Nabokov's Lolita

[CFHollister]

Originally Posted by fsquared

Do the people who have watched it see any direct allusions of ML's video to this film?

That's probably not gonna be a very large group of people...

[Ernest]

Originally Posted by Jess

I don't think you realized my post was kind of long, so I'll appologies for the both of us. Brad this is my first time for long posts, I'll try to keep them short next time.... This is one of those hard to find movies. You can buy the DVD at Amazon for $78.00 or try renting it from somewhere if you find it.

I need links . . .is it available? . . .

[mal]

old lolita movie was better. new one was kinda overly graphic.

[Ben]

Originally Posted by mal

old lolita movie was better. new one was kinda overly graphic.

I dunno, so is the novel. I really liked the new movie. It took the book too seriously, made Humbert too sympathetic, and missed most of the humor... but at least it's a faithful adaptation. Unlike Kubrick's, which I felt was a bit of a mess (Peter Sellers, for example, seemed to have dropped in from another movie, etc.). Don't get me wrong, I love his films (Strangelove, Shinning, etc.), but I don't think Lolita's one of his best.

[Jess]

Off topic, Snatcher did you ever see "The Bobo". This is one of my favorite Peter Sellers movie. I think Britt Ekland was pretty hot in that flick, what do you think?......... (Did you know that she was married to Peter Sellers at one point & had a daughter with him?)

[Ben]

Originally Posted by Jess

Off topic, Snatcher did you ever see "The Bobo".

No, I haven't, though I've heard of it. Will have to check it out.

[Topaz]

Originally Posted by mal

old lolita movie was better. new one was kinda overly graphic.

I think the 1962 one is best. Nabokov wrote the screenplay. Who better to adapt the novel, than the author of the novel?

[fsquared]

Actually, Nabokov wrote the original screenplay, but it was significantly changed by Kubrick and others, to the point where he ended up publishing his screenplay as a separate work in the early 70s. Kubrick said something to the effect that it was unfilmable and would have run 7 hours.

[Ben]

Originally Posted by Topaz

Nabokov wrote the screenplay. Who better to adapt the novel, than the author of the novel?

Yeah, but he was quite displeased with the end result, for the reasons fsquared mentioned (not that I think he'd like the '97 any better, but...).

Originally Posted by fsquared

Kubrick said something to the effect that it was unfilmable and would have run 7 hours.

And he was probably right... though I don't think what he did to it was much of an improvment.

[fsquared]

I've been rereading Lolita and the more I read it, the more disturbing it becomes. The parenthetical descriptions of the sexual abuse of Lolita in second part particularly are quite chilling, precisely because of the matter-of-fact, almost elliptical way he perceives (and reports) them.

It seems very interesting to me how the book splits into two parts (well, of course it does, Part One and Part Two). The first seems to be based on an old story of his, Vulshebnik (The Enchanter). In Part One, it seems that (aside from Humbert's criminal culpability as the adult in the situation), Humbert and Lolita are portrayed as on somewhat parallel footing and that they're basically toying with each other. The balance of power changes completely when Lolita finds out her mother is dead and she has nowhere to go. The second part, interestingly, makes an explicit reference to the crime of Frank La Salle against Sally Horner from 1948, but it seems that only in the last 15 years, scholars went back to the original news reports and realized how extensive the allusions in Part Two are to this crime. In my mind, I see Part Two's genesis as Nabokov being haunted by Frank's crime, and inspired to reconstruct an exegesis of this crime and his psychopathic mind, as well as a poignant tribute and memorialization of Sally's horrible suffering. She was kidnapped for the same length of time (21 months) as Lolita, and also died horribly about 3 years later (in a car crash). Her story was never major news though apparently.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Florence_Sally_Horner