MOVIE CHRONICLE
569
is planted that the movie had "licked" the book, and that
Lolita
has been
turned into the usual kind of sexy movie. The advertising has been
slanted to the mass audience, so the art-house audience isn't going.
A sizable part of the mass audience doesn't like the movie (their rejection
is being interpreted as a vote for "wholesomeness," which according to
Variety
is about to stage a comeback) and the art-house audience is
missing out on one of the few American films it might enjoy.
Recommend the film to friends and they reply, "Oh I've
had
it with
Lolita."
It turns out (now that
Lolita
can be purchased for 50¢ and so
is in the category of ordinary popular books) that they never thought
much of it; but even though they didn't really like the book, they don't
want to see the movie because of all the changes that have been made
in the book. Others had heard so much about the book, they thought
reading it superfluous (they had as
good
as read it-they were
tired
of
it) ; and if the book was too much talked about to necessitate a reading,
surely going to the film was really
de trap?
Besides, wasn't the girl who played
Lolita
practically a
matron?
The New York Times
said, "She looks to be a good seventeen," and the
rest of the press seemed to concur in this peculiarly inexpert judgment.
Time
opened its review with "Wind up the Lolita doll and it goes to
Hollywood and commits nymphanticide" and closed with
"Lolita
is the
saddest and most important victim of the current reckless adaptation
fad ..." In
The Observer
the premiere of the film was described
under the heading "Lolita fiasco" and the writer concluded that the
novel had been "turned into a film about this poor English guy who is
being given the runaround by this sly young broad." In
The New
Republic
Stanley Kauffmann wrote, "It is clear that Nabokov respects
the novel.
It
is equally clear that he does not respect the film-at least
as it is used in America . . . He has given to films the
Lolita
that, pre–
sumably, he thinks the medium deserves ..." After all this, who would
expect anything from the film?
The surprise of
Lolita
is how enjoyable it is: it's the first
mew
American comedy since those great days in the 1940's when Preston
Sturges recreated comedy with verbal slapstick.
Lolita
is black slapstick
and at times it's so far out that you gasp as you laugh. At its best
(which is about half the time) it makes most of the "New American
Cinema" look square. An inspired Peter Sellers creates a new comic
pattern-a crazy quilt of psychological, sociological commentary so "hip"
it's surrealist. It doesn't cover everything: there are structural weak–
nesses, the film falls apart, and there's even a forced and humiliating
attempt to "explain" the plot. But when the wit
is
galloping who's
