The Picturesque Picaresque of Barry Lyndon

Barry Lyndon was not well reviewed when it was released in 1975, especially in the US. It was called a coffee-table movie, a jewelled corpse. Pauline Kael went to town on it in the New Yorker, saying it was one of the vainest movies ever made: “We might as well be at a three-hour slide show for art-history majors.” Mad magazine dubbed it “Borey Lyndon”.