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A review by kimbobo
Lolita: A Screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov
3.0
As it's Nabokov and it's his Lolita, there are inevitably a lot of great things about this screenplay, especially compared to Kubrick's Lolita, which is enjoyable but a different creature altogether. Nabokov is himself throughout the entire screenplay and is often quite witty in the stage directions -- for instance, a narrator for a commercial about peaches is "A FRUITY VOICE". Or Nabokov takes the time to be humorous: the collie that was supposed to be hit by the van, the van that instead struck Charlotte, is happily going from group to group of the people gathered around her dead body. etc.
Furthermore, here Charlotte was allotted her due grace; instead of being the petty, shrewish mother of the movie, here she actually seems to like her daughter quite a lot, something that's a lot more tenable for me.
On its own, it's orders of magnitude less impressive than the novel. It's best as a supplement, so it can gain from the novel's brilliance without suffering by a comparison with the novel: it clarifies quite a few things that I somehow managed to miss in the novel, like the fact that Mona is Vivian Darkbloom's niece, and thus her friendship with Dolly is also Dolly's link to Quilty.
Probably its greatest virtue is the insight it gives to the relationship between Humbert and Dolly; it's more removed from Humbert, which means that you can actually see how he is externally. And it was astonishing, to read Humbert declaring to her things like, "I love you, I adore you," or, "You know I'll die if you leave me." That removal from Humbert meant not only that the screenplay revealed a bit of the more veiled hijinks of the novel (Quilty pursuing Humbert, for example; I'd been under the impression that the shifting cars tailing Humbert were actually a figment of his paranoia, something the screenplay disabused me of) and, also, there was a greater dollop of Dolly than in the novel.
(One quibble: on the announcement of her death, Dolly is called by her maiden name and not Mrs. Richard F. Schiller. That was a detail that I would have preferred preserved.)
Furthermore, here Charlotte was allotted her due grace; instead of being the petty, shrewish mother of the movie, here she actually seems to like her daughter quite a lot, something that's a lot more tenable for me.
On its own, it's orders of magnitude less impressive than the novel. It's best as a supplement, so it can gain from the novel's brilliance without suffering by a comparison with the novel: it clarifies quite a few things that I somehow managed to miss in the novel, like the fact that Mona is Vivian Darkbloom's niece, and thus her friendship with Dolly is also Dolly's link to Quilty.
Probably its greatest virtue is the insight it gives to the relationship between Humbert and Dolly; it's more removed from Humbert, which means that you can actually see how he is externally. And it was astonishing, to read Humbert declaring to her things like, "I love you, I adore you," or, "You know I'll die if you leave me." That removal from Humbert meant not only that the screenplay revealed a bit of the more veiled hijinks of the novel (Quilty pursuing Humbert, for example; I'd been under the impression that the shifting cars tailing Humbert were actually a figment of his paranoia, something the screenplay disabused me of) and, also, there was a greater dollop of Dolly than in the novel.
(One quibble: on the announcement of her death, Dolly is called by her maiden name and not Mrs. Richard F. Schiller. That was a detail that I would have preferred preserved.)