Subject
Lo film-Frick-16Apr97
Date
Body
Now that DN is monitoring the proceedings and offering his comments, I
am tempted to withhold the fact that I have just been to a screening
of the new "Lolita." But I will risk the rebuke. What most puzzles
me is that, toward the beginning of all the flap concerning the
remake, one of Lyne's arguments for embarking on the project was that
the change in times would allow him to be more faithful to the book
than poor restricted Kubrick. We get a glimpse of the adolescent HH
and Annabel, but other than that--and what cable raters call "brief
nudity"--nothing seems to have been _added_ to the original filmed
version. What has been deleted is monumental, most notably all humor
and the spectre of Quilty. (Quilty is still there, of course, but as
more of an afterthought, a sort of weak plot motivation, the way that
Annabel's presence comes off as heavy-handed--and sadly
simplistic--permission to care for Humbert.) To be somewhat fair, I
have no idea what version I saw. It was certainly long enough (around
2 hours), but Lyne may be cutting up what originally impressed Schiff
in order to get the thing distributed. Finally, I was not aware that
Melanie Griffith was cast as Charlotte. Her performance is so brief,
and yet so painful. If you imagine seeing Ms. Griffith in a bathing
suit at Hour Glass Lake and then imagine the not trivial on-screen
references to her bovine nature, you have already imagined a situation
where faithfulness to the letter of the novel (or Schiff's
adaptation) was obviously valued to the exclusion of its spirit.