SOURCE: Simon, John. “Not with a Bang …” National Review 51, no. 15 (9 August 1999): 54-6.

In the following review of Eyes Wide Shut, the 1999 film based on Schnitzler's Dream Story, Simon asserts that the film is based on a misinterpretation of the novella.

If previous ages tended blindly to ignore their geniuses, ours is all too ready to crown as genius the nearest trendy hack. One of the very few masters not fully acknowledged even posthumously is the Viennese playwright-fiction writer Arthur Schnitzler (1862-1931), most of whose many works are poorly, if at all, translated into English.

Hence it may be unsurprising if, for his last movie, Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick, along with his co-scenarist, Frederic Raphael, misread the work it was “inspired by,” Schnitzler's Traumnovelle (Dream Story, 1926). That the director died four days after completing the film, and before putting in his usual last-minute finishing touches, makes the result...