Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon is a 1975 epic historical drama film written, directed, and produced by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray.<ref name="BFIsearch">Template:Cite web</ref> Narrated by Michael Hordern, and starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of an 18th-century Anglo-Irish rogue and gold digger who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position.

Kubrick began production on Barry Lyndon after his 1971 film A Clockwork Orange. He had originally intended to direct a biopic on Napoleon, but lost his financing because of the commercial failure of the similar 1970 Dino De Laurentiis-produced Waterloo. Kubrick eventually directed Barry Lyndon, set partially during the Seven Years' War, utilising his research from the Napoleon project. Filming began in December 1973 and lasted roughly eight months, taking place in England, Ireland, and Germany.

The film's cinematography has been described as ground-breaking. Especially notable are the long double shots, usually ended with a slow backwards zoom, the scenes shot entirely in candlelight, and the settings based on William Hogarth paintings. The exteriors were filmed on location in England, Ireland, and Germany, with the interiors shot mainly in London.<ref name="production"/> The production had problems related to logistics, weather,<ref name="production">Template:Cite web</ref> and politics (Kubrick feared that he might be an IRA hostage target).<ref name="Whitington"/><ref name="rte"/>

Barry Lyndon received seven nominations at the 48th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning four: Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design. Although some critics took issue with the film's slow pace and restrained emotion, its reputation, like that of many of Kubrick's works, has grown over time, and it is now widely considered one of the greatest films of all time. In the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barry Lyndon placed 12th in the directors' poll and 45th in the critics' poll.

Plot

Part I: "By What Means Redmond Barry Acquired the Style and Title of Barry Lyndon"

In the 1750s Kingdom of Ireland, Redmond Barry's father is killed in a duel. Barry becomes infatuated with his cousin Nora Brady, and shoots her suitor, British Army captain John Quin, in a duel. He flees but is robbed by highwaymen on his way to Dublin. Penniless, Barry enlists in the British Army. Family friend Captain Grogan informs him that Quin is not dead: the duel was staged so that Nora's family could get rid of Barry and improve their finances through her marriage to Quin.

Barry serves with his regiment in Germany during the Seven Years' War, but deserts after Grogan dies in combat against the French Royal Army. Absconding with a lieutenant's horse and uniform, Barry has a brief affair with Frau Lieschen, a married German peasant woman. On his way to Bremen, he encounters Captain Potzdorf, who sees through the ruse and impresses him into the Prussian Army. Barry later saves Potzdorf's life and receives a commendation from Frederick the Great.

At the end of the war, Barry is recruited by Captain Potzdorf's uncle into the Prussian Ministry of Police. The Prussians suspect that the Chevalier de Balibari, an Austrian diplomat and professional gambler, is in fact an Irishman and a spy for Empress Maria Theresa, and assign Barry to become his manservant. An emotional Barry confides everything to the Chevalier and they become confederates. After they win an enormous sum from the Prince of Tübingen at cards, the Prince deduces that he has been cheated and refuses to pay his debt; the Chevalier in turn threatens to demand satisfaction. To avoid a scandal, the Ministry of Police pays off the debt and quietly escorts the Chevalier outside Prussian borders, which allows Barry, disguised as the Chevalier, to leave the country as well.

Barry and the Chevalier travel across Europe, perpetrating similar gambling scams, with Barry forcing payment from debtors with sword duels. In Spa, he encounters the beautiful, wealthy, and visibly depressed Lady Lyndon. He seduces her, and goads her elderly husband Sir Charles Lyndon to death with verbal repartee.

Part II: "Containing an Account of the Misfortunes and Disasters Which Befell Barry Lyndon"

In 1773, Barry marries Lady Lyndon, takes her last name and settles in England. The Countess bears Barry a son, Bryan Patrick, whom Barry spoils. The marriage is unhappy: Barry is openly unfaithful and squanders his wife's wealth while keeping her in seclusion. Lord Bullingdon, Lady Lyndon's son by Sir Charles, still grieves for his father and sees Barry as a gold digger who does not love his mother. Barry responds with years of escalating emotional and physical abuse.

