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Re: [NABOKOV-L][QUERY] Kubrick's Lolita - more portraits
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A. Stadlen: "I saw Kubrick's film many times in my misspent youth, and never noticed a picture of Nabokov, although I noticed small details like the hotel's name being changed to "The Hunted Enchanters". But that does not prove the picture is not there."
JM: It's funny what we sometimes remember from a movie we haven't seen for a long time. Before I got to the DVD, what I remembered more clearly was a stuffed squirrel which appears in a cluttered room in Lolita's summer-camp and reappears, I think, in Mrs. Haze's living room. What I didn't recollect was how tense and disagreable the film is from its very start with the drunk Quilty playing Roman ping pong, what a nuisance poor Charlotte is, how very dark and forbidding Kubrick's handling faithfully deals with HH's perverse world.
It must be a tribute to Kubrick's lugubrius genius that once, on TV, while the small comedy of a clumsy valet trying to fold Lolita's campbed was going on in "The Hunted Enchanters" (thanks, A.Stadlen, I didn't remember that inversion of words...A reviewer once named Quilty's gothic castle "Xanadu," instead of "Pavor Manor" and that was quaint!), I had sat down for a moment with my five-year old grandson, noticed the scene on TV and tiredly convinced myself that that was only a harmless comedy part...whereas the boy stared at James Mason's tense expression and asked point-blank: "What does that bad papa want to do with his little daughter?"
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JM: It's funny what we sometimes remember from a movie we haven't seen for a long time. Before I got to the DVD, what I remembered more clearly was a stuffed squirrel which appears in a cluttered room in Lolita's summer-camp and reappears, I think, in Mrs. Haze's living room. What I didn't recollect was how tense and disagreable the film is from its very start with the drunk Quilty playing Roman ping pong, what a nuisance poor Charlotte is, how very dark and forbidding Kubrick's handling faithfully deals with HH's perverse world.
It must be a tribute to Kubrick's lugubrius genius that once, on TV, while the small comedy of a clumsy valet trying to fold Lolita's campbed was going on in "The Hunted Enchanters" (thanks, A.Stadlen, I didn't remember that inversion of words...A reviewer once named Quilty's gothic castle "Xanadu," instead of "Pavor Manor" and that was quaint!), I had sat down for a moment with my five-year old grandson, noticed the scene on TV and tiredly convinced myself that that was only a harmless comedy part...whereas the boy stared at James Mason's tense expression and asked point-blank: "What does that bad papa want to do with his little daughter?"
Search archive with Google:
http://www.google.com/advanced_search?q=site:listserv.ucsb.edu&HL=en
Contact the Editors: mailto:nabokv-l@utk.edu,nabokv-l@holycross.edu
Visit Zembla: http://www.libraries.psu.edu/nabokov/zembla.htm
View Nabokv-L policies: http://web.utk.edu/~sblackwe/EDNote.htm
Visit "Nabokov Online Journal:" http://www.nabokovonline.com
Manage subscription options: http://listserv.ucsb.edu/