Dr. Harford Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Masks

mask eyes wide shut

Good news for all Stanley Kubrick fans! There is a new documentary which is about the making of the masks in Eyes Wide Shut. In Kubrick’s last masterpiece, Dr. Bill Harford (played by Tom Cruise) wears an androgynous mask, as its creator Franco Cecamore specifically intended. This reinforces the theme that Dr Harford’s increasingly ambiguous relationship with his sexuality, spawned partly by the neurotic jealousy of his wife. Harford meets other “masks” at the secret orgy.

These masks represent characteristics that are normally hidden from society. As Cecamore says the Mysterious Woman uses a mask that he named “Inca mask”, because he was inspired by Inca witch doctors. So we can say that the Mysterious Woman put a spell on Bill in a figuratively and literally.

Another very important character interacts with Dr Harford: Red Cloak. Franco Cecamore calls Vitali’s mask “Orgy Master mask” and he says this mask was, at the beginning, a “Tragic Pierrot”. This last information turns Leon Vitali’s character into an uncanny (in Freudian sense) leader of the masonic group.

Franco Cecamore is the creator of the main mask of Eyes Wide Shut. Now you can listen his incredible story. The filming of this documentary was conducted on two separate occasions in Venice. The decision to make a second trip was motivated by a fact, the model used for the mask worn by Tom Cruise wasn’t a man but a 28-year-old Viennese girl named Gabi, aka Gabriel Jallits, and Franco Cecamore agreed to show us her photos so we can put the new material in the film.

You will find the story and all the documents of the documentary here. This documentary was broadcasted by RAI (Italian Public Television) on March the 8th 2014.

Special thanks to: Franco and Francesca Cecamore, Marco Bassi, Gabriel Jallits, Josie Sherabayani, Ciro Giorgini, Sean Keane, Carolyn Burke and the people who financed the project.