Here is archival article from 1976 in which cinematographer John Alcott discusses his work on Barry Lyndon, for which he won an Oscar.
https://theasc.com/articles/flashback-barry-lyndon
#nostr #plebchain #nostrfilmclub #movies #film
Discussion
Amazing film. Did he borrow a camera from NASA for that ?
The lenses were left over from a batch made for use for NASA’s Apollo moon-landing program.
The following is taken from an interview with John Alcott which I posted earlier. It’s a fascinating read if you’re interested in the technical side. 📽
INTERVIEWER: Now we come to the scenes which have caused more comment than anything else in this overall beautiful film — namely the candlelight scenes. Can you tell me about these and how they were executed?
JOHN ALCOTT : The objective was to shoot these scenes exclusively by candlelight — that is, without a boost from any artificial light whatsoever. As I mentioned earlier, Stanley Kubrick and I had been discussing this possibility for years, but had not been able to find sufficiently fast lenses to do it. Stanley finally discovered three 50mm t/0.7 Zeiss still-camera lenses which were left over from a batch made for use by NASA in their Apollo moon-landing program. We had a non-reflexed Mitchell BNC which was sent over to Ed DiGiulio to be reconstructed to accept this ultra-fast lens. He had to mill out the existing lens mounts, because the rear element of this t/0.7 lens was virtually something like 4mm from the film plane. It took quite a while, and when we got the camera back we made quite extensive tests on it.
the cinematography was one of the best thing about the movie! I never gave you my review. It took me a few days to watch it in full, which I'm sure made it a little less impactful than if I had viewed it in one sitting. I rated it 7/10. That might seem low, but I have my reasons.
I wish there was no foreshadowing from the intertitles and the narrator. I like not knowing where a story is going, so I can be surprised. The narration gave too much away at times. The performances were good and Ryan O'Neal was well-cast. However, his mother chewed the scenery in the scene where she fires the Rev. and that took me out of the movie.
Finally, I found the ending rather abrupt. I don't understand why we end on a freeze-frame of Barry getting into a car.
Basically, Paths of Glory is better.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts!
I believe the foreshadowing is a nod to Thackeray’s novel, The Luck of Barry Lyndon, on which the screenplay is based. Descriptive chapter titles are a trope of 19th century literature, especially among those works which, like Barry Lyndon, were published serially.
I’m not sure what you mean about the ending. The freeze frame is the last scene in which Lyndon appears, but it is not the end of the film. The films ends with the charming and poignant epilogue:
It was in the reign of King George III that the aforementioned personages lived and quarreled; Good or bad, handsome or ugly, rich or poor they are all equal now.
🍿
I forgot that it was based on a book. That's what I dislike about adaptations; it feels like you can't criticize stuff about them because it makes sense in the source material