide Shut is the film.
Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, released in 1999, adapts Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story. The film follows Dr. Bill Harford, played by Tom Cruise, through a night of jealousy, sexual anxiety, secrecy, and a masked gathering after his wife Alice, played by Nicole Kidman, reveals a powerful fantasy of infidelity.
Schnitzler set Dream Story in early twentieth-century Vienna, while Kubrick and screenwriter Frederic Raphael moved the action to 1990s New York City. The adaptation preserves the novella's dreamlike uncertainty and its interest in the hidden desires within a seemingly secure marriage. The film's masked ritual and shifting boundary between reality and fantasy are central to that approach.
The other options belong to different parts of Kubrick's career: The Killing is a 1956 crime film, Lolita adapts Vladimir Nabokov's novel, and Barry Lyndon is based on William Makepeace Thackeray's 1844 novel. Eyes Wide Shut was Kubrick's final completed film.
Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Sept. 2026