Stanley Kubrick bent the conventions of the historical drama to his own will in this dazzling vision of brutal aristocracy, adapted from a novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. In picaresque detail, Barry Lyndon chronicles the adventures of an incorrigible trickster (Ryan O'Neal) whose opportunism takes him from an Irish farm to the battlefields of the Seven Years' War and the parlors of high society. For the most sumptuously crafted film of his career, Kubrick recreated the decadent surfaces and intricate social codes of the period, evoking the light and texture of eighteenth century painting with the help of pioneering cinematographic techniques and lavish costume and production design, all of which earned Academy Awards. The result is a masterpiece a sardonic, devastating portrait of a vanishing world whose opulence conceals the moral vacancy at its heart.
TWO BLU RAY SPECIAL EDITION FEATURES
New 4K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack
Alternate 5.1 surround DTS HD Master Audio soundtrack
New documentary featuring cast and crew interviews as well as excerpts from a 1976
audio interview with director Stanley Kubrick
New program about the film's groundbreaking visuals, featuring focus puller Douglas Milsome and gaffer Lou Bogue, as well as excerpts from a 1980 interview with cinematographer John Alcott
New program about Academy Award winning production designer Ken Adam with historian Sir Christopher Frayling
New interview with editor Anthony Lawson
French television interview from 1976 with Oscar winning costume designer Ulla Britt Soderlund
New interview with critic Michel Ciment
New interview with actor Leon Vitali about the 5.1 surround soundtrack, which he cosupervised
New piece analyzing the fine art inspired aesthetics of the film with art curator Adam Eaker
PLUS: An essay by critic Geoffrey O'Brien and two pieces about the film from the March 1976 issue of American Cinematographer