Barry's mother comes to live with him and warns him that if Lady Lyndon dies, Bullingdon will inherit everything. She advises her son to obtain a title. To this end, Barry cultivates the influential Lord Wendover and spends even larger sums of Lady Lyndon's money to ingratiate himself with high society. Bullingdon, now a young adult, interrupts a society party Barry throws. He publicly accuses his stepfather of infidelity, abuse, and financial mismanagement, and announces that he will leave the Lyndon estate for as long as Barry remains there. Barry responds by brutally assaulting Bullingdon until they are physically separated by the party attendees. In the aftermath, Barry is ostracised by high society and plunges further into financial ruin.

Barry arranges to gift Bryan a full-grown horse for his ninth birthday. An impatient Bryan rides the horse unaccompanied and dies in a riding accident. Barry sinks into alcoholism, while Lady Lyndon seeks religious counseling from clergyman Samuel Runt, who had been tutor to Bullingdon and Bryan and a longtime companion of Lady Lyndon. When Barry's mother dismisses Runt to keep her son from losing control, Lady Lyndon attempts suicide. Runt and Graham, the family's steward, write to Bullingdon, who returns to the estate and challenges his stepfather to a duel.

When the duel takes place, Bullingdon accidentally misfires the first shot, but Barry then deliberately fires into the ground, refusing to exploit his stepson's mistake. Bullingdon refuses to accept this as satisfaction and fires again, shooting Barry in the leg. This wound forces Barry to have an amputation below the knee. While Barry is recovering, Bullingdon takes control of the Lyndon estate. Through Graham, he reminds Barry that his credit is exhausted and offers him 500 guineas a year to leave Lady Lyndon, her estates, and England forever. Barry grudgingly accepts and resumes his former gambling profession, but without any real success. In December 1789, Lady Lyndon signs Barry's annuity cheque as her son looks on.

Cast

Template:Cast listing Critic Tim Robey suggests that the film "makes you realise that the most undervalued aspect of Kubrick's genius could well be his way with actors."<ref name="TelegraphReview"/> He adds that the supporting cast is a "glittering procession of cameos, not from star names but from vital character players."<ref name="TelegraphReview"/>

The cast featured Leon Vitali as the older Lord Bullingdon, who then became Kubrick's personal assistant, working as the casting director on his following films, and supervising film-to-video transfers for Kubrick. Their relationship lasted until Kubrick's death. The film's cinematographer, John Alcott, appears at the men's club in the non-speaking role of the man asleep in a chair near the title character when Lord Bullingdon challenges Barry to a duel. Kubrick's daughter Vivian also appears (in an uncredited role) as a guest at Bryan's birthday party.

Other Kubrick featured regulars were Leonard Rossiter (2001: A Space Odyssey), Steven Berkoff, Patrick Magee, Godfrey Quigley, Anthony Sharp, and Philip Stone (A Clockwork Orange). Stone went on to feature in The Shining.

Thematic analysis

A main theme explored in Barry Lyndon is one of fate and destiny. Barry is pushed through life by a series of key events, some of which seem unavoidable. As critic Roger Ebert says, "He is a man to whom things happen."<ref name="ebert 2009" /> He declines to eat with the highwayman Captain Feeney, where he would most likely have been robbed, but is robbed anyway farther down the road. The narrator repeatedly emphasizes the role of fate as he announces events before they unfold on screen, like Bryan's death and Bullingdon seeking satisfaction. This theme of fate is also developed in the recurring motif of the painting. Just like the events featured in the paintings, Barry is participating in events which always were.

Another major theme is between father and son. Barry lost his father at a young age and throughout the film he seeks and attaches himself to father-figures. Examples include his uncle, Grogan, and the Chevalier. When given the chance to be a father, Barry loves his son to the point of spoiling him. This contrasts with his role as a (step)father to Lord Bullingdon, whom he disregards and punishes.<ref name="ebert 2009" /><ref>Template:Cite web</ref><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Production

