A Nicole Kidman erotic thriller from 1999 had scenes so graphic they had to be digitally altered for cinemas.
Kidman has made many headlines following the UK release of her newest film, Babygirl.
Though this latest feature itself contains a number of racy scenes that have got everyone talking, they are small fry in comparison to this film.
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The movie is called Eyes Wide Shut, and Kidman starred alongside her husband at the time Tom Cruise in the erotic thriller. You can now even watch it on Netflix in the UK.
The concept centres around a couple, Bill and Alice, played by Cruise and Kidman respectively.
When Alice tells her husband Bill that she has fantasised about having sex with another man in the past, he goes down a dark spiral that ends with him infiltrating a high-powered orgy.
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Many parts of the film, directed by Stanley Kubrick, were done to a very high level of extremity, with Kidman herself having to insert a clause into her contract around the nudity in her sex scenes.
The orgy scenes were heavily digitally altered by Warner Brothers, a fact that drew a great deal of criticism.
This was due in part to Kubrick dying prior to the release of the film, making Eyes Wide Shut his last ever movie.
Kubrick died of a heart attack just six days after screening a ‘final’ cut of the film to studio executives, Kidman, and Cruise.
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Legendary film critic Roger Ebert, who gave the film 3.5 out of four stars, said in his review: “Kubrick died in March. It is hard to believe he would have accepted the digital hocus-pocus.
“Eyes Wide Shut should have been released as he made it, either 'unrated' or NC-17. For adult audiences, it creates a mesmerising daydream of sexual fantasy.”
At the time of the film’s release, critic groups in both New York and Los Angeles disagreed with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) for the alterations made to the film in order to ensure its R-Rating.
Films that are ‘unrated’ or NC-17 are often banned from playing in the majority of theatres due to licensing laws, which would have minimised the film’s release.
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In a statement made to the MPAA at the time, a New York film critic circle said the board were ‘out of control’.
They went on to say: “[The MPAA has] become a punitive and restrictive force, effectively trampling the freedom of American filmmakers.
“How is it possible that a serious movie about human sexuality, made by one of the world's master filmmakers, cannot be seen by American adults in its intended form, when those same adults can watch comparable fare any night on cable television?”
Jack Valenti, the chairman of the MPAA at the time, responded calling the group a ‘small band of constant whiners’ who ‘talk to each other, write for each other, opine with each other and view with lacerating contempt the rubes who live Out There, west of Manhattan and east of the San Andreas Fault’.
Eyes Wide Shut is available to watch on Netflix in the UK.
Topics: Film, Netflix, Nicole Kidman, TV and Film, Tom Cruise, Entertainment
Michael Slavin