Lolita *** (1997, Jeremy Irons, Dominique Swain, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella) – Classic Movie Review 2235

Director Adrian Lyne remakes Stanley Kubrick’s ground-breaking 1962 film of Vladimir Nabokov’s famous controversial tale of an older man’s obsession for an adolescent girl in 1997.

Jeremy Irons is perfectly cast and at his very best as the British middle-aged French literature professor Humbert Humbert, the wrecked, doomed and tragic figure who falls for Lolita (Dominique Swain), tempestuous underage daughter of his blowsy landlady Charlotte Haze (Melanie Griffith). Coming to the United States to take a teaching position in New Hampshire, he rents a room in the widow Haze’s house when he sees and is instantly attracted to her daughter. Despite hating the mother, he marries her to be close to the girl.

Such storms of controversy surrounded this movie that it was hard for anyone to view it dispassionately back in 1997. The film company’s ill-advised advertising campaign as ‘the most talked about, written about, controversial movie of the year’ backfired on them when a moral backlash led the public to stay away. But, without entering into the arguments, this is a serious-minded, extremely well-crafted and intelligent erotic thriller that rarely strays into soft porn or tacky violence. Its portrait of Forties small-town America and of a man brought down by his weakness seems impeccable.

This moral tale of a man’s downfall through his fatal flaw is made with great care in America by British director Adrian Lyne, maker of Fatal Attraction and 91/2 Weeks. And it is written equally carefully by Stephen Schiff in a screenplay that respects the original book in its faithfulness to Nabokov’s narrative. [Spoiler alert] Nabokov makes sure that the villains are all fully punished for their villainy.

If Irons is excellent, the 17-year-old Swain’s mature acting also impresses and Frank Langella has a field day with the extremely wicked Clare Quilty, the story’s main villain.

The film premiered in Europe before being released in America, where it had difficulty finding a distributor until it was released theatrically by the Samuel Goldwyn Company after screening on TV by cable network Showtime.

Schiff was hired to write it as his first movie script after – astoundingly – the film’s producers had rejected screenplays commissioned from more experienced screenwriters and directors James Dearden (Fatal Attraction), Harold Pinter and David Mamet.

It was a box-office fiasco, with the American gross income only $1,150,000 on a $62million budget. Maybe they should have gone with the Pinter or Mamet script.

© Derek Winnert 2015 Classic Movie Review 2235

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