Lolita (BFI Film Classics) (Paperback)

by Richard Corliss (Author) "I was the shadow of the monarch seen..." (more)
Key Phrases: Paths of Glory, Sue Lyon, Enchanted Hunters (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review
There are probably a dozen film critics as good as Richard Corliss (of Time and Film Comment fame), but none can match his verbal inventiveness--he's clever to the point of the preternatural. Others might have ably summed up Stanley Kubrick's film of Vladimir Nabokov's "nymphette" novel Lolita in under 100 pages, as Corliss briskly does in this British Film Institute book. (In fact, a true film buff really should consider buying the entire BFI Film Classics series--they're great little picture-filled books about amazing movies, for about the cost of a movie ticket.) No one but Corliss, however, would have dared to write his essay on 1962's Lolita in the form of a pastiche of Nabokov's 1962 novel Pale Fire, which consists of a poem followed by a mad scholar's commentary on it.

Corliss gives us a lively, learned, but quite sane gloss on his own poem "Pale Film," a funny but serious mediation about Lolita's perilous leap from literature to Hollywood, "a pasture full / Of pretty creatures, barnyard words, and bull." Corliss's style seems influenced by Nabokov's poem that begins, "What is translation? On a plate / The poet's pale and glaring head." Here is Corliss on the novelist's translation to screen: "Here lies Nabokov: teacher, critics' pet, / Daft lepidopterist (nut with a net).... And here flies V.N.'s work through movieland: / A butterfly in the projector beam. / It floats, then flits away, as in a dream / Of monarchs who find freedom in a cage / With horizontal bars--lines on a page."

It's remarkable how much gets packed into this tight package: a quick sketch of 1962 society and the state of the film biz; micro-bios of writer and director (both Nabokov and Kubrick started out playing chess for money); notions on Nabokov's own unfilmed Lolita: A Screenplay; spotlit insights into specific scenes (including the film's eight kisses and Peter Sellers's four big improvisation skits); sharp insiders' quotes; and dazzling critiques of acting craft. Shelley Winters (whom Kubrick almost fired mid-picture) "dances around ... like an elephant cow in heat.... [she] virtually cha-chas as she sits.... [S]he uses the cigarette holder as a Balinese dancer would her cymbals." Imagine how good Corliss is on the still greater work of James Mason. Corliss even has thoughts about Adrian Lyne's 1996 remake (silkily, slyly read by its star Jeremy Irons on the audiocassette Lolita). Though it was not yet made when Corliss wrote in 1994, he did write, "[Lyne] and Lolita seemed a match made in New Hollywood heaven." --Tim Appelo

Product Description
frontis., 25 b&w photos Corliss explores every facet of this complex and disturbing film. He deals in detail with casting, which included Sue Lyon as the nymphet Lolita, James Mason as her lover Humbert Humbert and Peter Sellers as the sinister Quilty.

Product Details

• Paperback: 96 pages
• Publisher: British Film Institute (January 22, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0851703682
• ISBN-13: 978-0851703688
• Product Dimensions: 7.4 x 5.3 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #988,579 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More on Nab than on Ku, May 19, 1998

By	[e-mail] (USA, CT) - See all my reviews

An easy read, especially if you are familiar with Nabokov. However, this is less for the film student than for the literature man. Corliss' copy-cat prose matches Nabokov to even the use of the same words. It is obvious that Corliss knows his Nabokov history and literature, and surely has seen the film Lolita more than once. But the discussion overall of the film will leave the film student not knowing anymore than he already did. He just may be inspired to read Nabokov instead.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Corliss tackles the big boys, Nabokov + Kubrick. The winner?, July 11, 2001

By	darragh o'donoghue (dublin, ireland) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

Stanley Kubrick's 1962 'Lolita' is unusual among the 360 films chosen by the British Film Institute as Classics in that it is not really a 'classic' at all, if we mean by that term a flawless work of art that transcends its time and culture, and is open to new readings from succeeding generations. 'Lolita' is considered an entertaining compromise, a film that cannot be called a true interpretation of Nabokov's notorious novel about a middle-aged Professor's rapturous lust for a prepubescent girl, because of censorship restrictions and the impossibility of capturing the book's essence on screen, it's narrative voice.

Richard Corliss doesn't try to counter critical consensus, concluding, after listing all the ways it fudges Nabokov, that 'Lolita' is 'a very good film', damning faint praise for a director usually spoken of in reverent superlatives. Corliss argues that 'Lolita' came too early for a still-young Kubrick who, a couple of years later in an increasingly liberal decade, might have made a freer, truer adaptation. Nevertheless, he sees Lolita as crucial in Kubrick's development, a signpost towards an aesthetic integrity away from the compromises of his last film, 'Spartacus'.

Corliss' monograph is a highly enjoyable study that gives equal prominece to Nabokov as Kubrick. Indeed, it is structured in imitation of Nabokov's other famous masterpiece, 'Pale Fire', with a poem 'Pale Film' and commentary. there's no overall thesis beyond the one outlined above, just a fascinating patchwork of insights concerning Nabokov (his life; 'Lolita' and his other work; his ambiguous, often contradictory response to cinema in general and Kubrick's film in particular; his unfilmable screenplay); Kubrick (his biography, poised before becoming the 'Stanley Kubrick' of legend; his themes; 'Lolita''s position in his oeuvre); the close connections between two seemingly disparate artists - their megalomaniacal conception of their art; their fondness for hermetic works about mad criminals.

Corliss' insights in detail are more persuasive than his general interpretations. Part of the problem is his critical conservatism - despite his protestations to the contrary, he reads Nabokov's book like a 19th century, character-driven, thematically coherent, realistic novel (when, on a textual level, it is the uncorroborated confession of a sick paedophile and murderer, and, on an ontological level, the masterpiece of a notoriously leg-pulling formalist); he reads Kubrick with little reference to cinematic form. This is fatal in the cases of two artists famous for retaining the pleasures of narrative while ludically (sic?) upending them.

This failure results in an undervaluing of Kubrick's film, which may be Nabokov-lite, but is full of its own tricks. Corliss, unlike most critics, notices the disparity between the two framing Castle Quilty scenes (where Humbert comes to kill his nemesis), but doesn't seem to think this radically altars our appreciation of the film (I think it does, and is an exciting pointer to Kubrick's masterpiece, 'The Shining').

In any case, Corliss' study is one of the better BFI Classics' books, written in the style of diluted David Thomson (whom he thanks in the Acknowledgements), with some neat character sketches of the cast, and a gallant, long overdue defence of Sue Lyon. And, mercifully, NO tedious personal reminiscenes about the author's first visit to the local fleapit where nice Mr. Winthorpe bought him an ice cream.