This month, AFI celebrates the 50th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s lavish eighteenth-century epic BARRY LYNDON (1975). The film was recently showcased as one of four titles hand-selected by Guillermo del Toro, Guest Artistic Director for AFI FEST 2025 presented by Canva, for his curated section of the festival. Recognized for its technological and cinematic innovations, BARRY LYNDON struggled at the box office upon its original release despite Kubrick’s recent commercial successes with 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY (1968) and A CLOCKWORK ORANGE (1971).
By the early 1970s, Kubrick had earned Best Director Oscar® nominations for his last three films, which allowed him the rare opportunity to choose his next project at Warner Bros. He had long been working on a biopic about Napoleon Bonaparte, but he came to believe the scale was insurmountable – particularly when the Dino De Laurentiis-produced, star-studded Napoleonic epic WATERLOO (1971) failed commercially – and he turned his focus to William Makepeace Thackeray’s 1848 novel “Vanity Fair.” When that, too, proved too expansive for a feature film, Kubrick decided to adapt Thackeray’s “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” (1844), repurposing his Napoleon research in the process.
Kubrick was known at the time as an eccentric, perfectionistic expatriate and the development of BARRY LYNDON was shrouded in secrecy. He even altered locations, character names and dates in his early drafts to prevent others in Hollywood from exploiting the public domain story for their own projects. [i] BARRY LYNDON follows the rise and fall of its titular character, an Irish charlatan who adopts false identities and rises through society, only to lose everything to his vices and ambition.
With a budget of $2.5 million, filming began in the fall of 1973 in England and Ireland, but the production expanded significantly and the film was ultimately completed for $11 million over 250 shooting days. [ii] This was due in part to Kubrick’s insistence on historical and aesthetic authenticity, which led to extensive location work at stately homes, the use of original eighteenth-century garments that were recreated “stitch by stitch” by Oscar®-winning costume designer Milena Canonero and the acquisition of special 50mm f/0.7 Zeiss camera lenses, developed by NASA for its lunar program, to shoot in low and natural light. [iii] Only 10 lenses were made, and Kubrick purchased three, marking a profound innovation in film photography. [iv]
According to BARRY LYNDON’s cinematographer, John Alcott, who also earned an Oscar® for his work on the film, Kubrick knew there were lenses capable of shooting by candlelight at the time, but they still required additional artificial lighting. Kubrick was deeply committed to representing the world of Barry Lyndon as it was in reality, before electricity, and capturing that unique illumination on film as a type of historic preservation. [v]
In 2025, BARRY LYNDON is experiencing new appreciation and attracting younger audiences including Gen Z star Jenna Ortega, who included the movie in a list of her favorite films during an interview with Letterboxd.[vi] The renewed interest in BARRY LYNDON as a cinematic masterpiece and as a cultural artifact became particularly apparent this past summer, when the 4K restoration of the film was released in theaters, followed by screenings in November and December 2025 at the AFI Silver Theatre and Cultural Center. Today, BARRY LYNDON offers movie lovers around the world an opportunity to reconsider its impact and legacy half a century after its release, as well as a chance to interpret its timeless story from a modern perspective.
