Barry Lyndon was a box office disappointment on its release in 1975. But it stands as one of Kubrick’s most visually stunning and emotionally rich films.

Unwilling to abandon his obsession with the late 18th century, he turned instead to The Luck of Barry Lyndon, a lesser-known 1844 novel by William Makepeace Thackeray. The choice of Thackeray was ...