Lolita (1997 film)

Infobox Film
name = Lolita


caption =
director = Adrian Lyne
producer = Mario Kassar
Joel B. Michaels | writer = Stephen Schiff
starring = Jeremy Irons,
Melanie Griffith,
Dominique Swain,
Frank Langella
music = Ennio Morricone
cinematography = Howard Atherton,
Stephen Smith (France)
editing = David Brenner, Julie Monroe
distributor = Samuel Goldwyn
Pathé
released = September 27 1997
runtime = 137 min.
country = USA
language = English
budget =
imdb_id = 0119558

"Lolita" is a 1997 film directed by Adrian Lyne and was the second screen adaptation of the novel by Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain (15 years old during filming) as Dolores "Lolita" Haze. Supporting roles are Melanie Griffith, playing Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty.

History

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 of "Lolita" was the 1962 version directed by Stanley Kubrick. Stephen Schiff, screenwriter of the 1997 version, 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'”, and quipped that Kubrick's film should have been called "Quilty" due to the prominent role of that character. Despite Schiff's confidence, the 1997 film was refused release by all the major Hollywood studios, many of whom may have feared legal action arising from the passage of the ambiguously worded Child Pornography Prevention Act of 1996. However, the film earned a large number of viewers when it aired on Showtime, and fared well in VHS and DVD sales and rentals.Fact|date=July 2007

Plot outline

Humbert Humbert, a British professor of French literature, travels to New Hampshire, United States for a teaching position. Falling in love with Dolores Haze, the flirtatious 14 year-old (age 12 in Nabokov's novel) daughter of his widowed landlady, Charlotte Haze, he marries Charlotte for the sake of access to her daughter. Charlotte's untimely death frees Humbert to pursue his relationship with Dolores, whom he nicknames 'Lolita'. However, Lolita's increasing boredom with Humbert, as well as a growing desire for independence, fires the tension between them. Humbert's affections are also rivaled by a more devious and experienced pedophile, the playwright Clare Quilty. Quilty's identity is unknown to Humbert, and when Lolita runs away with the playwright, Humbert's search for her is accordingly unsuccessful.

Several years later Humbert visits Lolita, who is married to another man and pregnant. His love for her remains, in spite of her circumstances, but she refuses to return to him. He relents and gives her a present of cash, and during this meeting, discovers the name of his nemesis. Subsequently, he hunts for Quilty and murders him.

Reception and controversy

The film was produced on a budget of just over USD$6.2 million, and had trouble finding a distributor in the United States, reportedly due to the widespread disapproval of pedophilia and strong sexuality, though this has been disputed. New Line Cinema was originally set to distribute it in America, but after seeing early footage of the film, they pulled out concerned over the content. It eventually premiered on the Showtime television network, where it drew an unusually wide audience — a near-record for Showtime — and then had a subsequent limited theatrical release, where it took in approximately $1 million. The film was not released in Australia until 1999, with censors in the country concerned of the pedophilia-related content. The film was given an R18+ rating, and did moderately well in a limited release.

Reviews were mixed, with some critics considering the film more faithful to the letter of the novel than the spirit. Critics such as James Berardinelli, however, praised the film, particularly for the performances of the two leads, [http://movie-reviews.colossus.net/movies/l/lolita.html] and "New York Times" critic Caryn James championed the film, though noted that it was "dully repetitious in the last 40 minutes". [ [http://movies2.nytimes.com/mem/movies/review.html?title1=&title2=Lolita%20%28Movie%29&reviewer=Caryn%20James&v_id=137204 Movie Reviews, Showtimes and Trailers - Movies - New York Times ] ] Writer and director James Toback has listed it in his picks for the 10 finest films ever made. [ [http://www.bfi.org.uk/sightandsound/topten/poll/voter.php?forename=James&surname=Toback BFI | Sight & Sound | Top Ten Poll 2002 - How the directors and critics voted ] ]

Differences from the novel

The film was publicized as an attempt to be faithful to the original novel, and the events of the film do match the events of the novel quite closely. Some critics and readers of the novel complained, however, that in taking such a reverent approach, many of the more subtle aspects of the novel, such as the unreliability of Humbert's narration, were lost. Many also thought that much of the humorous and tragic irony of the novel — which comes largely from the differences between Humbert's self-image and his action — was lost, since the movie essentially offers up Humbert's narration as fact. The critic Charles Taylor, for example, said of the film, "For all of their vaunted (and, it turns out, false) fidelity to Nabokov, Lyne and Schiff have made a pretty, gauzy "Lolita" that replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism", [ [http://www.salon.com/ent/movies/reviews/1998/05/cov_29review.html?CP=SAL&DN=110 Salon Entertainment | "Lolita" ] ] and Keith Phipps wrote that "Lyne doesn't seem to get the novel, failing to incorporate any of Nabokov's black comedy — which is to say, "Lolita"'s heart and soul". [ [http://avclub.com/content/node/2018 Lolita | The A.V. Club ] ]

Another major deviation is the depiction of Lolita as highly attractive. Several characters in the novel, including her own mother and Humbert himself, comment on Lolita's lack of conventional attractiveness, and it is hinted that this is why greater suspicion does not fall on Humbert.

The depiction of Lolita in the film differs from the book's description of her. In the book, she has honey-coloured skin, 'vacuous grey eyes', and brown hair, with a bobbed cut. In the film, Lolita is a 'sexy schoolgirl', and the film puts a visual emphasis on the orthodontic retainer she wears for her teeth, whereas Lolita doesn't wear braces in the book.

ee also

* Lolita
* Lolita (1962 film)
*List of films portraying paedophilia or sexual abuse of minors

References

Further reading

* [http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/schiff1.htm Interview with Stephen Schiff] by Suellen Stringer-Hye. "Zembla." 1996.
* [http://web.archive.org/web/19991009090408/www.hcs.harvard.edu/~advocate/winter98/Lolita97.html A Paradise with Skies the Color of Hell Flames: Adrian Lyne’s (Unseen) Adaptation of "Lolita."] (The first academic study of the film.) By Charles Savage. "The Harvard Advocate." Winter 1997-98.
* [http://web.archive.org/web/19991104011753/www.hcs.harvard.edu/~advocate/spring98/features/schiff.html Interview: Stephen Schiff on his "Lolita"] By Charles Savage. "The Harvard Advocate." Spring 1998.

External links

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* [http://film.virtual-history.com/film.php?filmid=3682 Movie stills]