Barry Lyndon

29 Jan – 29 Mar 2009

This display accompanies the Stanley Kubrick season taking place at BFI Southbank in February and March, and showcases material relating to Barry Lyndon, the director's 1975 masterpiece. Drawn from The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London's Archives and Special Collections Centre and from BFI Collections, this display focuses on the meticulous research for the film, and especially on the inspiration that the visual arts provided to Kubrick in creating this outstanding work.

Kubrick is well known for his attention to detail and for the fact that he researched a film thoroughly and for very long periods before starting a production. This story of a young Irishman and his rise and fall within 18th century English nobility based on William Makepeace Thackeray's novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon, is a film for which Kubrick researched the visual arts of the period at length and with which he took the relationship between film and painting to new levels. The pre-production material for Barry Lyndon which is preserved in The Stanley Kubrick Archives, demonstrates that the film's depiction of 18th century Irish, German and particularly English society was - down to the smallest detail - inspired by art works of the time. This makes Barry Lyndon a film as close to the visual arts as it is possible on celluloid.

With many thanks to The Stanley Kubrick Archives, University of the Arts London.