Cinema Classics Seminar: BARRY LYNDON (1975)

“Let the man who has to make his fortune in life remember this maxim,” writes William Makepeace Thackeray in his 1844 novel, THE LUCK OF BARRY LYNDON, “attacking is his only secret. Dare, and the world always yields.” In the wake of profound professional disappointments, Stanley Kubrick dared to bring the tale of Thackeray’s ambitious antihero to the screen. The result is one of his most extraordinary films.

Immersive and visually stunning, stately yet simmering with propulsive passions, Kubrick’s 1975 masterpiece is presided over by a title character who is both mercenary and simpleton, supreme egoist and easy mark. As played by the swoony Ryan O’Neal, Redmond Barry is someone we root for even as he frequently appalls us, in part because Kubrick’s film is deftly alert to the cruelty and hypocrisy characteristic of the 18th-century world of aristocratic privilege that Barry seeks to overcome. Yet given Kubrick’s revolutionary use of lighting and his meticulous, painterly attention to the composition of each frame, that world never looked so ravishingly beautiful as it does here.

In this class we will situate the film within the body of Kubrick’s work overall, paying particular attention to the formal and technical innovations that make this picaresque tale of lost innocence and hubristic boldness one of the cinema’s great achievements.

You may also like the following events from Bryn Mawr Film Institute:

• This Saturday, 14th March, 11:00 am, PONYO (2008) in Bryn Mawr
• Next Tuesday, 17th March, 07:00 pm, LINDA LINDA LINDA (2005) Presented by Viva Video in Bryn Mawr
• Next Wednesday, 18th March, 07:00 pm, JUST ANOTHER GIRL ON THE I.R.T. (1992) with director Leslie Harris in Bryn Mawr

Also check out other Workshops in Bryn Mawr, Entertainment events in Bryn Mawr.