Development

After completing post production on 2001: A Space Odyssey, Kubrick resumed planning a film about Napoleon. During pre-production, Sergei Bondarchuk and Dino De Laurentiis's Waterloo was released, and failed at the box office. Reconsidering, Kubrick's financiers pulled funding, and he turned his attention towards a film adaptation of Anthony Burgess's 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. Subsequently, Kubrick showed an interest 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."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Having earned Oscar nominations for Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's reputation in the early 1970s was that of "a perfectionist auteur who loomed larger over his movies than any concept or star".<ref name="TelegraphReview">Template:Cite news</ref> His studio—Warner Bros.—was therefore "eager to bankroll" his next project, which Kubrick kept "shrouded in secrecy" from the press partly due to the furore surrounding the controversially violent A Clockwork Orange (particularly in the UK) and partly due to his "long-standing paranoia about the tabloid press."<ref name="TelegraphReview"/> Kubrick was initially rumored to be developing an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story, which would serve as the source material for his later film Eyes Wide Shut (1999).<ref name=":0">Template:Cite web</ref>

In 1972 Kubrick finally set his sights on Thackeray's 1844 "satirical picaresque about the fortune-hunting of an Irish rogue," The Luck of Barry Lyndon, the setting of which allowed Kubrick to take advantage of the copious period research he had done for the now-aborted Napoleon.<ref name="TelegraphReview"/><ref name=":0" /> At the time, Kubrick merely announced that his next film would star Ryan O'Neal (deemed "a seemingly un-Kubricky choice of leading man"<ref name="TelegraphReview"/>) and Marisa Berenson, a former Vogue and Time magazine cover model,<ref name="Grdn2019">Template:Cite news</ref> and be shot largely in Ireland.<ref name="TelegraphReview"/> So heightened was the secrecy surrounding the film that "Even Berenson, when Kubrick first approached her, was told only that it was to be an 18th-century costume piece [and] she was instructed to keep out of the sun in the months before production, to achieve the period-specific pallor he required."<ref name="TelegraphReview"/>

Screenplay

Kubrick based his adapted 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 film departs from the novel in several ways. In Thackeray's writings, 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 narrator. Kubrick felt that using a first-person narrative would not be useful in a film adaptation:<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Kubrick made several changes to the plot, including the addition of the final duel.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Principal photography

Principal photography lasted 300 days, from spring 1973 through to early 1974, with a break for Christmas.<ref name =date>Template:Cite book</ref> Kubrick initially wished to film the entire production near his home in Borehamwood, but Ken Adam convinced him to relocate the shoot to Ireland.<ref name=":0" /> The crew arrived in Dublin in May 1973. Jan Harlan recalls that Kubrick "loved his time in Ireland – he rented a lovely house west of Dublin, he loved the scenery and the culture and the people". <ref name="Whitington">Template:Cite web</ref>

Many of the exteriors were shot in Ireland, playing "itself, England, and Prussia during the Seven Years' War."<ref name="TelegraphReview"/> Kubrick and cinematographer Alcott drew inspiration from "the landscapes of Watteau and Gainsborough," and also relied on the art direction of Ken Adam and Roy Walker.<ref name="TelegraphReview"/> Alcott, Adam and Walker were among those who would win Oscars for their work on the film.<ref name="TelegraphReview"/><ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Several of the interior scenes were filmed in Powerscourt House, an 18th-century mansion in County Wicklow. The house was destroyed in an accidental fire several months after filming (November 1974), so the film serves as a record of the lost interiors, particularly the "Saloon" which was used for more than one scene. The Wicklow Mountains are visible, for example, through the window of the saloon during a scene set in Berlin. Other locations included Kells Priory, County Kilkenny (the English Redcoat encampment);<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Huntington Castle, County Carlow (exterior) and Dublin Castle, County Dublin (the chevalier's home). Some exterior shots were also filmed at Waterford Castle, County Waterford (now a luxury hotel and golf course) and Little Island, Waterford. Moorstown Castle in County Tipperary also featured. Several scenes were filmed at Castletown House in Celbridge, County Kildare; outside Carrick-on-Suir, County Tipperary, and at Youghal, County Cork.

