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
Barry Lyndon body, Barry accepts. Barry, humiliated, hobbles on crutches to a carriage. The narrator states that Barry went first back to Ireland with his mother, then once he was fully recovered, he traveled to the European continent to resume his former profession of gambler (though without his former success). Barry kept his word and never returned to England or ever saw Lady Lyndon again. The final scene (set in December 1789) shows a middle-aged Lady Lyndon signing Barry's annuity cheque as her son looks on. It was in the reign of George III that the aforesaid personages lived and quarrelled; good