Barry Lyndon

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Barry Lyndon

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)
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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.

1 Background
2 Themes
3 Music
4 Photography
5 Influence
6 Cast
7 Source
8 Trivia
9 External links

[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.^{[citation needed]}

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 jabs 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.

[edit] Photography

A candlelight scene from the film.

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 scenes lit with actual candlelight with an average lighting volume of only three candlepower. In fact, the film features the largest lens aperture in film history.

Most shots, however, were achieved with conventional lenses but were lit in a way that mimics natural light. This has the dual result of making the lighting seem more realistic and giving a look to the film similar to 18th century paintings (because, of course, painters of the period were depicting a world devoid of electric lighting). For example, to light a room, rather than placing the lights inside as would be done in a conventional movie, the lights were placed outside and aimed through the windows, which were covered in a diffuse material to scatter the light evenly through the room. Not only did this give the look of natural daylight coming in through the windows, it also protected the historic locations from the damage caused by mounting the lights on walls or ceilings and the heat from the lights. One telltale sign of this method occurs in the scene where Barry duels Lord Bullingdon. Though it appears to be lit entirely with natural light, one can see that the light coming in through the cross-shaped windows in the barn appears blue in color, while the main lighting of the scene coming in from the side is not. This is because the light through the cross-shaped windows is actual daylight (which is blue-tinted compared to electric lights) while the light coming in from the side is not.

[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
Ryan O'Neal	Barry Lyndon
Marisa Berenson	Lady Lyndon
Patrick Magee	The Chevalier de Balibari
Hardy Krüger	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] Source

Stanley Kubrick based his original screenplay on William Makepeace Thackeray's The Luck of Barry Lyndon (republished as the novel Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq.), a picaresque tale written and published in serial form in 1844. The serial, which is told in the first person and "edited" by the fictional George Savage FitzBoodle, concerns a member of the Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy.

The source novel is written by Lyndon while imprisoned looking back on his life. Lyndon is a notable example of the literary device - the unreliable narrator and throughout the novel the reader is constantly asked to question the veracity of the events described by him. Although later editions dropped the frame device of FitzBoodle's (Thackeray's pseudonym) editions, it is crucial in unmasking Lyndon's narcissism through occasional notes inserted at the bottom of the page noting information that is contradictory or inconsistent in relation to what Lyndon writes elsewhere. Andrew Sanders mentions in his introduction for the Oxford Classics edition, these annotations were relevant to the novel as an ingenious narrative device as Thackeray constantly invites the reader to question Lyndon's version of the events.

Kubrick however felt that using a first-person narrative would not be useful in a film adaptation :

I believe Thackeray used Redmond Barry to tell his own story in a deliberately distorted way because it made it more interesting. Instead of the omniscient author, Thackeray used the imperfect observer, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say the dishonest observer, thus allowing the reader to judge for himself, with little difficulty, the probable truth in Redmond Barry's view of his life. This technique worked extremely well in the novel but, of course, in a film you have objective reality in front of you all of the time, so the effect of Thackeray's first-person story-teller could not be repeated on the screen. It might have worked as comedy by the juxtaposition of Barry's version of the truth with the reality on the screen, but I don't think that Barry Lyndon should have been done as a comedy. [1]

As in the case of most literary adaptations, Kubrick shortens or in some cases omits characters who were significant in the novel. The time period constituting his escape from the Prussian army to his marriage is given greater detail in the novel than the film.

Its also interesting to note that the film ends much before the novel's ending. At the end of the film, Barry Lyndon survives with an amputated leg from a duel (an incident absent in the novel) and returns to his gambling lifestyle with lesser success while Lady Lyndon pays the debts accumulated during her marriage to Barry, including the sum promised to Redmond in return for leaving the country. Though these events occur in the novel as well, it also shows that upon Lady Lyndon's death, the sum promised to Barry is cancelled and he becomes destitute eventually winding up in prison for his confidence schemes. It is at this place where Barry writes his memoirs, which end noting that he has to 'eke out a miserable existence, quite unworthy of the famous and fashionable Barry Lyndon'.

At this point Fitz-Boodle writes an epilogue of sorts about Barry's final days where his only visitor was his mother. He died after spending nineteen years in prison.

Thackeray based the novel on the life and exploits of the Irish rakehell and fortunehunter Andrew Robinson Stoney, who married (and subsequently was divorced by) Mary Eleanor Bowes, the Countess of Strathmore, who became known as "The Unhappy Countess" due to the tempestuous liaison. The Countess of Strathmore is one of the ancestors of Queen Elizabeth II.

The revised version, which is the novel that the world generally knows as "Barry Lyndon", was shorter and tighter than the original serialization, and dropped the FitzBoodle, Ed. device. It generally is considered the first "novel without a hero" or novel with an antihero in the English language. Upon its publication in 1856, it was entitled by Thackeray's publisher The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq. Of The Kingdom Of Ireland Containing An Account of His Extraordinary Adventures; Misfortunes; His Sufferings In The Service Of His Late Prussian Majesty; His Visits To Many Courts of Europe; His Marriage and Splendid Establishments in England And Ireland; And The Many Cruel Persecutions, Conspiracies And Slanders Of Which He Has Been A Victim.[2]

[edit] Trivia

Kubrick looked toward paintings of the era for inspiration.

Vivian Kubrick, daughter of Stanley Kubrick, had an uncredited role as a guest at the birthday party.
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.
Cinematographer John Alcott appears in the scene in which Lord Bullingdon confronts and challenges Barry in a men's club. In a non-speaking bit, the cinematographer plays a clubsman asleep in a chair near Barry.
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.