'Lolita': Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession

July 31, 1998

TELEVISION REVIEW

Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession

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By CARYN JAMES

s a screenwriter, Vladimir Nabokov was a great novelist. Mere traces of his awkward, overlong screenplay for "Lolita" are evident in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film (bizarre and dated in its own right), but the script survives in published form. In one of his least cinematic touches, Nabokov envisioned an on-camera prologue featuring Dr. John Ray Jr., the tongue-in-cheek character who framed the novel, a psychiatrist purporting to have edited Humbert Humbert's memoir about his affair with a 12-year-old nymphet.
"I have no intention to glorify Humbert," Ray explained. "He is horrible, he is abject. He is a shining example of moral leprosy." True, but on screen the speech would have seemed a clumsy attempt to disarm the anti-"Lolita" camp, then as now a small, literal-minded but vocal group.
Yet Ray's monologue soon becomes telling. While no version of "Lolita" has ever justified Humbert's actions, in his screenplay Nabokov eloquently justifies our interest in this pedophile: "There are in his story depths of passion and suffering, patterns of tenderness and distress, that cannot be dismissed by his judges."
That line expresses the soul of "Lolita," both the novel and Adrian Lyne's entrancing, heartbreaking film. This embattled movie is no longer quite new, of course, having been rejected by nearly every American distributor over the last year for several reasons: because the film was too expensive; for fear of a backlash because of the subject of pedophilia; for a combination of both. It will finally have its national premiere, uncut, on Sunday on Showtime (after a recent weeklong run in one Los Angeles theater to qualify for Academy Award nominations).
Visually and emotionally, "Lolita" survives its journey to the small screen with its power surprisingly intact. The film's master stroke is its understanding that this is Humbert's story, told in his own lyrical voice, from his own passionate, sad, tortured perspective.
As Humbert, Jeremy Irons creates one of the great, fearless screen performances. His face registers the astonishing complexity of Humbert's inner life. He is calculating, romantic, eventually soul-sick with his own love. His voice-overs, taken from the novel, resonate with Nabokov's poetry and with the conscience-stricken tone of Humbert's backward look.
Most important, Irons never metaphorically winks at the audience to hint that he knows better than Humbert. He seems to know exactly what Humbert knows, with all the discomforting truths that involves. It is an immensely seductive performance, but one whose seductions are never on the surface.
Lyne (whose commercial hits include "Fatal Attraction" and "Indecent Proposal") was expected to have made a titillating "Lolita." Instead, he has risen to the level of his material. His direction, and Stephen Schiff's discerning, faithful screenplay, are sensitive to Nabokov's wit as well as his lyricism.

All of "Lolita" is Humbert's long flashback, and he quickly reveals the source of his obsession with pubescent girls. In an appropriately gauzy-looking episode, he recalls Cannes in 1921. The 14-year-old Humbert (Ben Silverstone) loves a girl named Annabel Leigh (Emma Griffiths-Malin), who dies and stands forever frozen as the embodiment of his ideal woman.
He does not find her equal until he arrives in the New England town of Ramsdale in 1947 and meets Lolita when he rents a room from her mother, Charlotte. Melanie Griffith is ideally cast as the annoying, widowed Charlotte. With her garish red nails, her screeching voice, her affected diction, Charlotte seems unbearable to the professorial Humbert. He will eventually marry her to be near her daughter.
Dominique Swain is extraordinary as Lolita. She is within sight of womanhood yet remains, definitely, a schoolgirl. With braids and saddle shoes, she is long-limbed, petulant and wisecracking, always chewing gum, tossing jawbreakers around in her mouth, teasing Humbert.
There are flashes of seduction from Lolita that are, intentionally, hard to distinguish from a schoolgirl crush (the better for Humbert to misinterpret). Ms. Swain walks this incredibly narrow line between innocent playfulness and adult knowledge without a misstep.
Despite the overall sadness of the tale, moments of mordant humor undercut Humbert's romantic excess. When he first sets eyes on Lolita, sunbathing on the lawn, her sheer dress soaked through by the sprinkler, his heart stops. She smiles and reveals her retainer.
She wanders into his study one day and sits on his lap. She looks into his eyes and after an uneasy pause asks, "Am I getting a zit?"
After Charlotte's accidental death, Humbert and Lolita take off on a long road trip and begin their sexual affair. On their first night, at the Enchanted Hunters Hotel, Lolita suggests a game she played with a boy at summer camp. She whispers in Humbert's ear. She says out loud, "I guess I'm going to have to show you everything," as she unties his pajama bottoms. The screen fades to black, and we hear Humbert's retrospective voice saying, "Gentlewomen of the jury, I was not even her first lover."
Whether this is true or not, he takes vile advantage of a child. And though it will be a long while before he admits this, the film does so at once. Throughout, the erotic scenes are more suggestive than explicit, but are always fraught with this sense of Lolita's corrupted innocence.
As she gains experience, there are many chilling set pieces. Lolita puts her hand on Humbert's thigh. "You know how my allowance is a dollar a week?" she asks. "Well, I think it should be two."
There are scenes in which she howls with misery. Eventually, she shrieks, "Murder me, like you murdered my mother." Humbert remains besotted, desperate not to lose her.
The film is so faithful to the novel that it shares similar flaws. After a stay at Beardsley College, Humbert and Lolita go back on the road and the story flags. And though Frank Langella is effectively sinister as Clare Quilty, who lures Lolita from Humbert, the Grand Guignol scene of his murder belongs in another film (and another novel).
The stunning opening scene, with a bloodied Humbert driving on a desolate country road, seems diminished on a small screen. Otherwise, Howard Atherton's exquisite photography shines through: the faded beauty of Cannes, the piercing clarity of the small towns, the midnight-blue shadows of a rainy night. Ennio Morricone's haunting music reinforces Humbert's lyrical perspective.
Rich beyond what anyone could have expected, the film repays repeated viewings. (Soon it will appear on theater screens as well. Samuel Goldwyn Co. will release the movie in New York and Los Angeles on Sept. 25 and in other cities through October.)
In the end, "Lolita" is a tragic morality tale and a poignant character study. Humbert calls himself "an artist, a madman." Lyne's film echoes Nabokov's transforming vision: it turns Humbert's madness into art.

BROADCAST NOTES:
'LOLITA'
9 p.m. ET Sunday on Showtime

Directed by Adrian Lyne; screenplay by Stephen Schiff, based on the novel by Vladimir Nabokov; Mario Kassar and Joel B. Michaels, producers; Howard Atherton, director of photography; Jon Hutman, production designer; Julie Monroe and David Brenner, editors; Judianna Makovsky, costume designer; music by Ennio Morricone; Stephan R. Goldman, music supervisor; Ellen Chenoweth, casting. With: Jeremy Irons (Humbert Humbert), Melanie Griffith (Charlotte Haze), Frank Langella (Clare Quilty), Dominique Swain (Lolita), Ben Silverstone (Young Humbert), Emma Griffiths-Malin (Annabel Leigh) and Suzanne Shepherd (Miss Pratt).

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