Re-release: Killer of Sheep/Barry Lyndon
Two men caught in very different big-screen cages.
It is imperative to see films made before the adoption of the home VCR as they were meant to be seen, larger than life, overtaking the viewer with sound and fury.
These films were not meant to be experienced on a small screen in a private home. The first thing you notice is the wideness of the compositions, close enough on the characters to become emotionally attached, but simultaneously showing the world around them. They interact with their setting, guiding them to good or ill fortune.
The unfortunate situations were abundant for me in this week’s viewing (even compared to last week’s post, BOTTOM FEEDERS). First up was a 50th anniversary celebration of Stanley Kubrick’s masterpiece Barry Lyndon (1975) with my filmwatching-buddy Dave, courtesy of IFC Center on 6th Avenue in the West Village. Charles Burnett’s 4K restoration of his 1978 masterpiece Killer of Sheep followed at Film Forum with my long-time filmmaking partner, Jay Stern.
I mention my viewing partners in each case because post-screening discussion is essential for both films. I often go to the movies alone, and one evening I had to be “talked down” by phone with Jay after seeing Lars von Trier’s sadistic thriller Antichrist (2009, thx again, IFC Center).
It was coincidental that I saw both films in the same week, but I felt a connection between the protagonists, centered on entrapment. Both films were shot in the early 1970s, one in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Watts and the other in a selection of country estates in England, Ireland, and Germany. Killer of Sheep originated on 16mm black and white film and evokes Italian Neo-Realist cinema, whereas Barry Lyndon was shot in 35mm color Kodak 100T 5254, sometimes pushed one stop in development to 200 to help expose low-light scenes. This was done to create a naturalistic painterly beauty, seducing the protagonist to risk everything for his class striving.
Redmund Barry’s father is killed in a duel, condemning him to a poverty-stricken youth with his widowed mother, which he defies over and over again in his rise into the Eighteenth-century British aristocracy, followed by his inevitable self-inflicted downfall. He sees himself as a gentleman deserving better than his station has offered, ideas which lead him to take easy, quick shortcuts and make predictable ego-centric mistakes. His son and stepson love and hate him respectively, and he alienates his wealthy wife once they are contractually bound. But fate is a cruel mistress.
Killer of Sheep’s Stan, on the contrary, isn’t going anywhere. He works at a Watts slaughterhouse and heads home to his wife and kids, occasionally helping a friend buy a car engine or fielding other requests. His children play with the local kids in the alleys and empty lots, throwing rocks and bottles at each other or effortlessly jumping across rooftops. No one is going anywhere until Burnett starts to intercut the sheep being led to slaughter with the boys chasing each other through their walled-in courtyards. The camera never leaves the neighborhood pen.
Stan can’t stand up for himself, he drifts through every scene unable to commit to anything, not even his amazing and feisty wife, played by a scene-stealing Kaycee Moore. Two hoods try to pressure him into joining them for an armed robbery, and he can barely muster a response, sitting dejectedly on his front stoop.
His wife steps in and makes it abundantly clear that he is not interested in fast cash, asking, “Why are you always out to hurt someone?” Burnett’s mastery of composition tells the story of Stan’s dejection and entrapment.
The gangster is unmoved and grabs her arm as he responds unpleasantly. Again, Stan can’t summon the will to confront him. Later on, the couple dances to music in their living room, but he slinks off, leaving her to a teary breakdown in a beautiful shot silhouetted against the window.
Stan wants to work an honest job to make his living, while everyone around him scams for a quick buck, and he pays the price of exhaustion for working within the system. The coverage of his work at the slaughterhouse is shot in languid close ups, matter-of-factly guiding sheep through plywood pathways to their turn with the stun gun, men cut their throats and gut the animals as Stan sweeps up the leftover entrails from the floor. His eyes tell the story as we watch him perform mechanical actions again and again.
No directorial editorializing is necessary in Burnett’s filmmaking. To make his point, all he has to do is hold up a mirror.
The Power of the Big Screen and the Long Lens
Film Forum doesn’t have the multiplex-size screens, so we sat in the third row to get the perfect ratio between screen and peripheral vision. In my previous post on Ryan Coogler’s Sinners, I mentioned that the screen was so wide (2.76 to 1 ratio!) that it stretched to the edge of my vision, creating wide landscape shots of cotton fields and country roads, but kept the main subjects center framed in order to switch between wide and square IMAX formats, so I never had to swivel my neck in reverse shot coverage.
Shooting Killer of Sheep with a 4x3 or 1.33 to 1 square aspect ratio on 16mm gave each image a more vertical feeling, framing for the interaction of bodies within the space. Burnett often used telephoto lenses to compress the planes of action and further flatten the images, evoking entrapment. He uses the entirety of the frame, often teasing off-screen space by withholding turnarounds until finally he offers a cut to expand the screen environment.
When a character walks in a telephoto shot, it looks like they are staying in the same place, which is an apt visual metaphor for the characters in the film, adults and children alike. This effect is created by moving the camera far from the set and zooming in, so if someone walks 10 feet towards a camera 100 feet away, they only get 10% bigger. Conversely, if you zoom out or use a wide-angle prime lens 10 feet away from your subject walking that same path, they grow 100% bigger as they walk toward the camera, imbuing them with power and grandiosity.
