Stanley Kubrick achieved in death what he never managed in life yesterday by topping the United States box office with his last film, Eyes Wide Shut.
The reclusive director, who died in March at his home near Luton only days after finishing his edit of the movie after a slow London shoot, insisted all along that it was his "best film".
Such uncharacteristic hype from the man who had made Lolita, 2001 A Space Odyssey, The Shining, Spartacus and Dr Strangelove, combined with strict secrecy on set - he even kept his studio guessing about the title up to the last minute - have made Eyes Wide Shut an phenomenon before a single frame was seen.
Kubrick, something of a control freak's control freak, made the film's peepshow trailers himself.
They featured a semi-clad Nicole Kidman in the midst of rapture with her husband Tom Cruise.
Although the sexual chemistry seems to have worked with audiences - it took $22.8m (£18m) at the box office at the weekend - critics have so far failed to swoon.
The New York Times found it "spellbinding", but to the Washington Post it was "creaky, ancient and hopelessly out of touch. Eyes Wide Shut turns out to be the dirtiest movie of 1958".
The plot revolves around a New York psychiatrist (Cruise) driven demented by jealousy when his wife (Kidman) confesses to fantasising about another man. The much-talked about orgy scene - which will be shown in full in Britain when the film opens in September, but which has been obscured in America to mask offending genitalia - angered many.
Roger Ebert, of the Chicago Sun-Times, one of the most influential critics in America, called the decision hide the "bits and pieces" behind various digitally inserted props and people "annoying and ludicrous".
Jan Harlan, Kubrick's executive producer, conceded that the auteur himself would have preferred not to tamper with the original, but he was afraid of getting the US equivalent of an 18 certificate, which would have limited its appeal.
Despite his legendary reputation, Kubrick films rarely did as well at the box office as they did with critics.
Eyes Wide Shut has already made nearly half of the total takings of his last two films, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket.
