Lolita (1997 film)
Lolita is a
1997 film directed by
Adrian Lyne and was the second screen adaptation of the
novel by
Vladimir Nabokov. The film stars
Jeremy Irons as Humbert and
Dominique Swain (then fifteen) as Dolores "Lolita" Haze. Supporting roles are
Melanie Griffith, playing Charlotte Haze, and
Frank Langella as Clare Quilty.
The screenplay was written by
Stephen Schiff, and the film has a score by
Ennio Morricone. Schiff was commissioned to write the screenplay after scripts by
James Dearden,
David Mamet and
Harold Pinter had been rejected by the producers.
The first adaptation of
Lolita was the
1962 version directed by
Stanley Kubrick. Stephen Schiff, screenwriter of the 1997 version, has commented that, "Right from the beginning, it was clear to all of us that this movie was not a 'remake' of Kubrick's film. Rather, we were out to make a new adaptation of a very great novel". He added that, "Some of the filmmakers involved actually looked upon the Kubrick version as a kind of 'what not to do'", and quipped that Kubrick's film should have been called "Quilty" due to the prominent role of that character. Despite Schiff's confidence, the 1997 film was not well received and became a major
box office bomb.
The $62 million film had a great deal of trouble finding a distributor in the US, reportedly due to the widespread disapproval of
pedophilia at the time, though this has been disputed. It eventually premiered on the
Showtime television network, where it drew an unusually wide audience — a near-record for
Showtime — and then had a subsequent limited theatrical release, where it took in approximately $1 million.
Reviews were mixed, with some critics considering the film more faithful to the letter of the novel than the spirit. Critics such as
James Berardinelli, however, praised the film, particularly for the performances of the two leads [
1], and
New York Times critic
Caryn James championed the film, though noted that it was "dully repetitious in the last 40 minutes" [
2]. Writer and director
James Toback has listed it in his picks for the ten finest films ever made [
3].
The film was publicized as an attempt to be faithful to the original novel, and the events of the film do match the events of the novel quite closely. Some critics and readers of the novel complained, however, that in taking such a reverent approach, many of the more subtle aspects of the novel, such as the
unreliability of Humbert's narration, were lost. Many also thought that much of the humorous and tragic irony of the novel — which comes largely from the differences between Humbert's self-image and his action — was lost, since the movie essentially offers up Humbert's narration as fact. The critic Charles Taylor, for example, said of the film, "For all of their vaunted (and, it turns out, false) fidelity to Nabokov, Lyne and Schiff have made a pretty, gauzy
Lolita that replaces the book's cruelty and comedy with manufactured lyricism and mopey romanticism." [
4], and Keith Phipps wrote that "Lyne doesn't seem to get the novel, failing to incorporate any of Nabokov's black comedy â€" which is to say,
Lolita's heart and soul" [
5].
Another major deviation is the depiction of Lolita as
highly attractive. Several characters in the novel, including her own mother and Humbert himself, comment on Lolita's lack of conventional attractiveness, and it is hinted that this is why greater suspicion does not fall on Humbert.
The look of Lolita in the film was not in any way faithful to how she is described in the book. In the book, she is described by Humbert as having dark chesnut brown hair in a bob style, and that she had honey-tanned skin. In the film, Lolita/Dominique Swain is much more the "sexy schoolgirl" stereotype, with reddish blond hair in braids and pigtails, and the film puts a visual emphasis on the braces she wears for her teeth, while Lolita doesn't wear braces in the book.
Lolita's age when Humbert meets her is 14 in the movie, rather than 12, as in the novel, and her over-all behaviour is significantly more mature through the movie.
*
Interview with Stephen Schiff by Suellen Stringer-Hye.
Zembla Magazine. 1996.
*
A Paradise with Skies the Color of Hell Flames: Adrian Lyne's (Unseen) Adaptation of Lolita (The first academic study of the film.) By
Charles Savage.
The Harvard Advocate. Winter 1997-98.
*
Interview: Stephen Schiff on his Lolita By Charles Savage. The Harvard Advocate. Spring 1998.