The filming took place in the backdrop of some of the most intense years of the Troubles in Ireland, during which the Provisional Irish Republican Army (Provisional IRA) was waging an armed campaign in order to unite the island. On 30 January 1974, while filming in Dublin City's Phoenix Park, shooting had to be cancelled due to the chaos caused by 14 bomb threats.<ref name = date/> One day a phone call was received and Kubrick was given 24 hours to leave the country; he left within 12 hours. The phone call alleged that the Provisional IRA had him on a hit list and Harlan recalls "Whether the threat was a hoax or it was real, almost doesn't matter ... Stanley was not willing to take the risk. He was threatened, and he packed his bag and went home."<ref name="rte">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name="Whitington" /> Production of the film was one-third completed when this occurred, and it was rumored that the film would be abandoned. Nonetheless, Kubrick continued shooting the remainder of the film at locations in England, mainly southern England, Scotland, West Germany, and East Germany.<ref name=":0" />

Locations in England include Blenheim Palace, Oxfordshire; Castle Howard, North Yorkshire (exteriors of the Lyndon estate, "Castle Hickham"); Corsham Court, Wiltshire (various interiors and the music room scene); Petworth House, West Sussex (chapel); Stourhead, Wiltshire (lake and temple); Longleat, Wiltshire; Wilton House, Wiltshire (interior and exterior) and Lavenham Guildhall at Lavenham in Suffolk (amputation scene). Filming took place at Dunrobin Castle (exterior and garden as Spa) in Sutherland, Scotland. Locations in West Germany include Ludwigsburg Palace in Ludwigsburg and Hohenzollern Castle in Hechingen, both near Stuttgart. Frederick II of Prussia's Neues Palais at Potsdam near Berlin, at the time East Germany, was also used as a location (suggesting Berlin's main street Unter den Linden as construction in Potsdam had just begun in 1763).<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Cinematography

File:Barry12.jpg

Special ultra-fast lenses were used for Barry Lyndon to allow filming using only natural light.

File:Marriage A-la-Mode 2, The Tête à Tête - William Hogarth.jpg

Marriage à-la-mode, Shortly After the Marriage (scene two of six).

File:William Hogarth 035.jpg

Hogarth's Country Dance (c.1745) illustrates the type of interior scene that Kubrick sought to emulate with Barry Lyndon.

The film, as with "almost every Kubrick film", is a "showcase for [a] major innovation in technique."<ref name= "TelegraphReview" /> While 2001: A Space Odyssey had featured "revolutionary effects," and The Shining would later feature heavy use of the Steadicam, Barry Lyndon saw a considerable number of sequences shot "without recourse to electric light."<ref name= "TelegraphReview" /> The film's cinematography was overseen by director of photography John Alcott (who won an Oscar for his work), and is particularly noted for the technical innovations that made some of its most spectacular images possible. To achieve photography without electric lighting "[f]or the many densely furnished interior scenes … meant shooting by candlelight," which is known to be difficult in still photography, "let alone with moving images."<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/>

Kubrick was "determined not to reproduce the set-bound, artificially lit look of other costume dramas from that time."<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/> After "tinker[ing] with different combinations of lenses and film stock," the production obtained three super-fast 50mm lenses (Carl Zeiss Planar 50mm f/0.7) developed by Zeiss for use by NASA in the Apollo Moon landings, which Kubrick had discovered.<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/><ref name= DiGiulio>Two Special Lenses for "Barry Lyndon" Template:Webarchive, Ed DiGiulio (President, Cinema Products Corp.), American Cinematographer</ref> These super-fast lenses "with their huge aperture (the film actually features the lowest f-stop in film history) and fixed focal length" were problematic to mount, and were extensively modified into three versions by Cinema Products Corporation for Kubrick to gain a wider angle of view, with input from optics expert Richard Vetter of Todd-AO.<ref name="TelegraphReview"/><ref name= DiGiulio/> The rear element of the lens had to be 2.5 mm away from the film plane, requiring special modification to the rotating camera shutter.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit in candlelight to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age."<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/> In addition, Kubrick had the entire film push-developed by one stop.<ref name= DiGiulio/>

Although Kubrick and Alcott sought to avoid electric lighting where possible, most shots were achieved with conventional lenses and lighting, but were lit to deliberately mimic natural light rather than for compositional reasons. In addition to potentially seeming more realistic, these methods also gave a particular period look to the film which has often been likened to 18th-century paintings (which of course depict a world devoid of electric lighting), in particular owing "a lot to William Hogarth, with whom Thackeray had always been fascinated."<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/>

The film is widely regarded as having a stately, static, painterly quality,<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/> mostly due to its lengthy, wide-angle long shots. To illuminate the more notable interior scenes, artificial lights called "Mini-Brutes" were placed outside and aimed through the windows, which were covered in a diffuse material to scatter the light evenly through the room rather than being placed inside for maximum use as most conventional films do. In some instances, the natural daylight was allowed to come through, which when recorded on the film stock used by Kubrick showed up as blue-tinted compared to the incandescent electric light.<ref name="Lightman">Template:Cite web</ref>

