This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Hoary (talk | contribs) at 10:09, 7 October 2005 (Cutting stuff that's more about the earlier movie (which has its own article) than this one, which is not a remake; a bit of smoothing elsewhere). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.
Revision as of 10:09, 7 October 2005 by Hoary (talk | contribs) (Cutting stuff that's more about the earlier movie (which has its own article) than this one, which is not a remake; a bit of smoothing elsewhere)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)Lolita is a 1997 film directed by Adrian Lyne and was the second screen adaptation of the title of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. The screenplay was written by Stephen Schiff, and the film has a score by Ennio Morricone. Schiff was commissioned to write the screenplay after scripts by James Dearden, David Mamet and Harold Pinter had been rejected by the producers.
The first adaptation was the 1962 black and white film of the same title directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stephen Schiff has commented that, “Right from the beginning, it was clear to all of us that this movie was not a 'remake' of Kubrick's film. Rather, we were out to make a new adaptation of a very great novel”. He added that, “Some of the filmmakers involved actually looked upon the Kubrick version as a kind of 'what not to do'.”
Schiff said, however, that he had fonder memories of the original film, but that he did not go back to it: “my only source material, in fact, was the novel itself”. The plot of the new film is the same as that of the earlier film and it maintains the same structure as the earlier film with a prologue and the events leading up to it, told as a flashback. It is, however, given the 1940s setting of the novel, rather than the contemporary setting of the original film.
Schiff did not play up the role of Clare Quilty as Kubrick had done. (Schiff believed that Kubrick had made a film that might better have been titled Quilty.) While Kubrick moved the novel’s ending to the start of the film for a prologue. Schiff changed this prologue to an unexplained car chase and returned the novel’s ending to its true place. This allows the events in the story to unfold chronologically and allows the new film to have the same dramatic ending as the novel.
Lolita is now shown as a pubescent young girl, rather than the post-pubescent teenager of the 1962 production. Schiff maintains Humbert Humbert’s narration throughout the whole film, whereas Kubrick used it sparingly and stopped it once the odyssey across the United States began. Nabokov’s term “nymphet” is also freely used in the new film, whereas it was used only once in the original film and then without its meaning being defined.
Early in the new film, some scenes are opened by Humbert in his role as narrator with the simple statement, “What happens to a man in the summer of his fourteenth year affects him for the rest of his life”. Here the fourteen-year-old Humbert meets his first and perhaps 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 portrays Humbert as the definitive 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 with every move and gesture he evokes sympathy for the character.
Jeremy Irons has said in an interview, of his relationship with Dominique Swain "I just tried to become obsessed by her ... All right, I did become obsessed by her."
Melanie Griffith portrays Charlotte Haze as a small-minded, socially conscious, suburban widow, who believes that she has a position to keep up. She maintains a thin veneer of social grace, which can become grating, particularly with her shrewish screams at her daughter to clean her room. She can be comically obtuse with her blissful ignorance of Humbert’s indifference to her.
Freed from the strictures of a 1962 censor, Dominique Swain is able to portray Lolita as the flowering nymphet, who toys with her burgeoning sexuality but who has not overcome her fundamental nature as a little brat. This Lolita is alluring as a wayward character, but 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.
Reference
- Interview with Stephen Schiff by Suellen Stringer-Hye. For comments about other scripts and “Quilty”