Ninth Gate vs Eyes Wide Shut: Who Copied Whom in 1999?
Neither film copied the other. Stanley Kubrick shot Eyes Wide Shut from November 1996 to June 1998, and Roman Polanski only began filming The Ninth Gate in the summer of 1998. Both came out in 1999, both end in a masked ritual held in a former Rothschild house, and that coincidence has fed conspiracy theories ever since.
I have been reviewing films since 1990, and the year 1999 is still one of the strangest I remember. In a few months, two of the most famous directors alive released films about rich men, secret rituals and a hero who walks into a world he cannot understand. Kubrick died in March 1999, days after showing his final cut. Polanski, who had not been able to work in America since 1978, made his film in Europe with Johnny Depp. Online podcasts and videos now present the pair as a coded warning about a satanic elite. In this article I put the two films side by side, check each claim against the record, and separate what is on the screen from what is only in the theory.
Did Polanski Copy Kubrick? How Two Rival Rituals Hit Screens in 1999
Category: film history, release dates, The Ninth Gate, Eyes Wide Shut
No. The two films were made separately and overlapped only by chance. Eyes Wide Shut opened in the United States on 16 July 1999. The Ninth Gate premiered at the San Sebastián Film Festival on 25 August 1999 and reached American cinemas on 10 March 2000.
Kubrick's long shoot in England
Kubrick started filming Eyes Wide Shut on 4 November 1996 with Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, then married. The shoot ran until June 1998, one of the longest in film history, and Kubrick kept the plot secret. His source was Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), set in Vienna, which he moved to modern New York while filming almost entirely in England.
Polanski's European adventure
Polanski based The Ninth Gate on Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1993 novel El Club Dumas. He dropped the novel's Alexandre Dumas subplot and kept the hunt for a book of devil worship. Shooting took place in 1998 in France, Spain and Portugal, with Johnny Depp as the book dealer Dean Corso, Frank Langella as the collector Boris Balkan, Lena Olin as Liana Telfer and Emmanuelle Seigner, Polanski's wife, as the mysterious Girl.
Why critics compared them at once
Reviewers saw the overlap as soon as The Ninth Gate reached America. The New York Times review of 10 March 2000 called it "a dinner-theater version of 'Eyes Wide Shut'." The comparison was meant as a put-down, but it fixed the two films together in the public mind, and the conspiracy readings grew from that pairing.
My position
As a critic I treat the overlap as a mood of the late 1990s, not a plan. The approaching millennium, fears about secret power and a revival of interest in the occult were everywhere, from television to bestsellers. Two old masters picked up the same mood in different ways. Kubrick's film is a dream of sexual jealousy, and Polanski's is a dark comedy about a bookworm and the devil. For the earlier history of Hollywood's fascination with the devil, read my series Hollywood's Devil Stars: Jayne Mansfield and Anton LaVey.
What Is the Ninth Gate Book? From El Club Dumas to the Delomelanicon
Category: source novels, The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, Traumnovelle, personal experience
The book in The Ninth Gate is fictional. The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, said to have been printed in Venice in 1666, was invented by Arturo Pérez-Reverte for El Club Dumas. The story says it was based on the Delomelanicon, a manual supposedly written by the devil himself, and that legendary book is invented too.
Pérez-Reverte's novel and what Polanski cut
El Club Dumas (1993) follows Lucas Corso, a mercenary book hunter, on two cases at once: an original manuscript chapter of Dumas's The Three Musketeers and a satanic book of engravings. Polanski and his co-writers John Brownjohn and Enrique Urbizu dropped the Dumas half and built the film around the devil's book. That choice turned a playful literary puzzle into a straighter occult thriller and changed the ending.
The 1666 book, the nine engravings and the letters LCF
In the film, Boris Balkan owns one of three surviving copies of The Nine Gates, and he hires Corso to compare it with the other two. Each copy contains nine engravings. Corso discovers that the images differ: some are signed "AT", for the printer Aristide Torchia, who was burned with his books, and others "LCF", for Lucifer. Only by gathering the nine LCF engravings from all three copies can the ritual work. The pictures recall tarot cards, and that is the key to reading the film.
Is the Delomelanicon a real book?
