Barry Lyndon is back ...

A super new trailer for Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON, his 1975 film which perplexed people at the time, but now seems a timeless masterpiece. It is being reissued by the BFI in July, and should win a lot of new admirers when seen on cinema screens. Though I got the blu-ray recently I think I will have to experience it again on a cinema screen, particularly that perfect central sequence where our hero Redmond Barry meets the Countess of Lyndon .... did the 18th century ever look better? as I have written about here before (Ryan O'Neal label). 

For the weekend: a favourite scene ...

I absolutely love this scene from Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON - 1975 - and could watch it over and over (my Blu-ray gets played frequently), for the stunning photography and visuals recreating that 18th century, the throbbing music as the Countess of Lyndon and Barry connect at the gambling table, watched by her son's tutor Reverend Runt (the great Murray Melvin) - and then when they touch and kiss in the moonlight, like two helpless puppets pulled by invisible strings .... the following scenes are wonderful too with more great sets and photography. (see O'Neal label for my full review a while back).

BARRY LYNDON is an award-winning period film by Stanley Kubrick based on the novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon (1844) by William Makepeace Thackeray. It recounts the exploits of an unscrupulous 18th century Irish adventurer (Barry Lyndon né Redmond Barry), particularly his rise and fall within English society. 

I felt I should have the music soundtrack, but the CD is not available now, except for very silly prices. But what is the music here - is it Schubert's Trio Op 100  for violin, cello and piano? 

Redmond Barry meets the Countess of Lyndon

Hard to believe Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON is 40 years old this year. I have just been looking at the Blu-ray, its still a towering achievement and certainly one of the greatest costume dramas ever, as Kubrick recreates the 18th Century before our eyes - we certainly liked it at the time. After the enormous success of 2001 A SPACE ODYSSEY and the controversy over A CLOCKWORK ORANGE a lot of people were baffled that he next turned to a hefty 18th century novel by Thackeray (who also wrote "Vanity Fair" about another operator making their way through society, though Becky Sharp seemed sharper than Barry, who is often seen as a bit dim here). It seems Kubrick could only get the finance from Warner Bros if he cast his hero from a list of 'names' of the time, but only Robert Redford and Ryan O'Neal were suitable. Redford passed, so Ryan it was. He is actually quite right here, and does what Kubrick needed from him. Marisa Berenson is also perfectly right as the pallid, passive Countess.

An Irish rogue wins the heart of a rich widow and assumes her dead husband's aristocratic position in 18th-century England, or:

In the Eighteenth Century, in a small village in Ireland, Redmond Barry is a young farm boy in love with his cousin Nora Brady. When Nora gets engaged to the British Captain John Quin, Barry challenges him to a duel of pistols. He wins and escapes to Dublin but is robbed on the road. Without an alternative, Barry joins the British Army to fight in the Seven Years War. He deserts and is forced to join the Prussian Army where he saves the life of his captain and becomes his protégé and spy of the Irish gambler Chevalier de Balibari. He helps Chevalier and becomes his associate until he decides to marry the wealthy Lady Lyndon. They move to England and Barry, in his obsession of nobility, dissipates her fortune and makes a dangerous and revengeful enemy.

I love that whole sequence of where they meet at the gambling table (the painted faces, the wigs, the candles burning), after he earlier noticing her in the lawns with her old husband in a bath-chair, with her young son, Viscount Bullingdon, and his tutor, Murray Melvin again, as Reverend Runt. This is a fabulous scene as Barry and the Countess lock eyes over the cards, as that music throbs, and he follows her out on the balcony where they come together like a pair of marionettes whose wires are being pulled by unseen hands ....

Add in the great Marie Kean as Barry's mother, Hardy Kruger, Patrick Magee as the Chevalier, Frank Middlemass, Andre Morell, Leonard Rossiter and Steven Berkoff and others and all the characters are compulsive too. It is over three hours long but one wants to watch it slowly, revelling in what we we see, as the 18th Century conducts itself in war and at the gambling tables, idling their time away. The battles scenes are stupendous too, as drilled by Kubrick, and lensed by John Alcott, with Ken Adam's production design, and that music by Schubert, Vivaldi, Bach, Mozart, Handel, and traditional Irish tunes by The Chieftians. The candle-lit interiors and seemingly natural lighting of course were sensational and revolutionary at the time, Even now, the candle-lit interiors in the BBC series WOLF HALL are considered too dark and murky! 
It is telling at the end that the date on the money order the Countess is writing for her absent husband is the date of the French Revolution: 1789. Changes would be happening to these idle classes. The end title says it all, as narrated dryly by Michael Hordern.

