A. Stadlen: "I saw Kubrick's film many times
in my misspent youth, and never noticed a picture of Nabokov, although I
noticed small details like the hotel's name being changed to "The Hunted
Enchanters". But that does not prove the picture is not
there."
JM: It's funny what we
sometimes remember from a movie we haven't seen for a long time. Before I got to
the DVD, what I remembered more clearly was a stuffed squirrel which appears in
a cluttered room in Lolita's summer-camp and reappears, I think, in Mrs.
Haze's living room. What I didn't recollect was how tense and disagreable the
film is from its very start with the drunk Quilty playing Roman ping
pong, what a nuisance poor Charlotte is, how very dark and
forbidding Kubrick's handling faithfully deals with HH's perverse
world.
It must be a tribute to Kubrick's lugubrius
genius that once, on TV, while the small comedy of a clumsy valet trying to
fold Lolita's campbed was going on in "The Hunted Enchanters" (thanks,
A.Stadlen, I didn't remember that inversion of words...A reviewer once named
Quilty's gothic castle "Xanadu," instead of "Pavor Manor" and that was
quaint!), I had sat down for a moment with my five-year old grandson,
noticed the scene on TV and tiredly convinced myself that
that was only a harmless comedy part...whereas the boy stared at
James Mason's tense expression and asked point-blank: "What does that
bad papa want to do with his little daughter?"