What did the studio at Wonderland Avenue do?

[Jan Klimkowski]

The official story has it that Kubrick wanted to shoot Barry Lyndon by candlelight for artistic and aesthetic reasons.

That Kubrick's motivation was primarily artistic is probably, to a large extent, true.

Where did Stanley find the only lens in the world at that time that could deliver what he needed?

At NASA.

Above all it is the light that made BARRY LYNDON famous: the light of its interiors that stems from hundreds of candles, sometimes from only a few. Back then no lens was strong enough for such sequences without the support of artificial light. As early as 1968 Kubrick had run first tests with especially light-sensitive film material but the results could not satisfy him. During the preparations for BARRY LYNDON Kubrick found out about a special lens that Carl Zeiss Oberkochen had developed for NASA's space photographs. This lens with 1:0,7 and a focal length of 50mm was two f-stops faster than all other film lenses at that time. Kubrick had camera specialist Ed DiGiulio integrate it into an old Mitchell BNC which had to be completely remodeled to accommodate the large lens. This enabled cameraman John Alcott to film interiors with available light but it also held a directorial challenge: The much interpreted artificiality and hypnotic slowness of the protagonists is partly due to the technical requirements of filming: actors had to pay attention to not move too fast thereby leaving the extremely limited depth of focus.

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