In a catalog with no shortage of masterpieces, for many fans of Stanley Kubrick, “Barry Lyndon” is near the top of the list. The director’s visually stunning, melancholy, and hilarious adaptation of William Makepeace Thackeray‘s novel is almost staggering in its technical precision, and it’s matched by Kubrick’s exacting vision. However, the director tried a couple different avenues before landing on how he would present the tale of the titular character, with different ideas for the score and narration considered through the editing process.
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Editor Tony Lawson reveals some fascinating details about the making of “Barry Lyndon” in a new interview with Film Comment, and he reveals that two big time composers were considered to provide music for the movie, before Kubrick wound up going with an array of classic works by Bach, Mozart, Schubert and more.
“We did dally with Nino Rota. I have a memory that Ennio Morricone was mentioned at one point, though I don’t know how far that went,” Lawson revealed.
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Those are two very individual composers, whose work would’ve likely greatly changed the tenor of the movie had they been used. But it perhaps points to the fact that Kubrick was willing to entertain a wide variety of ideas, before figuring out what he needed.
Speaking of tenor, it’s hard to imagine “Barry Lyndon” without the wickedly dry narration of Michael Hordern, but at one point, Kubrick thought about dropping it altogether.
“I was actually operating the Nagra tape recorder [when recording the narration]. There’s a film studio five minutes from Stanley’s house. We took a sound booth and took our equipment down there and Michael read it. At one time, instead of using a narrator we were going to have titles, rather like silent-movie titles, interspersed throughout the film. We tried it and found that it just slowed the film up. It didn’t help. We went to narration instead,” Lawson explained. “Even that is so audacious, because the narrator tells you what’s going to happen before it happens, and then you watch it happen. That’s against all the rules. [Laughs] To tell you what’s going to happen and then watch it is just mad.”
Mad or not, it worked, and “Barry Lyndon” is simply brilliant all around. Thoughts? Let us know in the comments section.