Despite such slight tinting effects, this method of lighting not only gave the look of natural daylight coming in through the windows, but it also protected the historic locations from the damage caused by mounting the lights on walls or ceilings and the heat from the lights. This helped the film "fit ... perfectly with Kubrick's gilded-cage aesthetic – the film is consciously a museum piece, its characters pinned to the frame like butterflies."<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/><ref name="Lightman" />

Music

The film's period setting allowed Kubrick to indulge his penchant for using classical music, and the film score includes pieces by Vivaldi, Bach, Handel, Paisiello, Mozart, and Schubert.Template:Efn The piece most associated with the film, however, is the main title music, Handel's Sarabande from the Keyboard suite in D minor (HWV 437). Originally for solo harpsichord, the versions for the main and end titles are performed with strings, timpani, and continuo. The score also includes Irish folk music, including Seán Ó Riada's song "Women of Ireland", arranged by Paddy Moloney and performed by The Chieftains. "The British Grenadiers" also features in scenes with Redcoats marching.

Charts

Chart (1976)	Position
Australia (Kent Music Report)<ref name=aus>Template:Cite book</ref>	99

Reception

Contemporaneous

The film "was not the commercial success Warner Bros. had been hoping for" within the United States,<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/> although it fared better in Europe. In the US it earned $9.1 million.<ref name="film">SECOND ANNUAL GROSSES GLOSS Byron, Stuart. Film Comment; New York Vol. 13, Iss. 2, (Mar/Apr 1977): 35-37, 64.</ref> Ultimately, the film grossed a worldwide total of $31.5 million on an $11 million budget.<ref name= "imdb.com"/>

This mixed reaction saw the film (in the words of one retrospective review) "greeted, on its release, with dutiful admiration – but not love. Critics ... rail[ed] against the perceived coldness of Kubrick's style, the film's self-conscious artistry and slow pace. Audiences, on the whole, rather agreed".<ref name="TelegraphReview"/>

Roger Ebert gave the film three and a half stars out of four and wrote that it "is almost aggressive in its cool detachment. It defies us to care, it forces us to remain detached about its stately elegance." He added, "This must be one of the most beautiful films ever made."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Vincent Canby of The New York Times called the film "another fascinating challenge from one of our most remarkable, independent-minded directors."<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three and a half stars out of four and wrote "I found Barry Lyndon to be quite obvious about its intentions and thoroughly successful in achieving them. Kubrick has taken a novel about a social class and has turned it into an utterly comfortable story that conveys the stunning emptiness of upper-class life only 200 years past."<ref>Siskel, Gene (26 December 1975). "'Barry Lyndon': Beauty and grace outweigh pace in a Kubrick classic". Chicago Tribune. Section 3, p. 1.</ref> He ranked the film fifth on his year-end list of the best films of 1975.<ref>Siskel, Gene (4 January 1976). "Ten films outclass the publicity pitch". Chicago Tribune. Section 6, p. 2.</ref>

Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very heavy, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables. It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses, a succession of salon quality still photographs—as often as not very still indeed."<ref>Champlin, Charles (19 December 1975). "A Rake's Lack of Progress". Los Angeles Times. Part IV, p. 1.</ref> The Washington Post wrote, "It's not inaccurate to describe 'Barry Lyndon' as a masterpiece, but it's a deadend masterpiece, an objet d'art rather than a movie. It would be more at home, and perhaps easier to like, on the bookshelf, next to something like 'The Age of the Grand Tour,' than on the silver screen."<ref>"'Barry' Is All Dressed Up, but Going Where?" The Washington Post. 25 December 1975. H14.</ref> Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote that "Kubrick has taken a quick-witted story" and "controlled it so meticulously that he's drained the blood out of it," adding, "It's a coffee-table movie; we might as well be at a three-hour slide show for art-history majors."<ref>Kael, Pauline (29 December 1975). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. 49.</ref>

This "air of disappointment"<ref name= "TelegraphReview"/> affected Kubrick's choice for his next film, an adaption of Stephen King's The Shining, a project that would not only please him artistically, but was more likely to succeed financially.

