Volu m e I - Purdue University Calumet

Stanley Kubrick’s Lolita
Amidst high-pitched “yaya’s” and a chorus of “Lolita’s,” the trailer for Stanley Kubrick’s 1962 Lolita
anticipated viewers’ reactions to the film in its ironic quip, “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?”
Certainly many critics have obstinately declared that “they” simply did not, yet these reviewers and scholars
overlook the playfulness of the advertising ploy, which acknowledges the difficulty of adapting not just book
to screen, but a Nabokovian novel that delights in language and the interior complexity of its characters.
Critics argue that, while the film is a success in its own right, it fails as an adaptation; indeed, “rather than
considering the film as an adaptation and transformation of both the novel and the screenplay—and seeing
them as sources of stimulation to Kubrick’s creative interests—[they look] at the film through [their] vision
of the novel and propose scenarios for what it should have done” (Nelson 58-59). As a young director
pursuing artistic independence, Kubrick was unwilling to sacrifice creative license for a mere faithful
representation of the novel. Like Nabokov himself, Kubrick strived for originality in his production of Lolita
and ultimately created a parody that paralleled the ambitions of the novel in its attempt at reconceptualizing
its literary predecessor and participating in the expanding Lolita enterprise.
Kubrick’s film is neither about the named Lolita nor the obsessive Humbert in pursuit of his
childhood love. Rather, Kubrick draws Clare Quilty forward and awards him primacy in the unfolding of
the narrative. Quilty is the driving force in the film, the ultimate cause that wields a destructive effect on an
unsuspecting Humbert. He supplements Lolita in the obsession that haunts and terrorizes Humbert and
entices the powerless and victimized lover to pursue his double. Kubrick presents this altered compulsive
chase in the film’s opening sequence, signifying that the doppelganger amusement overshadows the
relationship between lover and nymphet. Indeed, just as “Lolita” framed the novel as the first and last words
uttered by Humbert, so too does Quilty provide the structure for the film. Upon entering Pavor Manor,
Humbert shouts Quilty’s name—first with apprehension though subsequently with greater tenacity—in
opposition to the passionate throes within which Nabokov’s Humbert found himself in constructing his
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