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Barry Lyndon

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Barry Lyndon
Image:Barry Lyndon A.jpg
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.

Contents

[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

Image:Barry12.jpg

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
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] 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 Irish gentry trying to become a member of the English aristocracy.

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.[1]

[edit] Trivia

Image:Barry Lyndon screenshot.JPG
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • The character of Barry Lyndon was loosely based on Andrew Robinson Stoney, a real-life Irish rake who married and abused a wealthy widow.

[edit] External links


 

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Stanley Kubrick
Films: 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
Kubrick in Popular Culture: Spartacus • Dr. Strangelove • 2001: A Space Odyssey • A Clockwork Orange • The Shining
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