Stanley Kubrick bent the conventions of the historical drama to his own will in this dazzling vision of a pitiless 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 parlours 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.

Barry Lyndon is presented in the film’s photographed aspect ratio of 1.66:1, as specified in a December 8, 1975, letter from director Stanley Kubrick to projectionists. This new 4K restoration was sourced from a 4K scan of the 35mm original camera negative. The high-definition transfer, created in 2000 under the supervision of Leon Vitali (Kubrick’s personal assistant), served as a colour reference for this restoration. The 5.1 surround audio mix was created from restored original soundtrack stems.

Colour Grading: Sheri Eisenberg at Warner Bros. Motion Picture Imaging Digital image restoration: Prasad Corporation, Burbank Audio restoration: Chris Jenkins at WB Post Production Services Sound