No genuine text with that title exists. The name was used in occult writing and on the internet before the film, but no historical copy survives, and Pérez-Reverte's version is literary invention. The books Corso handles are props. The real rare books mentioned on screen are a different matter: collectors will recognise titles from the history of demonology, which is one reason the film still feels authentic to bibliophiles.
Kubrick's source: Schnitzler's Dream Story
Eyes Wide Shut comes from Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle, written in Vienna in the 1920s. In the novella, a doctor named Fridolin enters a masked gathering with the password "Denmark". Kubrick and his co-writer Frederic Raphael changed the password to "Fidelio", the title of Beethoven's only opera, about a wife's faithfulness. Raphael wrote about the collaboration in his memoir Eyes Wide Open. The ritual, the masks and the woman who saves the hero were all in Schnitzler first, long before any modern conspiracy.
My reading as a critic and former film marketer
When I worked in film marketing in Egypt in the 1990s, I learned how much a mystery object sells a film: a box, a ring, a book. Both directors used that device. Polanski's book is a classic MacGuffin, the thing everyone chases until we see that the chase itself is the transformation. Kubrick's password is the same device in a single word. Neither object hides a real secret. Each one opens a door into the hero's own desires, and that is why the two films still reward anyone who rereads the novels behind them.
Rothschild Houses on Screen: Mentmore, Ferrières and the 1972 Surrealist Ball
Category: filming locations, Mentmore Towers, Château de Ferrières, myth vs fact
Both films do use former Rothschild houses for their ritual mansions, but only for exterior shots, and neither house belonged to the family when the cameras rolled. Eyes Wide Shut filmed the outside of Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, and The Ninth Gate used the Château de Ferrières near Paris for Liana Telfer's château.
Mentmore Towers: Kubrick's Somerton
Mentmore Towers was built in the 1850s for Baron Mayer de Rothschild. Through his daughter Hannah it passed to the Earls of Rosebery, and the house was sold in 1977. When Kubrick filmed there in the late 1990s, it had no Rothschild link beyond its history. The interiors of the masked ball were shot elsewhere, mainly at Elveden Hall in Suffolk, built for the Maharajah Duleep Singh, with other scenes at Highclere Castle, the house later famous from Downton Abbey. Neither is a Rothschild house.
The Château de Ferrières: Polanski's cult château
Ferrières, east of Paris, was built in the 1850s for Baron James de Rothschild. The family gave it to the University of Paris in 1975, so it was public property when Polanski filmed its exterior in 1998. Location records confirm the façade. Whether the black-mass interior was also filmed there is not documented, and I won't treat it as fact.
The 1972 Surrealist Ball
In December 1972, Marie-Hélène de Rothschild held a Surrealist Ball at Ferrières, the same château Polanski later filmed. Guests including Salvador Dalí and Audrey Hepburn wore surreal masks and costumes, and the invitations were printed backwards. Photographs from that night circulate online as "proof" of elite rituals. It was a lavish costume party, not an orgy, and its link to The Ninth Gate is a coincidence of location.
| Location | Film | Built for | Rothschild-owned at filming? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mentmore Towers (exterior) | Eyes Wide Shut | Baron Mayer de Rothschild | No, sold in 1977 |
| Elveden Hall (interiors) | Eyes Wide Shut | Maharajah Duleep Singh | No, never |
| Highclere Castle (some scenes) | Eyes Wide Shut | Earls of Carnarvon | No, never |
| Château de Ferrières (exterior) | The Ninth Gate | Baron James de Rothschild | No, given away in 1975 |
Why the Rothschild theory needs care
Online readings of these films often claim that a single Jewish banking family secretly rules the world. That idea is an antisemitic conspiracy myth with a long and ugly history, and it has nothing to do with location scouting. Grand nineteenth-century houses survive in Britain and France, many built for the richest families of the time, and film crews rent them because they look like old money. That is the whole story.
What a marketing man sees in these locations
From my years marketing films for Hollywood studios in Egypt, I know a location is a sales tool. A real palace tells the audience that these people are richer than anyone they know, without a word of dialogue. Kubrick and Polanski both needed that shorthand, and both found it in houses that were available, photogenic and out of the family's hands. Kubrick's reputation for using real places to create unease goes back further, as I explore in Hotel California and Kubrick's The Shining.
