Film: Barry Lyndon

BARRY LYNDON
While our allotment of advance tickets has sold out online, some additional tickets will be available to purchase at the door on a first come, first served basis on the day of the show. Box office & doors open approximately 1 hour before showtime. For shows that have sold out online, in-person ticket purchases are limited to 2 tickets per person.

Looking at any other director’s work, you’d be understandably perplexed seeing this sumptuous adaptation of William Thackeray’s 19th century novel sandwiched in their filmography between an ultra-violent satire on dystopian youth (A Clockwork Orange, 1971) and a horror epic of a bestselling Stephen King novel (The Shining, 1980). But with pantheon auteur Stanley Kubrick, it simply seems business as usual. Set in the mid-1700s, Kubrick follows a young Irish rogue (Ryan O’Neal) joining the British military and his misadventures on the continent. His unhappy marriage to Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) is rife with family misfortune, economic insecurity, adulterous love affairs, gambling debts, duels and alcoholic dissolution. Initially, the film received mixed reviews and lukewarm box office, but Barry Lyndon is now considered one of Kubrick’s finest achievements. Meticulous production design effortlessly transports the viewer to another era. Cinematographer John Alcott described the use of candlelight to illuminate interior sequences as leaving one ballroom’s high ceiling blackened with soot before the end of the day’s filming. With a sterling supporting cast, including Patrick Magee, Hardy Kruger, Leon Vitali and Andre Morell. A winner of four Oscars, including Best Cinematography and Best Art Direction, and critic Roger Ebert hailed it as “one of the most beautiful films ever made.”

“I’m not sure if I can have a favorite Kubrick picture, but somehow I keep coming back to Barry Lyndon.” – Martin Scorsese

“Stanley Kubrick’s magisterial Thackeray adaptation now stands as one of his greatest and most savagely ironic films, not to mention one of the few period pieces on celluloid so transporting that it seems to predate the invention of cameras.” – Jim Ridley, Village Voice

Kim Morgan discusses Barry Lyndon on the New Beverly blog.

DIRECTOR Stanley Kubrick
WRITER written for the screen by Stanley Kubrick from the novel “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” by William Makepeace Thackeray
STARRING Ryan O’Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Hardy Krüger, Steven Berkoff
YEAR 1975
RATED PG
COUNTRY UK/USA/Ireland
FORMAT 35mm
RUNNING TIME 184 minutes