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Nabokov at the Movies 
Film Perspectives in
Fiction
Barbara Wyllie
ISBN: 0-7864-1638-6
308pp. illustrations,
notes, filmography, bibliography, index $39.95 softcover 2003
Vladimir Nabokov claimed, speaking of Laughter in the
Dark: “I wanted to write the entire book as if it were a film.”
The relevance of film to the novelist’s art remains a preoccupying
question in recent American fiction: writers must decide whether to
acknowledge the medium that is a defining element of America’s
collective unconscious and, if so, how to deploy it successfully
toward a written work of fiction. In situating Nabokov within
America’s literary and cinematic traditions, this book throws new
light on Nabokov’s treatment of film in his work, focusing on major
texts set against key developments in American film and fiction from
the 1920s on.
Parallels are drawn with the cinematic fiction
of American writers such as John Dos Passos and F. Scott Fitzgerald,
whose treatment of film in literature can be compared to Nabokov’s
Russian works. Major influences on Nabokov’s early Russian fiction
include experimental German and Soviet film, while his later English
work demonstrates an affinity with contemporary American fiction and
film, from 1940s noir to the New Hollywood of the early ’70s.
In order to create Lolita’s heroine, Nabokov had to acquaint
himself with her world, a postwar America dominated by Hollywood;
she appears as a femme fatale, fugitive moll, and screwball
heroine. Van Veen, on the other hand, manipulates the cinematic mode
as a narrative and representational tool, which in turn becomes
integral to processes of memory and the imagination. A variety of
works by Nabokov and others are explored, with particular emphasis
on Laughter in the Dark, “The Assistant Producer,” Lolita,
Ada, Transparent Things, as well as The Great Gatsby, The Big
Sleep, The Moviegoer and American Psycho. Film stills, a
detailed filmography and bibliography complete the book.
Accomplished musician and researcher Barbara Wyllie is
assistant editor of the Slavonic and East European Review.
She lives in London, England.
Table of
Contents
Acknowledgments
vii
Preface
1
One — Nabokov and Film: Positive Versus
Negative 3
Two — The Impact
of German and Soviet Film on Nabokov’s Early Russian
Fiction 11
Three — A Medium
Invaded: Cinema and Cinematics in The Great Gatsby; King, Queen,
Knave; and Laughter in the
Dark 45
Four — A Common
Vision? Traces of Noir in Nabokov’s Russian Fiction and American
Writing of the 1930s 79
Five
— Images of Terror and Desire: Lolita and the American
Cinematic Experience, 1939–1952
123
Six — Dream Distortions: Film and Visual Deceit in
“The Assistant Producer,” Bend Sinister and
Ada 173
Seven —
Altered Perspectives and Visual Disruption in Transparent Things and
American Film of the Early 1970s
213
Eight — Shimmers on a Screen: Cinematic Hyper-reality
in Recent American Fiction and Film
250
Notes
261
Filmography
275
Bibliography
281
Index 295
$39.95
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