Eyes Wide Shut | 1999

After all the hype and the secrecy, Stanley Kubrick’s final movie was greeted with a strangely muted reception, but there’s no denying how gorgeous it looks.

Although it’s set in New York, there are only the most fleeting glimpses of the real city, courtesy of a Second Unit.

The ‘Long Island’ mansions were found in the Home Counties, the ‘Greenwich Village’ streets constructed at Pinewood Studio or faked in corners of central London.

One of the very few real Big Apple locations is the exterior of the mansion of Victor Ziegler (Tootsie director Sydney Pollack, replacing Harvey Keitel), which is in fact the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, East 37th Street at Madison Avenue in the New York.

The party interior, though, where Dr Bill Harford (Tom Cruise) attends to a guest after she ODs on a speedball, was filmed at Luton Hoo, Hotel, Golf and Spa, near Luton in Bedfordshire. A popular filming location, Luton Hoo was once open to the public but has since been turned into a luxury hotel. It’s famously featured in Four Weddings and a Funeral, as a 'French chateau in 1964 Pink Panther sequel A Shot in the Dark and as 'Shrublands' health club in rogue Bond movie Never Say Never Again.

The exterior of ‘Club Sonata’, the New York jazz club, is on the Pinewood set, but the interior is the now-closed Madame JoJo's, Brewer Street, in Soho.

Most of the ‘Greenwich Village’ street scenes were shot on the elaborately detailed outdoor set at Pinewood (the proliferation of T-junctions is a dead giveaway), but for a few shots, London streets were dressed as New York.

After leaving the apartment of hooker Domino, Dr Bill is stalked by a sinister man as he walks along Hatton Garden, where New York-style payphones were installed between numbers 32 and 38.

The stalker, who appears to be across the street, is actually on Worship Street, EC2, just off City Road near Old Street in the City (look out for the 21 Worship Street, in the background).

The Royal Suite of the luxurious Lanesborough, 1 Lanesborough Place, SW1, the converted hospital occupying a prestigious spot opposite Hyde Park Corner, is the site of the edgy pool-game meeting between Bill and Ziegler.

Knebworth House (‘Wayne Manor’ in Tim Burton’s Batman) was screentested and rejected, for the masked ‘orgy’ scene. In the end, two separate locations were used.

Coincidentally, the exterior is another ‘Wayne Manor’ – Mentmore Towers, in the village of Mentmore, Buckinghamshire (seen in Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins as well as Terry Gilliam’s Brazil). It has stood empty for years while its future is decided – there are plans to convert it into a hotel.

The exotic interior, with its Indian-style carvings, is Elveden Hall, a private house on the A11 about four miles west of Thetford in Suffolk. Elveden Hall also stood in for the interior of the palatial home of villain Manfred Powell (Iain Glen) in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider, was used for the ‘Tangier’ banquet in Bond movie The Living Daylights, and became the bedchamber of the King (Peter O’Toole) in Matthew Vaughn’s Stardust.

The huge revolving doors of the new Chelsea and Westminster Hospital complex on Fulham Road, Chelsea, lead into the spacious atrium where Dr Bill goes to look for the unfortunate Amanda Curram (Julienne Davis). The hospital was also where Imogen Stubbs dies in childbirth, leaving Richard E Grant bringing up baby in Jack & Sarah, and also appears in rom-com Sliding Doors.

The final Christmas shopping reconciliation scene was filmed on the ground floor of London's famous West End toyshop Hamley’s, Regent Street, London W1.

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