Barry Lyndon (1975)

Perhaps Stanley Kubrick's most underrated film, Barry Lyndon - adapted from William Makepeace Thackeray's 1844 picaresque novel The Memoirs of Barry Lyndon, Esq, As Told By Himself - inhabits the 18th century that way A Clockwork Orange and 2001: A Space Odyssey inhabit the future, with perferct sets, costumes, and cinematography trapping characters whose rises and falls are at once deeply tragic and absurdly comical.

Narrated in avuncular form by Michael Hordern, who replaces Thackeray's ironically self-serving first-person hero with wise third-person melancholla, the film follows the fortunes of Redmond Barry (Ryan O'Neal), a handsome Irish youth forced to flee his hometown after a duel with a cowardly English officer (Leonard Rossiter). Stripped of his small fortune by a deferential highwayman, Barry joins the British army and fights in Seven Years War, attempting a desertion that leads him into the Prussian army. A position as a spy on an exquisitely painted con man (Patrick Magee) leads a life of gambling around the courts of Europe, and just before the intermission our hero achieves all he could want by marrying the wealthy, titled, beautiful widow Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson). A sign of Barry's willingness to humiliate himself to worldly advancement is that he takes his married name from his wife's titled first husband. Howerver, Part Two reveals that Barry can no more be a clockwork orange than the protaganist if Kubrick's previous film of the same name, and his spendthrift ways, foolhardy pursuit of social advancement, and unwise treatment of his new family lead to several disasters, climaxing in another horrific (yet farcical) duel.

Shot by John Alcott almost entirely in the "magic hour," that point of the day where the light is mistily perfect, with innovative use of candlelight for interiors, Barry Lyndon looks ravishing, but the perfection of its images is matched by the inner turmoil of seemingly frozen characters. Kubrick is often accused of being unemotional, but his restraint here is all the more affecting, as when Barry is struck by the deaths of those close to him, his wife writhes into madness, or his stepson (Leon Vitali) vomits before he can stand his ground in a duel.

Quote of the Day - Redmond Barry "I'm not sorry. And I'll not apologize. And I'd as soon go to Dublin as to hell."

Tomorrow: Sparticus (1960)