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Lolita is a 1997 film, which is directed by Adrian Lyne and is adapted from the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. The screenplay was written by Stephen Schiff, with a musical score written by Ennio Morricone. It is shot in color and runs for 137 minutes. This film differs considerably from the 1962 black and white film of the same name directed by Stanley Kubrick.

Most remakes are judged against the original and this production avoids many of the earlier film’s mistakes. It is given the 1940 s setting of the book, rather than the contemporary setting of the original film.

Nabokov’s self-coined term “nymphet” is freely introduced into the new production’s dialogue, whereas it was never used in the originalperhaps owing to censorship worries.

Lolita is now shown as a pubescent young girl, rather than the post-pubescent teenager of the 1962 production. Another change is that Lyne maintains Humbert Humbert’s narration throughout the whole film, whereas Kubrick stopped it after he had moved into the Haze household.

The plot is the same, but it unfolds with events being laid out in a more chronological sequence. This avoids the atmosphere of anticlimax created during the latter half of the original film. In addition, early in this new film, some scenes are introduced that were not in the Kubrick’s film. These scenes are opened by Humbert Humbert in his role as narrator with the simple statement, “What happens to a man in the summer of his fourteenth year effects him for the rest of his life”. Here the fourteen-year-old Humbert meets his first and perhaps his only love, a fourteen year old “nymphet” named Annabel. After four months, this romance ends in tragedy with Annabel’s sudden death from typhoid and Humbert’s emotions are frozen forever. These scenes and this simple statement go a long way to explaining, although not excusing his lust for and obsession with Lolita. She is Annabel reborn.

Jeremy Irons gives an excellent performance as Humbert. Initially he is the definitive Old World European intellectual, only really at ease in the ordered, cloistered world of academia. But, after he becomes smitten with his “nymphet”, he is a man, whose obsession bristles beneath his timorous demeanor. His performance is understated but evocative with every move and gesture. He evokes much sympathy for the character.

Melanie Griffith is a superb Charlotte Haze, portraying her as a small-minded, socially conscious, suburban widow, who believes that she has a position to keep up. She is comically obtuse and her veneer hits all the right, grating notes. Everything from her shrewish screams at her daughter to clean her room to blissful ignorance of Humbert’s indifference to her is portrayed as something quite normal.

Freed from the strictures of a 1962 censor, Dominique Swain delivers an on-target portrayal of Lolita as the flowering nymphet, who toys with her burgeoning sexuality but who has not overcome her fundamental nature as a little brat. Swain is alluring as a wayward character, but she elicits no pity, since her immaturity of mindset and her selfish behavior do not excuse her from complicity in her affairs.

Frank Langella rounds out the cast as the mysterious Clare Quilty. He is appropriately shady, vague, and sinister when he appears from time to time, slowly revealing himself as a true villain and seducer of “little girls”. His impersonation of the police officer at the hotel is both dark and menacing and calculated to undermine the already brittle self-confidence of the guilt-ridden Humbert.

The film received good reviews on its release, but remains a subject of debate, particularly amongst dedicated fans of Stanley Kubrick.

• 1997 films