[3] Narrated by Michael Hordern, and starring Ryan O'Neal, Marisa Berenson, Patrick Magee, Leonard Rossiter and Hardy Krüger, the film recounts the early exploits and later unravelling of an 18th-century Anglo-Irish rogue and gold digger who marries a rich widow to climb the social ladder and assume her late husband's aristocratic position.

He had originally intended to direct a biopic on Napoleon, but lost his financing because of the commercial failure of the similar 1970 Dino De Laurentiis-produced Waterloo.

[5][6] Barry Lyndon received seven nominations at the 48th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, winning four: Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Art Direction, and Best Costume Design.

The Prussians suspect that the Chevalier de Balibari, an Austrian diplomat and professional gambler, is in fact an Irishman and a spy for Empress Maria Theresa, and assign Barry to become his manservant.

Lord Bullingdon, Lady Lyndon's son by Sir Charles, still grieves for his father and sees Barry as a gold digger who does not love his mother.

To this end, Barry cultivates the influential Lord Wendover and spends even larger sums of Lady Lyndon's money to ingratiate himself with high society.

He publicly accuses his stepfather of infidelity, abuse and financial mismanagement, and announces that he will leave the Lyndon estate for as long as Barry remains there.

Through Graham, he reminds Barry that his credit is exhausted and offers him 500 guineas a year to leave Lady Lyndon, her estates, and England forever.

The film's cinematographer, John Alcott, appears at the men's club in the non-speaking role of the man asleep in a chair near the title character when Lord Bullingdon challenges Barry to a duel.

Other Kubrick featured regulars were Leonard Rossiter (2001: A Space Odyssey), Steven Berkoff, Patrick Magee, Godfrey Quigley, Anthony Sharp, and Philip Stone (A Clockwork Orange).

The narrator repeatedly emphasizes the role of fate as he announces events before they unfold on screen, like Bryan's death and Bullingdon seeking satisfaction.

"[11] Having earned Oscar nominations for Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick's reputation in the early 1970s was that of "a perfectionist auteur who loomed larger over his movies than any concept or star".

"[7] Kubrick was initially rumored to be developing an adaptation of Arthur Schnitzler's 1926 novella Dream Story, which would serve as the source material for his later film Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

[7] So heightened was the secrecy surrounding the film that "Even Berenson, when Kubrick first approached her, was told only that it was to be an 18th-century costume piece [and] she was instructed to keep out of the sun in the months before production, to achieve the period-specific pallor he required.

Kubrick felt that using a first-person narrative would not be useful in a film adaptation:[14] I believe Thackeray used Redmond Barry to tell his own story in a deliberately distorted way because it made it more interesting.

This technique worked extremely well in the novel but, of course, in a film you have objective reality in front of you all of the time, so the effect of Thackeray's first-person story-teller could not be repeated on the screen.

[16] Kubrick initially wished to film the entire production near his home in Borehamwood, but Ken Adam convinced him to relocate the shoot to Ireland.

"[7] Kubrick and cinematographer Alcott drew inspiration from "the landscapes of Watteau and Gainsborough," and also relied on the art direction of Ken Adam and Roy Walker.

The phone call alleged that the Provisional IRA had him on a hit list and Harlan recalls "Whether the threat was a hoax or it was real, almost doesn't matter ... Stanley was not willing to take the risk.

"[7] The film's cinematography was overseen by director of photography John Alcott (who won an Oscar for his work), and is particularly noted for the technical innovations that made some of its most spectacular images possible.

[21] This allowed Kubrick and Alcott to shoot scenes lit in candlelight to an average lighting volume of only three candela, "recreating the huddle and glow of a pre-electrical age.

In addition to potentially seeming more realistic, these methods also gave a particular period look to the film which has often been likened to 18th-century paintings (which of course depict a world devoid of electric lighting), in particular owing "a lot to William Hogarth, with whom Thackeray had always been fascinated.

In some instances, the natural daylight was allowed to come through, which when recorded on the film stock used by Kubrick showed up as blue-tinted compared to the incandescent electric light.

"[27] Gene Siskel of the Chicago Tribune gave the film three and a half stars out of four and wrote "I found Barry Lyndon to be quite obvious about its intentions and thoroughly successful in achieving them.

Kubrick has taken a novel about a social class and has turned it into an utterly comfortable story that conveys the stunning emptiness of upper-class life only 200 years past.

[29] Charles Champlin of the Los Angeles Times called it "the motion picture equivalent of one of those very large, very heavy, very expensive, very elegant and very dull books that exist solely to be seen on coffee tables.

"[31] Pauline Kael of The New Yorker wrote that "Kubrick has taken a quick-witted story" and "controlled it so meticulously that he's drained the blood out of it," adding, "It's a coffee-table movie; we might as well be at a three-hour slide show for art-history majors.

"[32] This "air of disappointment"[7] factored into Kubrick's decision for his next film, an adaption of Stephen King's The Shining, a project that would not only please him artistically, but was more likely to succeed financially.

The website's critical consensus reads, "Cynical, ironic, and suffused with seductive natural lighting, Barry Lyndon is a complex character piece of a hapless man doomed by Georgian society.

[34] Roger Ebert added the film to his 'Great Movies' list on 9 September 2009 and increased his original rating from three and a half stars to four, writing, "Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon, received indifferently in 1975, has grown in stature in the years since and is now widely regarded as one of the master's best.