Re-evaluation

Over time, the film has gained a more positive reaction.<ref name="ebert 2009" /> On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 78% based on 143 reviews, with an average rating of 8.2/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "Visually astonishing and placid as a pond in the English countryside, Stanley Kubrick's maddening and masterful Barry Lyndon renders a hollow life with painterly poise."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 89 out of 100 based on reviews from 21 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Roger Ebert added the film to his 'Great Movies' list on 9 September 2009 and increased his original rating from three and a half stars to four, writing, "Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, received indifferently in 1975, has grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one of the master's best. It is certainly in every frame a Kubrick film: technically awesome, emotionally distant, remorseless in its doubt of human goodness."<ref name="ebert 2009">Template:Cite news</ref>

The Village Voice ranked the film at number 46 in its Top 250 "Best Films of the Century" list in 1999, based on a poll of critics.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> Director Martin Scorsese has named Barry Lyndon as his favourite Kubrick film,<ref>Template:Cite book</ref> and it is also one of Lars von Trier's favourite films.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Barry Lyndon was included on TimeTemplate:'s All-Time 100 best movies list.<ref>Template:Cite magazine</ref> In the 2012 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barry Lyndon placed 19th in the directors' poll and 59th in the critics' poll.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> The film ranked 27th in BBC's 2015 list of the 100 greatest American films.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> In the 2022 Sight & Sound Greatest Films of All Time poll, Barry Lyndon placed 12th in the directors' poll and 45th in the critics' poll.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

In a list compiled by The Irish Times critics Tara Brady and Donald Clarke in 2020, Barry Lyndon was named the greatest Irish film of all time.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

The Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa cited the movie as one of his 100 favorite films.<ref name="farout">Template:Cite web</ref>

Awards and nominations

Award	Category	Recipient	Result
Academy Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Picture	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Nom
	Best Director		Template:Nom
	Best Adaptated Screenplay		Template:Nom
	Best Art Direction	Ken Adam, Roy Walker,Vernon Dixon	Template:Won
	Best Cinematography	John Alcott	Template:Won
	Best Costume Design	Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Söderlund	Template:Won
	Best Original Score	Leonard Rosenman	Template:Won
British Academy Film Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Film		Template:Nom
	Best Director	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Won
	Best Art Direction	Ken Adam	Template:Nom
	Best Cinematography	John Alcott	Template:Won
	Best Costume Design	Milena Canonero and Ulla-Britt Söderlund	Template:Nom
British Society of Cinematographers	Best Cinematography	John Alcott	Template:Won
César Awards	Best Foreign Film	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Nom
Directors Guild of America Awards	Outstanding Directing – Feature Film	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Nom
Golden Globe Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Motion Picture – Drama		Template:Nom
	Best Director	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Nom
Los Angeles Film Critics Association Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Cinematography	John Alcott	Template:Won
National Board of Review Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Film		Template:WonTemplate:Efn
	Top Ten Films		Template:WonTemplate:Efn
	Best Director	Stanley Kubrick	Template:WonTemplate:Efn
National Society of Film Critics Awards<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>	Best Cinematography	John Alcott	Template:Won
Sant Jordi Awards	Best Foreign Film	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Won
Writers Guild of America Awards	Best Drama Adapted from Another Medium	Stanley Kubrick	Template:Nom

See also

• List of American films of 1975
• Overlord – the 1975 Stuart Cooper WWII film cinematographer John Alcott also worked on
• Cinema of Ireland

Further reading

• Tibbetts, John C., and James M. Welsh, eds. The Encyclopedia of Novels into Film (2nd ed. 2005) pp 23–24.

External links

• Template:IMDb title
• Template:Rotten Tomatoes
• Template:Tcmdb title
• Template:AFI film
• Template:Screenonline title
• Barry Lyndon: Time Regained an essay by Geoffrey O'Brien at the Criterion Collection
• Screenplay of Barry Lyndon (18 February 1973) at Daily script.
• Barry Lyndon Press Kit at Indelible Inc.
• The Kubrick Site, a "non-profit resource archive for documentary materials", including essays and articles.
• Stanley Kubrick’s letter to projectionists on Barry Lyndon at Some Came Running.