Balkan and Ziegler: Are These Films About a Satanic Billionaire Class?
Category: characters, wealth and power, critical analysis, personal experience
They are films about the very rich, not proof of a satanic elite. Boris Balkan in The Ninth Gate and Victor Ziegler in Eyes Wide Shut are fictional characters drawn from novels, and both directors use them to show how money buys silence, access and the illusion of power over others.
Boris Balkan: the collector who wants to become a god
Frank Langella plays Balkan as a wealthy New York publisher and book collector who gives lectures on the devil and keeps his treasures in a private library. He wants the nine engravings so he can perform the ritual and gain immortality. Online commentators compare him to the publisher Robert Maxwell, but there is no evidence that Polanski or Pérez-Reverte had Maxwell in mind. In the novel, the Balkan character is a literary critic, not a tycoon.
Victor Ziegler: the host who explains everything
Sydney Pollack plays Ziegler, the rich patient whose Christmas party opens Eyes Wide Shut. Near the end he tells Bill that the masked ball was partly theatre staged to frighten him, and that the woman who died was a drug addict who "got her brains fucked out." Kubrick leaves us unsure whether Ziegler is telling the truth. That doubt is the point: the powerful control the story as well as the events.
Do the films show a real hidden ruling class?
Conspiracy videos claim both directors were exposing a secret network of satanic billionaires. Nothing in Kubrick's interviews, Frederic Raphael's memoir or Polanski's statements supports that reading. Kubrick's films had shown the arrogance of power since Paths of Glory and Spartacus, and Polanski's had done so since Chinatown. These are critiques of class and privilege, a common theme in serious cinema, not coded confessions.
Corso and Bill: two outsiders
Both heroes are middle-class professionals who serve the rich. Corso is a hired book hunter, and Bill is a society doctor. Each is drawn into a world that tolerates him only while he is useful. The irony in Polanski's film is that the devil's favour finally falls on the cynical hired man, not on the millionaire who paid for the search. Kubrick's hero is simply sent back home.
What I have seen of wealth and cinema
Over three decades as a critic, festival programmer and juror, I have met producers, sponsors and patrons of every kind. The real influence of money on film is usually less exotic than any ritual: it decides which films get made, who is invited, and who is quietly left out. Kubrick and Polanski both understood that. For how cinema handles the real scandals of rich men, read my article Movies about Epstein Island.
Green Eyes, Liana and Alice: Who Holds the Keys to the Gate?
Category: women characters, The Girl, Alice Harford, critical analysis
In both films, the women hold the real power. In The Ninth Gate, the nameless Girl played by Emmanuelle Seigner guides Corso to the final gate and is strongly suggested to be a supernatural, even satanic, figure. In Eyes Wide Shut, Alice Harford's confession sets the story moving, and her last word ends it.
Who is the Girl in The Ninth Gate?
The credits call her only "the Girl", and many viewers call her Green Eyes because of the way Polanski lights her eyes. She follows Corso across Europe, protects him with almost superhuman force, and at one point appears to float down a staircase. Her green eyes flash during their love scene before the burning castle, the moment Corso's initiation is completed. Polanski never gives a final explanation, but the film strongly hints that she is the devil, or the devil's servant, in female form.
Liana Telfer: the widow who wants the book
Lena Olin plays Liana Telfer, whose husband sold his copy of the book to Balkan before killing himself. She leads the Order of the Silver Serpent and will seduce, threaten and send hired thugs to get the book back. Liana is the false priestess: rich, theatrical and desperate for a power she will never receive.
Alice Harford: the confession that starts everything
Nicole Kidman's Alice tells Bill that she once fantasised about leaving him for a naval officer she glimpsed on holiday. That speech wounds his pride and sends him into the night. Alice's dream of an orgy later echoes the masked ball he actually saw. At the end, in a toy shop, she tells him there is something they must do as soon as possible, and the film's last word, "Fuck", returns them to their marriage.
Mandy and Domino: the women who pay
Kubrick's film also has women who suffer for the hero's journey: Mandy (Julienne Davis), who overdoses at Ziegler's party and later seems to sacrifice herself to save Bill at the ball, and Domino (Vinessa Shaw), the prostitute who turns out to be HIV-positive. Whether the dead woman in the morgue is really Mandy, and whether her death was murder, is left deliberately open.
