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More on Lyne's Lolita
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From: "Julian W. Connolly" <jwc4w@virginia.edu>
I recently came across a long critique of the Adrian Lyne
"Lolita." It was posted on the web site of a Harvard student journal, _The
Advocate_. The specific URL is as follows:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~advocate/winter98/Lolita97.html
According to the author, Charles Savage, this piece represents a
condensation of a chapter of a senior thesis on "cinematizing _Lolita_."
It consists of a detailed examination of Lyne's film in comparison with
Nabokov's novel, the Kubrick film, and the Schiff screenplay. A sentence
in the middle of the article summarizes its findings: "Thus the
presentation of this most complex of Nabokov's characters is two-fold and
dialectical: a sympathetic portrayal of a kinder, gentler Humbert through
the film's denotative narrative structures, versus a merciless moral
condemnation of the pedophile through the connotative symbolism of its
formal expression...." I found the article thoughtful and interesting.
On a somewhat odder note, I came across a reference to _Lolita_ in a review
of Richard Kwietniowski's film "Love and Death on Long Island" that
appeared in the _Washington Post_ (Mar. 13, 1998), under the title "De'Ath
in the Suburbs." As the author of the review states, the film moves
Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" "into the endless banality of a New York
'burb.'" Those who are aware of Nabokov's oft-repeated antipathy for
Mann's work may find the following statement to be rather ironic: "Those
who love to fish for subtexts will have a fancy old time in this film. For
at around this point, "Love and Death on Long Island" becomes an odd,
mildly gay gloss on 'Lolita.' It's about a courtly, wordly European
intellectual seduced to the point of madness by a youthful sprite of
American popcult. And, like Humbert Humbert's ordeal by humiliation, so
does Giles suffers such a fate." I haven't seen the film, but to judge by
the rest of the review, the comparison seems suspect.
Julian
I recently came across a long critique of the Adrian Lyne
"Lolita." It was posted on the web site of a Harvard student journal, _The
Advocate_. The specific URL is as follows:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/~advocate/winter98/Lolita97.html
According to the author, Charles Savage, this piece represents a
condensation of a chapter of a senior thesis on "cinematizing _Lolita_."
It consists of a detailed examination of Lyne's film in comparison with
Nabokov's novel, the Kubrick film, and the Schiff screenplay. A sentence
in the middle of the article summarizes its findings: "Thus the
presentation of this most complex of Nabokov's characters is two-fold and
dialectical: a sympathetic portrayal of a kinder, gentler Humbert through
the film's denotative narrative structures, versus a merciless moral
condemnation of the pedophile through the connotative symbolism of its
formal expression...." I found the article thoughtful and interesting.
On a somewhat odder note, I came across a reference to _Lolita_ in a review
of Richard Kwietniowski's film "Love and Death on Long Island" that
appeared in the _Washington Post_ (Mar. 13, 1998), under the title "De'Ath
in the Suburbs." As the author of the review states, the film moves
Thomas Mann's "Death in Venice" "into the endless banality of a New York
'burb.'" Those who are aware of Nabokov's oft-repeated antipathy for
Mann's work may find the following statement to be rather ironic: "Those
who love to fish for subtexts will have a fancy old time in this film. For
at around this point, "Love and Death on Long Island" becomes an odd,
mildly gay gloss on 'Lolita.' It's about a courtly, wordly European
intellectual seduced to the point of madness by a youthful sprite of
American popcult. And, like Humbert Humbert's ordeal by humiliation, so
does Giles suffers such a fate." I haven't seen the film, but to judge by
the rest of the review, the comparison seems suspect.
Julian