Everyone knows that looking up creates a sense of aggrandizement; that’s why Tom Cruise walks around on apple boxes, so seeing the film from a lower perspective, rather than on my computer or TV at home, was a welcome change. The film grain danced across every frame, and the contrast and black levels sang to high heaven in this 4K restoration print, a collaborative effort between the UCLA Film & TV Archive, Milestone Films, and the Criterion Collection, approved by Charles Burnett, of course.
On a side note, I've been reading a lot of recent praise for the “indie-cred” of Sean Baker for his work on Anora (2024), winning Oscars as director, writer, producer, and editor, which is fine. But I am even more impressed by Burnett’s film as he was also the cinematographer, and didn’t have $6 mil to do it. I think it is natural for a good director to shoot their own films, especially when shooting requires the intimacy of small personal locations and situations where an outsider could change the trajectory of the actors.
Steven Soderbergh shoots his own films under the name Peter Andrews, and Robert Rodriguez has also made a name for himself as a DP/director, following on the heels of Nicholas Roeg (Walkabout) and presaging filmmakers like Doug Liman (Swingers) and Reed Morano (Meadowland) who shot their early films themselves. But nobody can hold a candle to the ultimate DP/director.
The man. The myth. The legend.
Apparently, Stanley Kubrick didn’t do shot lists. He arrived on set for Barry Lyndon with a lens kit and viewfinder, worked with the actors to block the scene, and figured out the best place for the camera to go on the spot. He had John Alcott, BSC, as his cinematographer (sometimes called “lighting cameraman” but gets a Photographed by credit), who certainly deserved his Oscar for the tale of Redmund Barry, but there was no question as to who was in charge of the camera.
To quote American Cinematographer,
“Stanley Kubrick does not simply create films - he creates entire worlds on film. An almost fanatical perfectionist, he drives his co-workers seemingly beyond the limits of their endurance toward heights of achievement they never imagined, let alone hoped to attain.
The operative phrase out of that assertion is: “The most ravishing set of images ever printed on a single strip of celluloid.” — which is quite possibly true, because Barry Lyndon is a delicious feast for the eye. Each composition is like a painting by one of the Old Masters, and they link one onto the other like the tiles of a wondrous mosaic.
Pictorially, the elegant result emerges from a close collaboration between Kubrick (a photographer himself) and director of photography John Alcott, BSC.”
In the interview with AC, Alcott disclosed his working relationship with Kubrick as being “close because we think exactly alike photographically. We really do see eye-to-eye photographically. In preparation for Barry Lyndon, we studied the lighting effects achieved in the paintings of the Dutch masters, but they seemed a bit flat, so we decided to light more from the side.”
This was my fourth theatrical screening of Barry Lyndon, and we arrived at the IFC Center early to get perfect seats, second only to one woman a row back. It was a Tuesday evening screening that I fit in between teaching days, so I was nervous that the small crowd would make the jokes fall flat (that’s right, Barry Lyndon is a comedy, though people forget - it always kills in a packed theater). Fortunately, my fellow New Yorkers showed up, selling out and generating roaring laughter for three hours (plus intermission).
In previous theatrical environments, I’ve enjoyed noticing more details in the wide shots of duels, battles, and political machinations, but this time, something new stood out to me - the close-ups. I had never felt the emotional power of these close shots and how vividly they conveyed the stakes - jealousy, betrayal, lust, the full range of human suffering on the grandest scale.
Most films shot today overly rely on close-ups, fearing that the audience will miss the story as they watch on a small screen or half-watch while doing something else on their phone. But since Lyndon was meant to be seen in a theater, even closer moments often show a good deal of the actor’s body. The 1.66 to 1 aspect ratio favors the vertical and acts as the Old Masters’ horizontal landscape format.
The first close shot that jumped out at me is near the beginning of the story when Barry is obsessed with his cousin, Nora Brady, who dances with the newly arrived Captain John Quinn, a propertied Englishman. Penniless Barry doesn’t stand a chance against a 500-a-year dowry, but that’s not how he sees it.
Kubrick takes his time in the edit, using a long lens to focus on the couple among the other dancers, cuts to Barry watching in a wide profile, then even closer on the couple to more clearly show Nora’s flirtatious smile. Then he ends the scene on Barry’s close-up, the camera has moved from profile to right in front of him to capture the anguish and jealousy.
Knowing how to use eye-line in coverage is a film directing superpower.
This is how close-ups were meant to work - save them for maximum impact. Look at his face, he is being torn apart inside. He doesn’t know what he doesn’t know, making this moment so relatable. At the mid-point of the film, after growing cynical about love and the ways of the world, Barry sees Lady Lyndon for the first time and decides that he will marry into wealth rather than earn it himself. Kubrick calls back to his earlier close-up, but now we see Barry made up as a refined gambler.
A wolf in sheep’s clothing, he doesn’t realize that it’s he who is stepping into the trap.
Any time you can see a classic movie in a theater, I highly recommend it, even if you’ve seen it at home. The audience it draws is not the type to talk or be on their phones - they are respectful of the filmmaker's craft and their fellow cinephile patrons. So take a break from streaming and see where it takes you.
BONUS LINKS!
If you would like to read more of the American Cinematographer interview with John Alcott about Barry Lyndon, here is the link: https://theasc.com/articles/flashback-barry-lyndon
Here is the Criterion Collection breakdown for their 4K re-release of Killer of Sheep: https://www.criterion.com/films/34233-killer-of-sheep?srsltid=AfmBOorWNkbAY64S1iCc1LfR-tKln2WCmPOpDTYen-LvsqeHBfd0ZBMy
And the revelatory nature of mixing peanut m&ms in your popcorn