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Lolita (1997 film)

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Lolita
Theatrical release poster
Directed byAdrian Lyne
Screenplay byStephen Schiff
Produced byMario Kassar
Joel B. Michaels
StarringJeremy Irons
Melanie Griffith
Dominique Swain
Frank Langella
CinematographyHoward Atherton
Edited byDavid Brenner
Julie Monroe
Music byEnnio Morricone
Production
company
Distributed byPathé (France)
The Samuel Goldwyn Company
Release date
September 25, 1997 (1997-09-25)
Running time
137 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$62 million[1]
Box office$1,147,784 (US)[2]

Lolita is a 1997 French-American drama film directed by Adrian Lyne. It is the second screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name and stars Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert and Dominique Swain as Dolores "Lolita" Haze, with supporting roles by Melanie Griffith as Charlotte Haze, and Frank Langella as Clare Quilty.

With the central theme of Humbert's hebephilia, the film had considerable difficulty finding an American distributor[3] and premiered in Europe before being released in America, where it was met with much controversy. The film was picked up in the United States by Showtime, a cable network, before finally being released theatrically by The Samuel Goldwyn Company.[4] The performances by Irons and Swain impressed audiences, but, although praised by some critics for its faithfulness to Nabokov's narrative, the film received a mixed critical reception in the United States. Following its theatrical release, the film was distributed on VHS and DVD, both now out of print, by Pathé.

Plot

In 1947, Humbert Humbert (Jeremy Irons), a European professor of French literature, travels to the United States to take a teaching position in New Hampshire. He rents a room in the home of widow Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith), largely because he sees her adolescent daughter Dolores (Dominique Swain), also called "Lo", while touring the house. Obsessed from boyhood with girls of this age (whom he calls "nymphets"), partly because of a boyhood sexual experience and subsequent tragic loss, Humbert marries Charlotte for the sake of access to her daughter.

Later in their marriage, Charlotte becomes furious after she, by way of reading Humbert's secret diary, discovers Humbert's preference for her daughter. Moments after, Charlotte goes to the mailbox to mail some letters when she is struck by a car and killed. Her death frees Humbert to pursue a sexual and emotional relationship with Lo, whom he nicknames "Lolita". Humbert and Lo then travel the country, staying in various motels before eventually settling in the college town of Beardsley, where Humbert takes a teaching job. However, Lo's increasing boredom with Humbert, as well as her growing desire for independence, fuels a constant tension between them. Humbert's desperate affections for Lo are also rivaled by another man, playwright Clare Quilty (Frank Langella), who has been pursuing Lo since the beginning of their travels. Quilty's name and identity are at first unknown to Humbert, and when Lo runs away to him, Humbert's search for her is unsuccessful.

Three years later, Humbert receives a letter from Lo asking for financial help. Humbert visits Lo, who is now married to another man and pregnant. Humbert, who still loves Lo, asks her to run away with him, but she refuses. He relents and gives her a substantial amount of money and information about her inheritance from her mother. Lo also reveals to Humbert how Quilty actually tracked young girls her age and took them to Pavor Manor, his home in Parkington, to film the girls performing various sexual acts with the help of his assistant Vivian.

She also tells him about how after being taken from Humbert, Quilty tried to film Lo performing sex acts in a group setting. When Lo refuses and prefers Quilty to be like a father to her, Quilty leaves Lo on her own. After his visit with Lo, Humbert tracks down Quilty and kills him. After being chased by the police, Humbert is arrested and sent to prison. He dies in November 1950, and Lo dies on Christmas Day in childbirth.

Cast

Production

History of the screenplay

The first screen adaptation of Lolita (1962) was written by Nabokov and directed by Stanley Kubrick.

The screenplay for the 1997 version, more faithful to the text of the novel than the author's adaptation, is credited to Stephen Schiff, a writer for the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and other magazines. He was hired to write it as his first movie script, after the film's producers had rejected screenplays commissioned from more experienced screenwriters and directors James Dearden (Fatal Attraction), Harold Pinter, and David Mamet.[5][6][7]

According to Schiff, "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." Schiff stated 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.[8][citation needed]

Release

Critical reception

The film received mixed reviews, with an approval rating of 67% at Rotten Tomatoes and an average score of 46/100 at Metacritic.[9][10] Many critics evaluated the film highly and appreciated aspects of it, though some tended to qualify their positive comments. For example, James Berardinelli praised the performances of the two leads, Jeremy Irons and Dominique Swain, but he considered Melanie Griffith's performance weak, "stiff and unconvincing"; he considered the film better when she no longer appeared in it and concluded: "Lolita is not a sex film; it's about characters, relationships, and the consequences of imprudent actions. And those who seek to brand the picture as immoral have missed the point. Both Humbert and Lolita are eventually destroyed—what could be more moral? The only real controversy I can see surrounding this film is why there was ever a controversy in the first place."[11]

The film was The New York Times "Critics Pick" on 31 July 1998, with its critic Caryn James championing it and saying, "Rich beyond what anyone could have expected, the film repays repeated viewings...it turns Humbert's madness into art."[12]

Writer and director James Toback lists it in his picks for the 10 finest films ever made, but he rates the original film higher.[13]

Commenting on differences between the novel and the film, Charles Taylor observes that "[f]or 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."[14] Extending Taylor's observation, Keith Phipps concludes: "Lyne doesn't seem to get the novel, failing to incorporate any of Nabokov's black comedy—which is to say, Lolita's heart and soul."[15]

