This article explores the interdependence of money, guilt, and redemption in Arthur Schnitzler's Traumnovelle ('Dream Story') and Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. It argues that the protagonist's culpability in both the literary text and the film results from their drive to surpass the confinements of their upper middle-class status. However, their desire to enter the realm of a quasi-religious circle of social and monetary power is bound to fail and forces them to seek redemption. After willfully admitting their 'sins,' they ultimately accept their proper social positions. Initially, these similarities seem unsurprising, considering that the film is an adaptation of the novella. However, Kubrick's version does not so much aim at a 'decontextualization' of social and economic conditions, but rather suggests that the intrinsic economic order and its sustaining sphere have not only not changed, but have even been reinforced since the time of Schnitzler's text. This leads to a different final assessment of this condition at the end of the film and the novella. The latter's optimistic outlook has been replaced by a fatalistic and almost radical acknowledgment of the middle-class individual's limited possibilities in finding fulfillment.