The 50th Year of Lolita: A Discussion of the Two Films and the Book
The emotional intensity we can display in the first post-pubescent relationship we experience will scar our emotional skin. Because we have no wear or age to this skin, any new mark, especially the first will be etched into memory. Whether good or bad. “It is not, Celia(Lolita), in our powerâÂ?¦To say how long our love will last; It may be we within the hourâÂ?¦ May lose those joys we do now tasteâÂ?¦”(1) Sir George Etherege understands the intensity that a new first love can invoke. He also comments on the extreme anxiety one can face in light of the glorious first union coming to an end. The failure to find these feelings in subsequent relations would have the parties involved feeling that they have failed at love completely. Countless writings over centuries contest loves’ power. After understanding that, one should sympathize with Humbert Humbert’s layered love of a young girl in Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita.
Two screen versions of the classic novel, Lolita, have been produced. Stanley Kubrick directed the actors under an original Nabokov screen play in 1962 and Adrienne Lyne directed the 1998 release because he was, “Marked by my love for the book and for the America it depicts and for the doomed, twisted romance at it’s (the novels) heart” (2). The two films are quite different in both overall tone and respect for the original text. Yet these three sources provide rich evidence to the human drive to find the one true love that makes life worth living. If you had a person who had no knowledge of this story and sat them down to read the book then viewed the films you would witness one of two general responses: Empathy for Humbert’s story or repulsion for his seduction of women-child.
Lolita is a story about a middle aged man, Humbert, who becomes a twelve year old girl’s stepfather. He then falls passionately in love with her. The couple embark on a cross country road trip only to end with Lolita disappearing with the pedophile and writer, Clare Quilty (Humbert was a self confessed lover of nymphets and writer himself, ironically enough). Humbert kills Quilty only after he discovers Lolita only really ever loved Quilty. Reading the inside jacket of the novel or the treatment on the cover of a DVD case cannot explain the love contained with in this story. Multiple layers of love are expressed through obsession, freedom and remorse of Humbert’s life. Humbert’s ramblings both in the book and the film are a defense of his actions. He begins many passages with, “Ladies and gentlemen of the juryâÂ?¦”(3) before he explains the actions he chose. Humbert knew that what he was doing was immoral and despised, especially in the 1940’s. Nabokov uses his love of the English language to explore Humbert’s inner visions and psychosis, “You can always count on a murderer for a fancy prose styleâÂ?¦Lolita, light of my life, fire of my lions. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-taâÂ?¦” Literary nuances of romantic love and hopelessness are riddled throughout the text, all attempting to defend how a properly cultured man would act so emotional perverse. Critic Sarah Miles Watts agrees with the following passage from her critique of the novel to film translations, “Pervert yet poet, Humbert describes not the ‘elements of animality’ in his relationship with Lolita but ‘the perilous magic of nymphets'”(2). Humbert’s story is a desire to describe the emotions behind his actions, not provide vulgar images of the couple’s physical attraction. Lost in the translation to film is Nabokov’s romance of the English language.
Stanley Kubrick directed the 1962 version of Lolita. He worked from Nabokov’s originally screenplay (Nabokov was contracted by the studio to do so), well somewhat. The script was over 400 pages long and passing certain scenes by the censorship board seemed impossible. Kubrick cut down the script to 20% of what is was before and applied a satirically tone to the direction. He wanted to underscore the repulsiveness of Lolita with comedy. Humbert’s story of his lost first love is a tale of his teenage sweetheart. They loved each other in the country of France, on the beaches and in the streets they were meant for each other. Shortly after losing their virginity she falls ill with typhoid fever and dies. Humbert is crushed and no longer loves passionately until he meets Dolores Haze, Lolita, decades later. Humbert’s emotional development stops here and he is scarred for life. Humbert would appreciate William Blake’s words on the loss of love with the following from Love’s Secret, “âÂ?¦I told my love, I told my love, I told her all my heart, trembling cold, in ghastly fears. Ah! She did depart!…”(4). The images invoked by Blake produce feelings of profound remorse and that is precisely what Humbert is dealing with his entire life. This is why Lyne and Nabokov point the audience to Humbert’s early love life to help them understand how a cultured man would throw morality out of the window. His infatuation with young Lolita is rooted in his teenage occurrence with tragedy. This entire scene, however, is absent from the Kubrick version! Without this, the audience cannot understand Humbert’s internal desire to find his lost love in Lolita and reads into his character feelings of humility and disdain. Kubrick’s film jokingly explores the doomed couples romance and prefers a dark, comedic approach to their exploits rather than the romantic introspection that occurs in Adrienne Lyne’s Lolita.
Lyne’s use of soft focus and pastel colors do justice to the overall tone of the story. He uses the lost love story help the audience comprehends Humbert’s seduction of Lolita. This film also elaborates on Humbert’s attitudes toward the object of his lust, he begins pleading with her for psychical love, later in the film he strikes her when she does not give in to is sexual advances. A shocking scene shot in the light of moonlight reveals the lovers shadowy naked bodies fighting over money that explodes over a bed after Lolita demands payment for her sexual services. That scene is the climax of Humbert’s and Lolita’s love life, she has then been reduced to a common whore. Their relationship unravels after this point. Foreshadowing this scene is a dream sequence that Humbert experiences when the two are traveling across the country. Humbert finds Dick Tracy masked “johns” knocking on their hotel room door, looking for Lolita. They mindlessly laugh at Humbert’s conditions and question how can this man love a whore? Within their identity less numbers, Humbert is forced to reevaluate his love for the nymphet. During the dream, the cinematographer, Howard Atherton, utilizes distorting camera angles and blurred focus points to remind the audience that Humbert is internally distorted and his viewed of reality has been damaged by the love he harbors. These events only cause Humbert’s obsession to grow even after she left him or Clare Quilty abducted her. Lyne is very sly in these aspect of his auteur style of direction, he leaves a simple question up to the audience to decide: Did Lolita leave with Quilty under her on power? Or was she forcefully taken from her hospital bed? Depending on how voyeuristic the audience feels at this point, the answer could go either way. Did one feel empathy for Humbert’s loss? Or was one cheering for the end of his despicable relation with a twelve year old? This conundrum can be expressed easier on film, then in text. Lyne is conscious of the question he poses at this point in the film and that is characteristic of his style. The overall message of his style is that this story should be viewed as romantic defense of Humbert’s non-traditional love.
How can a classic in modern literature have a pedophile has the hero? One has to remove that label from the character and realize what Nabokov, Kubrick and Lyne are attempting to accomplish. That is, a case study of the how human experience is changed after one falls in love for the first time. The love Humbert practiced was so true for him that the world’s view did not factor into his judgment. He was truly in love with the idea of preserving his first love. Why? Because it struck him soâÂ?¦