BARRY LYNDON is a great companion piece to Richardson's TOM JONES, that other sprawling novel and marvellous film about another 18th century rogue!

An '80s comedy frightmare: Partners

Another 'We see them so you don't have to" social service report:
PARTNERS, 1982. Sergeant Benson is the biggest ladies man on the force. Kerwin is a closeted gay man, works a desk job and keeps quiet about his personal life. When a double murder lands on Benson's desk he is forced to go undercover into the gay community in order to bring the killer to justice. Its a tough job for a macho cop - but fortunately he has got a partner. Benson and Kerwin team up to solve the crimes and find themselves doing things that were never included in their job description. Written by Francis Verber (LA CAGE AUX FOLLES), this hilarious fish-out-of-water comedy delivers equal parts thrills and laughs ..

as the blurb hopefully suggests. 

I had totally forgotten this 1982  so-called comedy ever existed, nobody - gay or straight - bothered with it at the time, and it quickly sank without trace; when I saw it was on dvd, I just had to check it out for myself. John Hurt later said he had no recollection of making it at all, which does not seem surprising, as he goes through it blankly on autopilot as the mousey gay Kerwin, maybe the dreariest gay who ever gayed. On a roll after defining roles in THE NAKED CIVIL SERVANT, I CLAUDIUS, ALIEN, THE ELEPHANT MAN etc surely he, one of the busiest actors going, even now, could have declined this one - after capturing Quentin Crisp and that campy Caligula playing gay should not be a problem for him - perhaps he was shell-shocked at being in such piffle after all that high-quality stuff which was not making fun of gays, but he and Ryan O'Neal go through this like they are both suffering from extreme constipation - O'Neal does not just act being uncomfortable among the swishy gays, he seems very uncomfortable. He was fine for Bogdanovich (and is quite amusing in WHAT'S UP DOC? a decade earlier in 1971) and ideal for what Kubrick wanted in BARRY LYNDON, and I love Walter Hill's THE DRIVER, but he is a pill (and frankly seems past his prime) here - in fact they both seem too old for their roles.

Maybe it was intended as a comic version of CRUISING two years earlier, where Al Pacino also had to dress up in leathers and infiltrate "the gay community" who are treated like a race of aliens here .... of course they are all called "faggots" and made fun of - like the caftan wearing landlord (THE ROBE's screaming queen Jay Robinson - a very different Caligula from Hurt's), and the villain turns out to be Rick Jason! who is killing those male models on the magazine covers, as Ryan of course has to get his butt out and pose for the camera too, and Kenneth McMillan is their superior who puts them on the case. There is no real mystery in the plot, just how they thought this farrago was amusing or funny in the first place. The situation is milked for laughs as the two cops settle down in the boystown "gay community" with Kerwin happily cooking, wearing pink tracksuits and ironing Benson's underwear - and did I mention their cute pink little car? while Benson, looking for clues, has to date madly camp bar attendants, one of whom throws himself naked on him after a dip in the ocean ... how the audience (if there was one) must have screamed.

Do they wince now at how they refer to all the faggots and wonder at how gay life is different today? with its out and proud equality, which must have seemed unimaginable back in 1982 - just as Aids was starting to make inroads .... A tragic farce then, the Lower Trash with a vengance (up - or down - there with THE OSCAR, HARLOW, THE LOVE MACHINE, etc - as per Trash label reviews). I just had to see for myself how awful standards were then. THE BIRDCAGE for instance is genuinely funny about the gays, and I did not find it offensive at all, even if based on the same writer, Verber's LA CAGE AUX FOLLES ... Thankfully, PARTNERS limps to an end at 90 minutes, the ending though seems re-written as if hastily changed, we do not even see the injured Kerwin, who imagines he and Benson are going to set up home together ... what a laugh! 

Soon: back to the '70s and the very funny THE RITZ, a Richard Lester spectacular featuring the wonderful Googie Gomez, with Rita Moreno and Treat Williams.
Also Soon: Lauren Bacall, James Garner & Maureen Stapleton in the 1981 slasher thriller THE FAN - another 80s Trash Classic?