My reading as a critic of women on screen
I have spent years writing about actresses and the roles they are given. Both films use the old image of woman as guide and threat, the figure who opens the door to forbidden knowledge. Polanski makes her literally demonic, while Kubrick makes her psychologically real. Seigner, then Polanski's wife, plays the part with a teasing calm that turns the devil into the film's most likeable character. For a real actress whose life was tied to Polanski's occult films, read my Meeting Venus profile Sharon Tate: her career, private life and tragic ending.
Is The Ninth Gate Polanski's Third Devil Film? Rosemary's Baby, Sharon Tate and the Myths
Category: Roman Polanski, Rosemary's Baby, The Fearless Vampire Killers, Sharon Tate, myth vs fact
Yes, in a sense. The Ninth Gate completes a loose devil trilogy in Polanski's career, after the vampire comedy The Fearless Vampire Killers (1967) and Rosemary's Baby (1968). But the claim that Polanski belonged to a satanic circle has no evidence behind it. He has said he does not believe in the occult.
The Fearless Vampire Killers and Sharon Tate
Polanski's 1967 horror comedy sends a bumbling professor and his assistant, played by Polanski himself, to a vampire count's castle in Transylvania. Sharon Tate plays Sarah, the innkeeper's daughter carried off by the vampires. Polanski and Tate met during the production and married in London in January 1968. The film mocks gothic horror rather than worships it, and it parodies the British vampire films then in fashion.
Eye of the Devil: what Sharon Tate really played
Online videos say Tate played a ritual sacrifice in Eye of the Devil (1966), as if the film predicted her death. In fact she plays Odile, a young woman with witch-like powers, and the sacrificial victim is the nobleman played by David Niven. The film shows a pagan cult on a French estate, but it is fiction, and reading it as prophecy turns a murder into a myth.
Rosemary's Baby and the Dakota
Polanski adapted Ira Levin's novel Rosemary's Baby for Paramount, with Mia Farrow as a young wife who suspects her neighbours belong to a coven that wants her unborn child. The exteriors were filmed at the Dakota building in New York, where John Lennon was later shot in 1980. That tragedy has given the building a dark legend, but Lennon's murder had no link to the film. Rosemary's husband, an actor who trades his wife for success, remains one of cinema's sharpest portraits of ambition in show business.
The facts of 1969 and 1977
In August 1969, Sharon Tate, eight and a half months pregnant, and four others were murdered at the couple's Los Angeles home by followers of Charles Manson. Polanski was in London. The Manson killings were not a satanic ritual by Hollywood insiders, though rumours to that effect began almost at once. In March 1977, Polanski was arrested in Los Angeles on charges involving a 13-year-old girl. Under a plea bargain he pleaded guilty to one count of unlawful sexual intercourse with a minor, then fled to France in February 1978 before sentencing. He was detained in Switzerland in 2009, and the Swiss refused to extradite him in 2010. These are the facts on the court record. Anything beyond them in the podcast is rumour.
Polanski and the British devil tradition
Polanski's devil films grew out of a European tradition, not a secret one. In the same year as Rosemary's Baby, Hammer released The Devil Rides Out (1968), with Christopher Lee fighting a satanic cult among the English upper class, and it later made To the Devil a Daughter (1976). Rich worshippers in robes, a stolen book or child, and a battle for one soul were stock elements of British horror long before 1999. I trace that history in Hammer Films: Real Horror or Just Blood and Bosoms?
My position on the man and the films
As a critic, I keep two things apart. Polanski's crime is documented, and nothing in his films excuses it. His films are also major works that deserve to be judged on the screen. What I reject is the third story, the one that turns his life into proof of a satanic cult. That story is built from coincidence and grief, not evidence. For the wider history of Hollywood and the devil, read Hollywood's Devil Stars: Aleister Crowley and Jimmy Page and satanic cults in documentaries and feature films.
Kubrick, NASA and the CIA: Where Film History Ends and Folklore Begins
Category: Stanley Kubrick, Chinatown, George Hodel, conspiracy theories, fact-check
Kubrick did work with real space experts, and Polanski's Chinatown was inspired by real Los Angeles history. Beyond those facts, the stories that Kubrick faked the Moon landing, served the CIA or was killed for Eyes Wide Shut have no evidence. Kubrick died of a heart attack on 7 March 1999, at 70.
