- Eyes Wide Shut is a 1999 erotic mystery psychological drama film directed, produced, and co-written by Stanley Kubrick. It is based on the 1926 novella Dream Story (German: Traumnovelle) by Arthur Schnitzler, transferring the story’s setting from early twentieth-century Vienna to 1990s New York City. The plot centers on a doctor (Tom Cruise) who is shocked when his wife (Nicole Kidman) reveals that she had contemplated having an affair 12 months earlier. He then embarks on a night-long adventure, during which he infiltrates a masked orgy of an unnamed secret society.