20 Things You Didn't Know About Eyes Wide Shut

20. The Novel Has An Unseen Alternative Ending

Eyes Wide Shut is based on Traumnovelle, a 1926 novella written by Austrian Arthur Schnitzler, translated in English as Rhapsody: A Dream Story.

The film remained surprisingly faithful: Fridolin, a doctor, is tempted towards infidelity when his wife Albertina describes her sexual fantasies of other men, which leads to old friend Nachtigal and the orgiastic masquerade party. Albertina ultimately forgives him and tells him to 'not worry about the future.'

There was, however, an alternate version of this story in one of Schnitzler's earlier works, Das Weite Land, first written in 1908, a full 17 years before Dream Story. In this recently discovered earlier draft, featured in The Guardian, “He confesses his adventure to her. She chases him away.” Albertina is not so forgiving, reflecting Schnitzler's own disastrous marriage.

"A notorious womaniser in his younger years, Schnitzler later found himself at the receiving end of romantic infidelity. [His wife] Olga’s affair with the composer Wilhelm Gross is said to have been the final straw for an already frail relationship and they separated."