An Irish adventurer tells the story of his own life — duels, cards, the Seven Years' War, and a marriage to a rich widow — and is a liar in every sentence. Thackeray lost his own inheritance at the tables and wrote this before Vanity Fair, letting the scoundrel narrate himself into the ground. Kubrick filmed it, slowly and beautifully, and only made the cruelty clearer. Thirty-nine plates after painters including Gainsborough and Morland carry the camps, harbours and battlefields of the period, so the rogue's campaigns arrive in the colours of their own day.