lolita, the movie

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• lolita, the movie

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• visual versus textual representation
• How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?

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the transition

• Screenplay by Nabokov, rewritten by Kubrick and
  co-producer James B. Harris.
  
• Nabokov
• A blurred, skimpy glimpse of the marvelous
  picture I imagined and set down scene by scene.
  
• I shall never understand why he did not follow
  my directions and dreams.

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transition

• Kubricks original Humberts Noel Coward, Cary
  Grant, Laurence Olivier, Rex Harrison, David
  Niven (all British).
  
• Sue Lyon 14 when selected, 16 when film opens.
  Lolita 12 when selected, at 14 Humberts
  ageing mistress.
  

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Lolita 1962

• Kubricks exile to England after The Killing,
  his previous film was Spartacus
  
• cf Humberts various exiles and incarcerations
• what does it mean to translate a novel to
  screen?
  

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the novel dismantled

• fragments of Humberts first person narration a
  residue of the novel
  
• Humberts narration not from prison at the end
  of the movie Humbert is in gaol.
  
• The conceit of the novel as posthumous narrative
  transformed into a story leading to judgement
  (but of Quiltys murder, not of Humberts
  actions)

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the novel dismantled

• John Ray Jnrs psychotherapeutic frame is
  redacted (and school therapist invented)
  
• his care of the text removed, removes also an
  institutional/disciplinary frame for the story
  
• Story no longer pedagogical, no longer
  pathological?
  

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Quilty to Humbert, in the opening scene

• Quilty Wha? Wha? What's that?Humbert Are you
  Quilty?Quilty (spoken with a lisp) No, I'm
  Spartacus. Have you come to free the slaves or
  somethin'?
• Humbert Are you Quilty?Quilty Yeah, I am
  Quilty. Yes, sure.

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meta-fictional frame

• After the seduction at The Enchanted Hunter,
  Humbert says we got off to a rather slow start.
  Lolita requests and Humbert agrees to a movie.
  
• (and cf how differently the seduction is
  framed to the novel, where Humbert threatens Lo
  with the police, not vice versa)
  

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humberts tenancy

• What changes Humberts mind? The garden
  Lolita
  
• My flowers win prizes round here! Your
  cherry pie.
  

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domestic incarceration

• Humberts domestic incarceration rooms, beds,
  drawers, small spaces
  
• Humberts scanty dressing gowns (his body also on
  display)
  
• Humberts retreat to the bathroom, urinary
  segregation.

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the drive-in

• The drive-in, ambiguously inside-outside
• Film The Curse of Frankenstein (1957)
• Introduces the car as another interior space
• Movies incite sensation (debased, kitsch or
  naïve, infantile)
  
• a prolepsis for the road trip.

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Kubricks palette

• Black and white compare to the drenched colour
  of All That Heaven Allows.
  
• An umber and grey humberland.
• The film locations purposfully generic the
  generic landscape featureless, making the action
  and interiors more spectacular
  
• Cf Nabokov I am as American as April in
  Arizona. (Paris Review Interview)
  
• Cf Dairy Queen ? Frigid Queen

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style the sweeping eye meets elevator music

• Long takes, static in the frame, supplemented by
  sweeping shots which match the musics two modes
  sweeping chromatics or muzak for instance at
  The Enchanted Hunter.
• The musical repetition numbing (contrast with the
  stimulating effects of melodramatic music)

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style bricobracomania

• Cameras sweeping eye captures surfaces shiny
  surfaces (dressing gowns, cocktail shaker)
  hectic patterns, partiularly Charlottes
  leopard-skin prints
• Charlottes collection of classics in her
  bedroom, compare the Haze household to Quiltys
  deranged yet also shiny antiques and
  bricobracomania (Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
  coined this term in C19)
• tragic treasures

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poshlust kitsch

• Poshlust, or in a better transliteration
  poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have
  not described them clearly enough in my little
  book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody
  if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar
  clichés, Philistinism in all its phases,
  imitations of imitations, bogus profundities,
  crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudoliteraturethe
  se are obvious examples.
• The Art of Fiction, Nabokov Interview in
  The Paris Review No. 40 (Interview by Herbert
  Gold)

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poshlust kitsch

• Now, if we want to pin down poshlost in
  contemporary writing, we must look for it in
  Freudian symbolism, moth-eaten mythologies,
  social comment, humanistic messages, political
  allegories, over concern with class or race, and
  the journalistic generalities we all know.
  Poshlost speaks in such concepts as America is
  no better than Russia or We all share in
  Germanys guilt.
• The Art of Fiction, Nabokov Interview in
  The Paris Review No. 40 (Interview by Herbert
  Gold)
  

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• lolita, the movie (part ii)

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Humbert and the bathroom

• a series of shots facing into the bathroom

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Lolitas Circle of Influence migratory
femininity?
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domestic incarceration

• Humberts domestic incarceration rooms, beds,
  drawers, small spaces
  
• Humberts scanty dressing gowns (his body also on
  display)
  
• Humberts retreat to the bathroom, urinary
  segregation.

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Incarcerated masculinity
versus the playwright the enchanted (duped, be
guiled, seduced, irrepressible, shape-shifting
, quilty) hunter

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Humbert and the bathroom

• a series of shots facing into the bathroom

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Art Objects, cf Far From Heavens Raymond and
Kathy
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feminine style bricobracomania

• Cameras sweeping eye captures surfaces shiny
  surfaces (dressing gowns, cocktail shaker)
  hectic patterns, partiularly Charlottes
  leopard-skin prints
• Charlottes collection of classics in her
  bedroom, compare the Haze household to Quiltys
  deranged yet also shiny antiques and
  bricobracomania (Edmond and Jules De Goncourt
  coined this term in C19)

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Feminine style the sweeping eye meets elevator
music

• Long takes, static in the frame, supplemented by
  sweeping shots which match the musics two modes
  sweeping chromatics or muzak for instance at
  The Enchanted Hunter.
• The musical repetition numbing (contrast with the
  stimulating effects of melodramatic music)
  
• Melodrama becomes farce adulteration of pure
  genre

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poshlust kitsch

• Poshlust, or in a better transliteration
  poshlost, has many nuances, and evidently I have
  not described them clearly enough in my little
  book on Gogol, if you think one can ask anybody
  if he is tempted by poshlost. Corny trash, vulgar
  clichés, Philistinism in all its phases,
  imitations of imitations, bogus profundities,
  crude, moronic, and dishonest pseudoliteraturethe
  se are obvious examples.
• The Art of Fiction, Nabokov Interview in
  The Paris Review No. 40 (Interview by Herbert
  Gold)

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poshlust kitsch

• masculine subordination
• interior life
• the cha cha (dancing with the stars!)
• tragic treasure
• feminine sexuality

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SHELLEY WINTERS

• Winters was a supremely physical actress.
  Maybe these were the lessons she learnt from the
  much-abused Method training how to find a
  gesture that summed up a character, and how to
  listen, really listen, to whomever she was acting
  alongside.
• (Her and James Mason are a study of contrasts
  in Lolita, and their starkly different acting
  styles are cleverly exploited by Kubrick

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WINTERS ON TOP

• Mason is always narcissistically self-absorbed,
  as if acting in a mirror, while Winters fixes on
  him totally.) And those directors who were attune
  to the cinematic possibilities of such physical
  acting knew exactly what do with her put her in
  a scene, situation or frame where the shifting
  power dynamic is played out in terms of
  positioning, who is at the top and who is on the
  bottom.
• Georgia Lea, Shelley Winters Top and Bottom
• http//www.rouge.com.au/8/winters.html

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