0373. GREAT CINEMA ADAPTATIONS: LOLITA

In Session 1 of this two-part film adaptation of Lolita, author-actor-filmmaker Peter Josyph explores what was daring about director Stanley Kubrick’s choice to adapt this controversial masterpiece by Vladimir Nabokov, a novel first rejected by five American publishers before being accepted by Olympia Press in Paris, which had also published Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer. The owner of Olympia narrowly thought of both books as forms of soft-pornography. Although Nabokov said “I don’t give a damn for public morals, in America or elsewhere,” the novel has been defended, praised, and taught as high art with a wide range of interpretations, including the view that Nabokov meant it as a study in tyranny. In addition to two film adaptations, Lolita has been adapted into a musical, five plays, three operas, and a ballet.In Sesson 2 we will take an in-depth look at how Kubrick’s film brilliantly differs from Nabokov’s Oscar-nominated screenplay (which never really made it to the screen). The