Barry Lyndon sights on Thackeray's 1844 "satirical picaresque about the fortune-hunting of an Irish rogue," "Barry Lyndon", the setting of which allowed Kubrick to take advantage of the copious period research he had done for the now-aborted "Napoleon". At the time, Kubrick merely announced that his next film would star Ryan O'Neal (deemed "a seemingly un-Kubricky choice of leading man") and Marisa Berenson, a former "Vogue" and "Time" magazine cover model, and be shot largely in Ireland. So heightened was the secrecy surrounding the film that "Even Berenson, when Kubrick first approached her, was told only that it was to be an
Galileo (1975 film) in 1975, complained: "There is one problem with the film, and it is a major one; the casting of Topol in the title role … although he's a big man he imparts no sense of intellectual heft. ... but the rest of the production has exceptional style and intelligence, the sort of things one should be able to expect from the American Film Theater." The original 1947 theatrical performance, also directed by Losey, received a similar criticism, only then it was Charles Laughton who played Galileo. Tom Milne makes this a criticism of Losey's directing, writing that "Topol is allowed