Lolita is a 1997 drama film directed by Adrian Lyne and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty. It is the second screen adaptation of the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. The film concerns the story of an English professor's obsession with his landlady's flirtatious daughter and his attempts to possess her. Lolita was originally filmed by Stanley Kubrick in 1962, when much of the novel’s content was toned down significantly due to censorship restrictions. In a less conservative era, British director Lyne began filming his own adaptation.
With the central theme of Humbert's hebephilia, the film had considerable difficulty finding an American distributor[ and premiered in Europe before being released in America, where it was met with much controversy. The film was picked up in the United States by Showtime, a cablenetwork, before finally being released theatrically by The Samuel Goldwyn Company. The performances by Irons and Swain impressed audiences, but, although praised by some critics for its faithfulness to Nabokov's narrative, the film received a mixed critical reception in theUnited States. Following its theatrical release, the film was distributed on VHS and DVD byPathé, both of which are now out-of-print.
Plot summary
In 1947, Humbert Humbert, a European professor of French literature, travels to New Hampshirein the United States to take a teaching position. He rents a room in the home of widow Charlotte Haze, largely because he sees her adolescent daughter, Dolores (variously called "Dolly" or "Lo"; age 12 in Nabokov's novel, but shown as slightly older in the film), while touring the house. Obsessed from boyhood with girls of this age (whom he calls "nymphets"), partly because of an early sexual experience and tragic loss, Humbert marries Charlotte for the sake of access to her daughter.
Charlotte's untimely death, shortly after she discovers his preference for her daughter, frees Humbert to pursue a sexual and emotional relationship with Dolores, whom he nicknames "Lolita". The two travel the country for a few weeks or months, staying in various motels but eventually settling in a college town where Humbert takes a teaching job. However, Lolita's increasing boredom with Humbert, as well as her growing desire for independence, fuels a constant tension between them. Humbert's desperate affections for Lo are also rivaled by another man, the playwright Clare Quilty, who has been pursuing Lo from the beginning. Quilty's name and identity are at first unknown to Humbert, and when Lolita runs away to him, Humbert's search for her is unsuccessful.
Three years later, after a receiving a letter asking for financial help, Humbert visits the now 17-year-old Lolita, married to another man and pregnant. Humbert, who still loves her, asks her to run away with him, but she refuses. He relents and gives her a substantial amount of money and information about her inheritance from her mother. He also discovers the name of his nemesis, Quilty, whom he hunts down and murders.
After being arrested, Humbert dies in prison in November 1950. Lolita dies in childbirth a month later, on Christmas Day.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (Russian: Влади́мир Влади́мирович Набо́ков,pronounced [vlɐˈdʲimʲɪr nɐˈbokəf]; 22 April [O.S. 10 April] 1899c – 2 July 1977) was a multilingualRussian-American novelist and short story writer. Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian, then rose to international prominence as a master English prose stylist. He also made contributions to entomology and had an interest in chess problems.
Nabokov's Lolita (1955) is frequently cited as among his most important novels and is his most widely known, exhibiting the love of intricate word play and synesthetic detail that characterised all his works. The novel was ranked at #4 in the list of the Modern Library 100 Best Novels.Pale Fire (1962) was ranked at #53 on the same list. His memoir entitled Speak, Memory was listed #8 on the Modern Library nonfiction list.
Nabokov's afterword
In 1956, Nabokov penned an afterword to Lolita ("On a Book Entitled Lolita") that was included in every subsequent edition of the book.
One of the first things Nabokov makes a point of saying is, despite John Ray Jr.'s claim in the Foreword, there is no moral to the story.
In the afterword, Nabokov wrote that "the initial shiver of inspiration" for Lolita "was somehow prompted by a newspaper story about an ape in the Jardin des Plantes who, after months of coaxing by a scientist, produced the first drawing ever charcoaled by an animal: this sketch showed the bars of the poor creature's cage". Neither the article nor the drawing has been recovered.
In response to an American critic who characterized Lolita as the record of Nabokov's "love affair with the romantic novel", Nabokov wrote that "the substitution of 'English language' for 'romantic novel' would make this elegant formula more correct".
Nabokov concluded the afterword with a reference to his beloved first language, which he abandoned as a writer once he moved to the United States in 1940: "My private tragedy, which cannot, and indeed should not, be anybody's concern, is that I had to abandon my natural idiom, my untrammeled, rich, and infinitely docile Russian language for a second-rate brand of English".
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