What Kubrick really borrowed from the space industry
For 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Kubrick hired the space consultants Frederick Ordway and Harry Lange, who had worked with NASA contractors, and consulted dozens of companies about future technology. For Barry Lyndon (1975), he obtained ultra-fast Zeiss lenses originally made for NASA so he could film scenes by candlelight. Those are facts of craft. They do not make him a government agent.
The Moon-landing hoax
The claim that Kubrick staged the Apollo landings for NASA is one of the most widely repeated film myths. It has been debunked many times: the Apollo missions left equipment and reflectors on the Moon that scientists still use, and independent observers, including the Soviet Union, tracked the flights. A satirical French mockumentary, Dark Side of the Moon (2002), helped spread the joke, and many viewers took it seriously.
Was Eyes Wide Shut cut after his death?
Kubrick delivered his final cut to Warner Bros. days before he died. The only change made for American release was the addition of digital figures that hide some sexual activity in the orgy, so the film could avoid an NC-17 rating. The uncensored version was released in Europe and later on home video. The idea that a "lost" hour was removed to protect an elite is rumour, not record.
Chinatown, John Huston and George Hodel
Chinatown (1974), written by Robert Towne and directed by Polanski, draws on the real water wars that built Los Angeles in the early twentieth century. John Huston plays the corrupt millionaire Noah Cross. Huston knew the Los Angeles doctor George Hodel, who married Huston's former wife Dorothy. Hodel was tried for incest in 1949 and acquitted, and he was a suspect in the 1947 Black Dahlia murder but never charged. His son, the former detective Steve Hodel, argues in his books that his father was the killer. That is one investigator's case, not a proven fact, and there is no evidence that Chinatown was a coded message about Hodel.
What I tell readers who send me these videos
Readers often send me videos claiming hidden messages in Kubrick or Polanski. My answer as a film historian is always to check the sources: production records, interviews, court papers. Great directors leave rich, ambiguous films, and ambiguity invites theories. That is a sign of their art, not of a secret. For more on how film fans fill gaps with legends, read my piece Jean Cocteau, the Priory of Sion Hoax and France's Occult Stars.
The Ninth Gate Ending Explained and Eyes Wide Shut Ending Explained
Category: endings explained, spoilers, The Ninth Gate, Eyes Wide Shut
The Ninth Gate ends with Corso, not Balkan, passing through the ninth gate, apparently granted the devil's favour. Eyes Wide Shut ends with Bill and Alice in a toy shop, choosing their marriage over fantasy. One hero is initiated into darkness, and the other is sent safely home.
The Ninth Gate: what happens at the castle
Balkan takes the nine LCF engravings to a ruined castle, filmed at the Château de Puivert in the Aude, and performs the ritual inside a ring of fire. Believing he has become immortal, he sets himself alight and burns to death, screaming. Corso shoots him to end his agony. Outside, before the burning ruin, Corso and the Girl make love, and her eyes glow.
The ninth engraving and the final light
The Girl then tells Corso that one of Balkan's engravings is a forgery. Corso returns to the Ceniza brothers' bookshop in Toledo, which is now empty, and finds the genuine ninth engraving. It shows a woman riding a seven-headed beast in front of a burning castle, and the woman has the Girl's face. Corso goes back to the castle, the gate fills with white light, and he walks in.
What the ending means
The devil rejects the rich collector who tried to buy power and chooses the lonely, amoral book hunter who had nothing to lose. The nine gates are less a door in a wall than stages of Corso's own transformation. Whether he becomes damned, enlightened or both is left to the audience. Pérez-Reverte's novel ends differently, as a literary game; Polanski's film is darker and more ambiguous.
Eyes Wide Shut: the toy shop and the final word
After Ziegler's explanation, Bill comes home to find the mask he wore at the ball lying on his pillow beside the sleeping Alice. He breaks down and confesses everything. The next day, while their daughter looks at toys, Alice says they should be grateful they survived their adventures, "whether they were real or only a dream". She says they must do something very important as soon as possible, and the last word of Kubrick's career is her answer: "Fuck".
