Between Film & Literature "Lolita"

However, Nabokov's virtuoso command of the English language and his injection of extremely funny black inclination into the novel distance us from its erotic and pornographic contents. It is the tragedy, the poetry, and the human waggery that are the focus of this work of art, with its contents existence relegated to an inferior position in the hands of Nabokov. Pornography, comedy and mockery are blended together seam slightly in the writer's hands, a concomitant noted by numerous amateurs and reviewers. It is exactly these qualities that make the choose versions of Lolita (Stanley Kubrick's - 1962 and Adrian Lynne's - 1997) inferior in many ways. As one critic noted, "Few novels are both as sad and as amusing as this one, with Nabokov mixing and managing both tragedy and comedy perfectly. Nabokov's prose is so rich and his presentations so carefully thought-through that the book proves top-hole to the photographic videos at every turn" (Complete 2). This analysis give in a flash compare and contrast Nabokov's novel with Kubrick's film of the same, a film that Nabokov originally wrote the screenplay for only to have it butchered by Kubrick and others. The analysis will demonstrate that great works of literature are seldom translated into great works of film primarily due to the constraints of filmmaking in general.

Kubrick's black and white version of Lolita is immediately less make and shock

Kubrick's film also switches events in the film and adds other not there. For example, the opening credits of the film display tantalizing images of the feet of Lolita while a male is icon her toenails. Also in the film the movie opens with the murder of Quilty, or acts as the prologue while it is the epilogue in the novel. I find this further undermines the impact of the novel because by the end of the humbug both Nabokov and Lolita are destroyed. His act of murder at this time, occurring in the beginning and then being revisited through flashback in the film, takes forward the impact of his ultimate destruction. Additionally, it seems like Kubrick could not decided whether the film should be a comedy or a satire.

thither is a focus lacking that is not appa wage in the book which blends these elements seamlessly. Kubrick uses odd additions to the film which break our aesthetic distance. For example, when Charlotte daze shows Humbert the photograph of her deceased husband, it looks very much like a young Nabokov. This breaks the aesthetic distance and is pointless. Nevertheless, Kubrick does keep in many double entendres and sexual metaphors that are amusing. For example, after the reluctant to rent an apartment Humbert first views Lolita and then tells Charlotte he wishes to stay, she asks him what factor make him come to a decision. He replies, "I think it was the florid pies."

It is this use of language that enables the book to be a out-of-the-way(prenominal) better entertainment than the Kubrick film because it has the power to evoke much meaning in our forelands than film images. Film images are less vague or abstract and often make our mind up for us ? like the sad sight of Humbert loss Dolores with the old, tired dog yapping at his heels. Further, the movie appears to garner reason for Humbert by softening the content, while Nabokov makes no moral conclusions whatever in the novel. In fact, he admits that some of his characters' demons make for despicable charac
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