Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon

Scenes from "Barry Lyndon", a 1975 British-American period drama film by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1844 novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon by William Makepeace Thackeray. It stars Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger.  The film is considered among the most beautiful films ever made.

The cinematography is 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 Ireland, England and Germany, with the interiors filmed mainly in Kubrick's adopted home city of London.

Barry Lyndon won four Oscars in production categories at the 1975 Academy Awards. Although some critics took issue with the film's glacial pace and restrained emotion, like many of Kubrick’s works, its reputation has strengthened over time, with many now regarding it as one of his greatest achievements, and one of the finest films ever made.

Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim. Attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields: or, if it beat you sometimes, dare again, and it will succumb.

A lady who sets her heart upon a lad in uniform must prepare to change lovers pretty quickly, or her life will be but a sad one.

It was in the reign of George II. that the above-named personages lived and quarrelled ; good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor, they are all equal now.

But it's a changeable world! When we consider how great our sorrow seem, and how small they are; how we think we shall die of grief, and how quickly we forget, I think we ought to be ashamed of ourselves and our fickle-heartedness. For, after all, what business has Time to bring us consolation?

And by these wonderful circumstances I was once more free again: and I kept my resolution then made, never to fall more into the hands of any recruiter, and henceforth and for ever to be a gentleman.

His Scotch bear-leader, Mr Boswell, was a butt of the first quality.

Fate had determined that he should leave none of his race behind him, and that he should finish his life poor, lonely and childless.

This heart of Lischen's was like many a neighboring town and had been stormed and occupied several times before Barry came to invest it.

Gentlemen, cock your pistols! Gentlemen...

Utterly baffled and beaten, what was the lonely and broken-hearted man to do? He took the annuity and returned to Ireland with his mother to complete his recovery. Sometime later he travelled to the Continent. 

His life there, we have not the means of following accurately. But he appears to have resumed his former profession of a gambler without his former success. He never saw Lady Lyndon again.

...had been bred, like many other young sons of a genteel family, to the profession of the law.

Five years in the army, and some considerable experience of the world, had by now dispelled any of those romantic notions regarding love with which Barry commenced life.

And he began to have it in mind, as so many gentlemen had done before him, to marry a woman of fortune and condition.

Thus Barry fell into the very worst of courses and company. And was soon very far advanced in the science of every kind of misconduct.

She was the wife of The Right Honorable Sir Charles Reginald Lyndon, Knight of the Bath, and Minister to George III at several of the smaller Courts of Europe, a cripple, wheeled about in a chair, worn out by gout and a myriad of diseases. Her Ladyship's Chaplain, Mr. Runt, acted in the capacity of tutor to her son, the little Viscount Bullingdon, a melancholy little boy, much attached to his mother.

For he too was an exile from home, and a friendly voice, a look, brought the old country back to his memory again.

Barry's first taste of battle was only a skirmish against a small rearguard of Frenchmen who occupied an orchard beside a road down which, a few hours later, the English main force wished to pass. 

The Chevalier was as much affected as Barry at thus finding one of his countrymen.

Barry had resolved never to see Nora again, but such resolutions, though they may be steadfastly held for a whole week, are abandoned in a few moments of despair.

It is well to dream of glorious war in a snug armchair at home, but it is a very different thing to see it first at hand.