Barry Lyndon
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| Barry Lyndon | |
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| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Written by | Novel: William Makepeace Thackeray Screenplay: Stanley Kubrick |
| Starring | Ryan O'Neal Marisa Berenson |
| Distributed by | Warner Bros. |
| Release date(s) | 18 December 1975 |
| Running time | 184 min. |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $11,000,000 (estimated) |
| IMDb profile | |
Barry Lyndon (1975) is a film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. It recounts the exploits of an unscrupulous 18th century Irish adventurer (Barry Lyndon né Redmond Barry), particularly his rise and fall within English society. Ryan O'Neal stars as the title character.
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[edit] Background
After 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick made plans for a film about Napoleon Bonaparte. During pre-production, however, Sergei Bondarchuk's Waterloo was released and subsequently failed at the box office. As a result, Kubrick's financiers pulled their funding for the film. He was furious, having put considerable time and effort into the development of the Napoleon project. Left with no alternative, he turned his attention to his next film, A Clockwork Orange. Barry Lyndon followed, in part to take advantage of the copious research Kubrick had done for the aborted Napoleon.
Kubrick was also interested in Thackeray's Vanity Fair but dropped the project when a serialised version for television was produced. He told an interviewer: "At one time, Vanity Fair interested me as a possible film but, in the end, I decided the story could not be successfully compressed into the relatively short time-span of a feature film...as soon as I read Barry Lyndon I became very excited about it".
The film did not do well at the box office in the United States, but it was a hit in Europe. This mixed reaction factored in Kubrick's filming of Stephen King's The Shining — a project that would not only please him artistically, but also succeed financially.
[edit] Themes
Barry Lyndon departs from its source novel in several ways: In Thackeray’s original, events are related in the first person by Barry himself. A comic tone pervades the work, as Barry proves both a raconteur and an unreliable narrator.
Kubrick’s film, by contrast, presents the story objectively. Though the film contains voice-over (by actor Michael Hordern), the comments expressed are not Barry's, but those of an omniscient, although not entirely impartial, narrator. This change in perspective also alters the tone of the story: Thackeray tells a jaunty, humorous tale, but Kubrick's telling is essentially tragic, with many subtle humorous jaunts toward 18th century society (such as how Barry tries to find the correct behavior to become a gentleman, and when he does so pays a huge price).
Kubrick also changed the plot: The novel does not include a final duel, and by adding this episode, Kubrick establishes dueling as the film’s central motif. (The movie begins with a duel where Barry’s father is shot dead, and duels recur throughout the film.)
[edit] Music
The movie’s period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for classical music, and the film score uses pieces by Johann Sebastian Bach, Antonio Vivaldi, Giovanni Paisiello, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and Franz Schubert. The score also includes Irish folk music performed by The Chieftains. The piece most associated with the film is the main title music, George Friderich Handel's stately Sarabande from the Keyboard suite Vol.2, No.4 in D minor HWV 437, originally for solo harpsichord. Yet, the versions for main and end title are performed very romantically with orchestral strings, harpsichord, and tympani. It is used at various points in the film, in various arrangements, to indicate the implacable working of impersonal fate. The film won a 1975 Academy Award for Best Musical Score.
Leonard Rosenman won an Academy Award for adapting the score from various pieces of baroque and classical music. Although his reinterpretations of the "Sarabande" main theme are significant departures from Handel in both rhythm and orchestration, he never felt he deserved an award for it and did not show up to receive it.[citation needed]
[edit] Photography
The film is famous for its cinematography, which was overseen by director of photography John Alcott (who won an Oscar for his work), and for the technical innovations that made some of its most spectacular images possible. Alcott used three f/0.70 lenses developed by Zeiss for NASA for use in the Apollo moon landings, which Kubrick discovered in his search for a lens that could film in low-light situations. The super-fast lens allowed him to shoot many of the scenes using natural light, including candlelight scenes with an average lighting volume of only three candlepower. In fact, the film features the largest aperture in film history. Kurbrick and Alcott used wide angle to telephoto zoom lenses in many shots, which flattened perspective, allowing Kubrick to present his 18th century settings in a way that is reminiscent of paintings from the period.
[edit] Influence
Barry Lyndon has been hailed by Kubrick fans as the definitive example of a period feature film. Quotations from the film appear in such disparate works as Martin Scorsese's The Age of Innocence and Wes Anderson's Rushmore.
In recent years, Barry Lyndon has come to be regarded not only among Kubrick's finest films but indeed as a classic of world cinema. It was part of the Time magazine's poll of 100 best films as well as the Village Voice poll conducted in 1999. Director Martin Scorsese has cited this picture as his favorite Kubrick film.
[edit] Cast
| Actor/Actress | Role |
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| Ryan O'Neal | Barry Lyndon |
| Marisa Berenson | Lady Lyndon |
| Patrick Magee | The Chevalier de Balibari |
| Hardy Kruger | Capt. Potzdorf |
| Gay Hamilton | Nora Brady |
| Murray Melvin | Rev. Samuel Runt |
| Frank Middlemass | Sir Charles Reginald Lyndon |
| Leon Vitali | Lord Bullingdon |
| Steven Berkoff | Lord Ludd |
| Leonard Rossiter | Capt. John Quinn |
| André Morell | Lord Wendover |
| David Morley | Bryan Patrick Lyndon |
| Michael Hordern | Narrator |
| Diana Körner | Lischen (German Girl) |
| Dominic Savage | Young Bullingdon |
| Arthur O'Sullivan | Capt. Feeny |
| Billy Boyle | Seamus Feeny |
[edit] Trivia
- Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Stanley Kubrick, had an uncredited role as a guest.
- Several of the interior scenes were filmed in Powerscourt House, a famous 18th century mansion in County Wicklow, Republic of Ireland. The house was destroyed in an accidental fire several months after filming (November 1974), so the movie serves as a record of the lost interiors.
- In 1973, Leon Vitali auditioned for and won the role of the older Lord Bullingdon, step-son of Barry Lyndon. Vitali would go on to become Kubrick's personal assistant, acting as casting director on his next films, and supervising film-to-video transfers of Kubrick's films. Their relationship lasted until Kubrick's death.
- Principal photography took 300 days, from spring 1973 through early 1974, with a break for Christmas.
- Among the locations used were Castle Howard in England (exteriors of the Lyndon estate), Dublin Castle in Ireland (the Chevaliers’ home) and Frederick the Great's administration buildings at Potsdam near Berlin.
- The character of Barry Lyndon was loosely based on Andrew Robertson Stoney, a real-life Irish rake who married and abused a wealthy widow.
[edit] External links
- Barry Lyndon Press Kit
- "Two Special Lenses for Barry Lyndon article from American Cinematographer
- "Barry Lyndon Reconsidered" essay by Mark Crispin Miller
- "Kubrick's Anti-Reading Of The Luck Of Barry Lyndon" essay by Mark Crispin Miller
- "Barry Lyndon: The Shape of Things to Come" essay by Bilge Ebiri
- "Narrative and Discourse in Kubrick's Modern Tragedy" essay by Michael Klein
- "The Zooms in Barry Lyndon" essay by J. S. Bernstein
- "Photographing Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon", interview with John Alcott first published in American Cinematographer
- Barry Lyndon at the Internet Movie Database
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| Fear and Desire • Killer's Kiss • The Killing • Paths of Glory • Spartacus • Lolita • Dr. Strangelove • 2001: A Space Odyssey • A Clockwork Orange • Barry Lyndon • The Shining • Full Metal Jacket • Eyes Wide Shut Shorts: Day of the Fight • Flying Padre • The Seafarers Productions: A.I.: Artificial Intelligence |
