Glastonbury West • Articles / Reviews

Subject: Schnitzler and "Eyes Wide Shut"

Having read the by-now infamous London _Evening Standard's_ review of the late Stanley Kubrick's last film (which was very positive, by the way), I've discovered that the screenplay was based on a work by 19th-century Austrian author Arthur Schnitzler called _Traumnouvellen_. Schnitzler sounds interesting and I'm wondering if anyone on the list knows his work and could tell us whether he wrote stories in our genres. Subject: Re: Re: Schnitzler and "Eyes Wide Shut"

<<All his characters in spite of their wit and command of language cannot communicate with each other; they are entraped in the roles society gives them and allow those roles to satisfy their basic desires thereby losing all hope of more lasting fulfillment.>>

I agree, from what I have read, well spoke! Also, as in La Ronde and Anatol and if my faulty memory serves, also in Cassanova's Homecoming, he presents the view of life as a kind of merry-go-round (all glitz and loud music in which the horses are not real) which is also a trap: we are fated to repeat our mistakes endlessly. This can lead to a cavalier, oh-what-the-hell attitude, but eventually, for all the wit and charm of the things I've read by Schnitzler, they are sad at their heart.

Anyone else have that tug? Read more here...

Articles

article

"The "Dangerous Art" of Arthur Schnitzler: Stage & Screen & Stage"

An aesthetico-ethical critical essay in Film & Philosophy, on the Rebellious Art of: SCHNITZLER, OPHÜLS, KUBRICK, HARE, and MENDES. As that is exemplified in the Literature of the texts: Eyes Wide Shut (screenplay-adaptation by Stanley Kubrick & Frederic Raphael); Traumnovelle (the novella by Arthur Schnitzler); and the performing-arts in the feature film, "EYES WIDE SHUT" (Warner Bros./Stanley Kubrick, 1999 ); with further thematic critical references made to the stage-plays: "Reigen"(1900) & "The Blue Room" (1999) and to the motion pictures: "LA RONDE" (1950) & "AMERICAN BEAUTY" (1999)

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Reviews

"Howie the Rookie" Reviews:

• "Howie the Rookie" -
New York Sun

• "Howie the Rookie" -
New York Cool

• "Howie the Rookie" - Broadway.com

• "Howie the Rookie" -
New York Times

Howie the Rookie, Mark O'Rowe's "epic tale of friendship, betrayal and vengeance," will get an Off-Broadway production at the Irish Arts Center in Manhattan beginning May12th toward a May 18th opening. The play was seen in acclaimed and popular runs in Toronto, Los Angeles and elsewhere.

It won the Irish Times New Play Awards, The George Devine Award, the Rooney Award for Irish Literature and the Heard Angel for Best Production at The Edinburgh Festival Fringe. O'Rowe is the writer of "Intermission," the recent film staring Colin Farrell and Colm Meany. Howie the Rookie includes "a Mayan death god, Siamese fighting fish and Matt Dillon," and is set over two days in Dublin, Ireland. Emmy Award-winner Nancy Malone will direct the staging, to feature John O'Callaghan ("We Were the Mulvaneys") and Mark Byrne ("Gangs of New York").

The Irish Arts Center (Pauline Turley, executive director), Georganne Aldrich Heller, Tom Kibbe, and Naked In The Wings present the production.

The Irish Arts Center is at 553 West 51st Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. The playing schedule for Howie the Rookie is Wednesday through Saturday at 8 PM and Sunday at 3 PM. Tickets are $40-$45 and are available by calling (212) 868-4444 or visiting www.smarttix.com.

Located in the heart of Hell's Kitchen, the Irish Arts Center was founded in 1972 by Jim Sheridan (My Left Foot, In America) "to celebrate the artistic expression of the Irish and Irish American Experience."

The Play

full play

Read the play here: "The Affairs of Anatol."
The Granville Barker version of ANATOL is posted here by link with the Gaslight website at Mt. Royal University in Canada, as is the lively discussion on Schnitzler (Gaslight archive DATES ) which led to the Toronto production of ANATOL in 2005.

MAX. Well, Anatol, I envy you.

ANATOL. My dear Max!

MAX. Perfectly astonishing. I've always said it was all tricks. But he went off to sleep under my very eyes . . . and then he danced when you told him he was a ballet dancer and cried when you said his sweetheart was dead . . . and he sentenced that criminal very soundly when you'd made him a judge.

ANATOL. Didn't he?

MAX. It's wizardry!

ANATOL. We can all be wizards to some extent

MAX. Perfectly uncanny.

ANATOL. Not more so than much else in life . . . not more uncanny than lots we've been finding out the last hundred years. If you'd suddenly proved to one of our ancestors that the world went round, he'd have turned giddy.

MAX. But this seems super-natural.

ANATOL. So must anything strange. What would a man think if he'd never seen a sunrise before, or watched the spring arrive . . . the trees and the flowers . . . and then felt himself falling in love. MAX. Mesmerism . . . ANATOL. Hypnotism.

MAX. Yes . . . I'll take care no one ever does it to me.

ANATOL. Where's the harm? I tell you to go to sleep. You settle down comfortably . . . off you go . .

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Film

listing

SILENT FILM
IMDB Listing - "The Affairs of Anatol"

Socialite Anatol Spencer seeks a better relation that he has with his wife. He sets up the friend of his youth Emilie in an apartment only to have her two-time him. He comforts the near suicide Annie only to have her rob him of his wallet. "Satan" Synne, the "wickedest woman in New York," looks promising but she's only plying her trade to help raise funds for her husband's surgery. He decides to return to his wife, with all her faults, only to find her carousing with his best friend Max.