What Kubrick's ending means
Kubrick ends on reconciliation, not revelation. Bill never learns the truth about the ball or Mandy's death, and the film suggests that no one outside that world ever does. What remains is a married couple who have looked at their fantasies and decided to go on. It is a humane ending to a cold film, and it belongs to Schnitzler as much as to Kubrick.
My verdict on the two endings
I have seen both films many times since 1999, in cinemas, at festivals and on home video, and their endings have changed for me with age. Polanski's still feels like a wicked joke with a gothic glow. Kubrick's feels more personal every time, a last film about trust from a director who never explained himself. For more on how Tom Cruise carried that role in his career, see Tom Cruise's top ten films, and for Depp's most memorable roles, read Johnny Depp's most memorable roles.
Who Copied Whom? My Verdict on The Ninth Gate and Eyes Wide Shut
Category: conclusion, critical verdict, personal experience
Nobody copied anybody. Kubrick and Polanski made their films separately, from different novels, with different composers, and they released them months apart in 1999. What they share is an old gothic image of rich people in robes behind palace walls, and a hero who sees more than he should.
After more than three decades of watching, reviewing and programming films, I still find this pair one of the most rewarding double bills in modern cinema. Eyes Wide Shut is a sombre film about desire, jealousy and the walls money builds around the powerful. The Ninth Gate is a sly gothic comedy in which the devil prefers an honest cynic to a millionaire. The conspiracy readings make both films smaller, because they replace the directors' questions with someone else's answers. Watch them back to back, read Schnitzler and Pérez-Reverte, check the facts, and keep your own eyes open.
Ninth Gate and Eyes Wide Shut FAQ
Did The Ninth Gate copy Eyes Wide Shut?
No. Kubrick filmed Eyes Wide Shut from November 1996 to June 1998, and Polanski shot The Ninth Gate in 1998. Both were released in 1999, Eyes Wide Shut in July and The Ninth Gate at San Sebastián in August, so the similarities come from shared themes and old gothic imagery, not copying.
What is The Ninth Gate based on?
The Ninth Gate is based on Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 1993 novel El Club Dumas (The Club Dumas). Polanski dropped the novel's Alexandre Dumas subplot and kept the hunt for The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows, a fictional book of devil worship said to have been printed in Venice in 1666.
Is the Delomelanicon a real book?
No. The Delomelanicon, the manual said to have been written by the devil, is fictional, and so is The Nine Gates of the Kingdom of Shadows. No historical copy of either exists. Pérez-Reverte invented the 1666 book and its nine engravings, some signed AT and others LCF, for Lucifer.
Who is the Girl in The Ninth Gate?
The Girl, played by Emmanuelle Seigner, is never named. She guides and protects Corso, appears to float, and her green eyes glow at key moments. The film strongly suggests she is the devil, or a demonic servant, in female form, and the ninth engraving shows a woman with her face riding the beast.
What does the ending of The Ninth Gate mean?
Boris Balkan dies in his failed ritual, while Corso finds the genuine ninth engraving and walks into the white light of the final gate. The devil rejects the rich man who tried to buy power and chooses the amoral book hunter, whose journey through the nine gates was his own initiation.
Is Eyes Wide Shut based on a true story?
No. Eyes Wide Shut is based on Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Traumnovelle (Dream Story), set in Vienna. Schnitzler's story already included the secret masked gathering, the password and the woman who saves the hero. Kubrick moved it to modern New York, and no evidence links it to a real event.
Where was the Eyes Wide Shut mansion filmed?
The exterior of the Somerton mansion is Mentmore Towers in Buckinghamshire, built for Baron Mayer de Rothschild and sold in 1977. The masked-ball interiors were filmed mainly at Elveden Hall in Suffolk, with other scenes at Highclere Castle. In The Ninth Gate, the Château de Ferrières stood in for Liana Telfer's château.
Was Fidelio the password in Eyes Wide Shut?
Yes. Bill Harford enters the masked ball with the password Fidelio, the title of Beethoven's only opera, about a faithful wife. In Schnitzler's novella the password was Denmark. Bill is still exposed during the ritual, when the master of ceremonies asks him for a second password for the house, which he does not know.