Box office

Due to the difficulty in securing a distributor, the film had a very limited theatrical run in order to qualify for awards.[16] Lolita only took in a gross income of $19,492 in its opening weekend. The final domestic gross income was $1,147,784[2] on a $62,000,000 budget, making it one of the biggest box office bombs of all time. This same statistic also makes it the most expensive TV movie ever made.[17][unreliable source]

References

  1. ^ "Lolita (1998)". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Movie Lolita – Box Office Data". The Numbers. Retrieved 15 August 2011.
  3. ^ James, Caryn (1998-07-31). "'Lolita': Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
  4. ^ Black, Joel (2002). The Reality Effect: Film culture and the graphic imperative. New York: Routledge. p. 262. ISBN 0-415-93721-3.
  5. ^ According to Gale, in Sharp Cut, Pinter was paid for his work but he asked to have his name removed from the credits, as permitted by his contract.: "In November 1994 Pinter wrote that 'I've just heard that they are bringing another writer into the Lolita film. It doesn't surprise me.' Pinter's contract contained a clause to the effect that the film company could bring in another writer, but that in such a case he could withdraw his name (this was also the case with [the film] The Remains of the Day— he had insisted on this clause since the experience with revisions made to his Handmaid's Tale script" (352).
  6. ^ Hudgins observes: "During our 1994 interview, Pinter told [Steven H.] Gale and me that he had learned his lesson after the revisions imposed on his script for The Handmaid's Tale, which he has decided not to publish. When his script for Remains of the Day was radically revised by the James Ivory–Ismail Merchant partnership, he refused to allow his name to be listed in the credits"; Hudgins adds: "We did not see Pinter's name up in lights when Lyne's Lolita finally made its appearance in 1998. Pinter goes on in the March 13 [1995] letter [to Hudgins] to state that 'I have never been given any reason at all as to why the film company brought in another writer,' again quite similar to the equally ungracious treatment that he received in the Remains of the Day situation. He concludes that though he never met Nabokov, 'indeed I knew "Lolita" very well and loved it.' " (125). Hudgins also observes that Schiff was brought in after the efforts by Dearden (October 21, 1991), Pinter (September 26, 1994), and Mamet (March 10, 1995) and that Schiff "has no previous scripts to his credit" (124).
  7. ^ In his 2008 essay published in The Pinter Review, Hudgins discusses further details about why "Pinter elected not to publish three of his completed filmscripts, The Handmaid's Tale, The Remains of the Day, and Lolita," all of which Hudgins considers "masterful filmscripts" of "demonstrable superiority to the shooting scripts that were eventually used to make the films"; fortunately ("We can thank our various lucky stars"), he says, "these Pinter filmscripts are now available not only in private collections but also in the Pinter Archive at the British Library"; in this essay, which he first presented as a paper at the 10th Europe Theatre Prize symposium, Pinter: Passion, Poetry, Politics, held in Turin, Italy, in March 2006, Hudgins "examin[es] all three unpublished filmscripts in conjunction with one another" and "provides several interesting insights about Pinter's adaptation process" (132).
  8. ^ Rose, Charlie (1996). Guests: Stephen Schiff RSS (Television production). United States: The Charlie Rose Show. {{cite AV media}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  9. ^ "Lolita (1997)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 2007-06-17. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  10. ^ "Lolita". Metacritic. Retrieved 2007-06-11. {{cite web}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  11. ^ Berardinelli, James (1999-01-29). "Lolita (1997): A Film Review by James Berardinelli". ReelViews. Retrieved 2010-07-16.
  12. ^ "Television Review: Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession". New York Times. New York Times Company. 1998-06-31. Retrieved 2009-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help); Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help) [dead link]
  13. ^ Toback, Uames (2002). "How the Directors and Critics Voted". Sight & Sound. British Film Institute. Retrieved 2009-03-25. {{cite news}}: Italic or bold markup not allowed in: |publisher= (help)
  14. ^ Taylor, Charles (1998-05-29). "Recent Movies: Home Movies: Nymphet Mania". Salon. Retrieved 2012-05-27.
  15. ^ Phipps, Keith (2002-03-29). "Lolita". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  16. ^ James, Caryn (1998-07-31). "'Lolita': Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession". The New York Times. Retrieved 2010-03-28.
  17. ^ "IMDb Lolita (1997) Trivia". IMDb. Retrieved 10 January 2012.
Works cited
  • Lexington, KY: The UP of Kentucky, 2003. ISBN (10). ISBN 978-0-8131-2244-1 (13). Print.
  • –––, ed. The Films of Harold Pinter. Albany: SUNY P, 2001. ISBN 0-7914-4932-7. ISBN 978-0-7914-4932-5. Print.
  • Hudgins, Christopher C. "Harold Pinter's Lolita: 'My Sin, My Soul'." 123–46 in Gale, The Films of Harold Pinter.
  • –––. "Three Unpublished Harold Pinter Filmscripts: The Handmaid's Tale, The Remains of the Day, Lolita." The Pinter Review: Nobel Prize / Europe Theatre Prize Volume: 2005–2008. Ed. Francis Gillen with Steven H. Gale. Tampa: U of Tampa P, 2008. 132–39. ISBN 978-1-879852-19-8 (hardcover). ISBN 978-1-879852-20-4 (softcover). ISSN 08959706. Print.
  • James, Caryn (1998-06-31 31 July 1998). "Television Review: Revisiting a Dangerous Obsession". New York Times. Retrieved 2009-03-25. {{cite news}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  • Phipps, Keith (2002-03-29). "Lolita". The A.V. Club. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  • Taylor, Charles (1998-05-29). "Recent Movies: Home Movies: Nymphet". Salon. Retrieved 2009-03-25.
  • Toback, James (2002). "How the Directors and Critics Voted: US: Top Ten". Sight & Sound. 2009-03-25.
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