Subject
Michael Wood on LOLITA, the Movie (fwd)
Date
Body
To: Nabokov <Nabokv-L@UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU>
Subject: Michael Wood on LOLITA, the Movie
This message was originally submitted by galya@U.WASHINGTON.EDU to the NABOKV-L
list at UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU. If you simply forward it back to the list, using a
mail command that generates "Resent-" fields (ask your local user support or
consult the documentation of your mail program if in doubt), it will be
distributed and the explanations you are now reading will be removed
automatically. If on the other hand you edit the contributions you receive into
a digest, you will have to remove this paragraph manually. Finally, you should
be able to contact the author of this message by using the normal "reply"
function of your mail program.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
The latest issue of the NYRB has a long article by Wood on Lyne's movie,
entitled "Revisiting Lolita." It goes through LOLITA's reception upon
publication, Kubrick's movie, and the present controversy occasioned by
the new movie, including the planned boycott and leaflets in Munich. Wood
saw the movie in Paris, where both English and French versions were
available: "The theater was not full and the audience seemed neither
excited nor outraged: it was just a movie." Wood's analysis of the movie
-- and the novel -- is too complex to summarize here, so I just wanted to
alert people to his article. Here is just a tiny bit: "Lyne... decided he
wanted the melodrama. His film is far from immoral, even apart from the
fact that everyone dies. It is a kind of parable against passion, rather
like his FATAL ATTRACTION, although far more subdued. ... Dominique
Swain as Lolita is appropriately sulky and gawky, and she has a
sudden, delayed smile which lights up the whole film whenever it
appears. Jeremy Irons offers a rather low-keyed, unfreaky Humbert... But
the real joy of the film's acting is Melanie Griffith as Charlotte."
Galya Diment
Subject: Michael Wood on LOLITA, the Movie
This message was originally submitted by galya@U.WASHINGTON.EDU to the NABOKV-L
list at UCSBVM.UCSB.EDU. If you simply forward it back to the list, using a
mail command that generates "Resent-" fields (ask your local user support or
consult the documentation of your mail program if in doubt), it will be
distributed and the explanations you are now reading will be removed
automatically. If on the other hand you edit the contributions you receive into
a digest, you will have to remove this paragraph manually. Finally, you should
be able to contact the author of this message by using the normal "reply"
function of your mail program.
---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Galya Diment <galya@u.washington.edu>
The latest issue of the NYRB has a long article by Wood on Lyne's movie,
entitled "Revisiting Lolita." It goes through LOLITA's reception upon
publication, Kubrick's movie, and the present controversy occasioned by
the new movie, including the planned boycott and leaflets in Munich. Wood
saw the movie in Paris, where both English and French versions were
available: "The theater was not full and the audience seemed neither
excited nor outraged: it was just a movie." Wood's analysis of the movie
-- and the novel -- is too complex to summarize here, so I just wanted to
alert people to his article. Here is just a tiny bit: "Lyne... decided he
wanted the melodrama. His film is far from immoral, even apart from the
fact that everyone dies. It is a kind of parable against passion, rather
like his FATAL ATTRACTION, although far more subdued. ... Dominique
Swain as Lolita is appropriately sulky and gawky, and she has a
sudden, delayed smile which lights up the whole film whenever it
appears. Jeremy Irons offers a rather low-keyed, unfreaky Humbert... But
the real joy of the film's acting is Melanie Griffith as Charlotte."
Galya Diment