GUEST INTRO
Introduction by Maria Pramaggiore, author of Making Time in Stanley Kubrick’s Barry Lyndon.

Barry Lyndon (1975), a lavish, three-hour long period drama based on a novel by William Thackeray and set during the Seven Years’ War, was Stanley Kubrick’s least commercially successful film. Yet, three decades after its release, Roger Ebert and Martin Scorsese proclaimed it a masterpiece. In 1973-4, Kubrick spent nine months in Ireland shooting the film before making a hasty exit due to disruptions related to The Troubles, an ironic turn of events given the production’s theme of colonial conquest. The film’s sumptuous visual style conjures an 18th century landscape permeated by Kubrick’s trademark technical virtuosity: he shot scenes only using candle light and perfected the use of the reverse zoom, familiar from his previous film, A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick’s mordant wit is evident in the satirical depiction of the British aristocracy as well as in the audacious casting of Ryan O’Neal as Irish adventurer Redmond Barry and supermodel Marisa Berenson as his long suffering wife, a move that presaged the convergence of cinema and celebrity culture

See also the Afternoon Talk: Barry Lyndon Panel Discussion on Wednesday February 18th (16.00). (N.B The date of the talk is incorrectly advertised as 16th Feb in the IFI printed programme.)