Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon (1975) is Stanley Kubrick's period drama you can watch online on iFILM. A poor Irish boy named Redmond Barry claws his way into the 18th-century gentry through gambling, duels and a calculated marriage.

Ryan O'Neal plays the chancer whom fate keeps tossing across Europe. A duel over his cousin sends him fleeing home. He's robbed on the road, presses into the British army, sees the Seven Years' War up close, deserts, then gets pressed again into Prussian service. Card tables and a cold-blooded marriage to the widowed Countess of Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) finally buy him the name he craves. Every rise costs him the next fall.

Adapted from William Thackeray's novel, the film took three years to make, and Kubrick spent much of it solving how to shoot candlelit interiors. Cinematographer John Alcott shot many scenes by firelight alone, using fast NASA lenses on a modified camera. The result won four Academy Awards, for cinematography, costumes, art direction and score. Stream Barry Lyndon (1975) online on iFILM.