Barry Lyndon (1975) Queer Film (A)

DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick.

BOTTOM LINE: In Stanley Kubrick’s “Barry Lyndon” (1975), there is a moment where our peripatetic hero/anti-hero Barry (Ryan O’Neal), during the seven years’ war of 1756-1763, finds two soldiers naked and holding hands in a pond. They confess their love for each other.In times like this, I realize how much I care for you and how impossibly empty life would be without you. Barry overhears their conversation. He takes advantage of the situation, steals the clothes of one of the men, and assumes his identity. The scene is humorous. But does it mock the lovers? The first time I saw it, I thought so. However, I have come to look at the scene more favorably on repeated viewings. It shows that same-sex love existed in the eighteenth century. It is an incidental moment, and the scene does not go beyond this. However, the expression of true love remains with the viewer.

Gay Actor Murray Melvin plays the Reverend Runt, who, by all appearances, is devoted to Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson) but is cruelly dismissed by Barry’s mother (Marie Kean). Oscar-winner John Alcott shot the movie’s famed candlelit card game sequence with all-natural lighting. The scene features O’Neal, Berenson and Melvin and also introduced the general public to Schubert’s Piano Trio in E Flat on the soundtrack.

The film was adapted from the novel “The Luck of Barry Lyndon” by William Makepeace Thackeray, directed and produced by Kubrick.  At Oscar time, when the nominations were announced, he was three for three in the BEST FILM | BEST DIRECTOR | BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY categories but lost all three to “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.”

Of its seven nominations, it won four:

Best Costume Design (Ulla-Britt Soderlund and Milena Canonero)

Best Cinematography (John Alcott)

Best Production Design (Ken Adam, Roy Walker and Vernon Dixon)

Best Adapted Score (Leonard Rosenman)

STREAMING: Amazon Prime, Apple TV+ and YouTube

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