HUMBERT (having gripped Lolita's arm): I wouldn't want you to miss any more piano lessons.

LOLITA: I haven't missed any.

HUMBERT: You know what I'm talking about.

SEMIRAMIS: It wasn't going to be late.

HUMBERT: Say goodnight to your friends.

LOLITA: Oh, come one, now. This isn't a regular party. This is a cast party.

HUMBERT (leading her away): Come on. Come on.

LOLITA: This is the cast party.

HUMBERT: We'll discuss it later.

Led away, Lolita stares at Miss Starch.

399 MS Vivian and Quilty. (1:53:11)

QUILTY: Brewster, go and get some Type "A" Kodachrome.

BREWSTER: Okay.

Crossfade to shot 400.

Return to the top of the page

Comparing Nabokov and Kubrick

This is a very short section in the screenplay concerned mostly with Humbert learning from Miss King, the piano teacher, that Lolita hasn't been to practice in four weeks. They don't discuss their thoughts on the play itself. As soon as Lolita appears and asks if she can go to Mona's aunt's for a party, Humbert insists she's going home. She says she'll do anything if he lets her go. She says she loves him. Still, he grasps her hand and they leave.

Earlier in the screenplay, just after the introduction of them to Beardsley, there is a scene with Quilty, Vivian Darkbloom and Humbert. An instructor who is showing Quilty and Vivian around, stops Humbert and introduces them. Quilty immediately acknowledges he's seen Humbert a a couple of times in Ramsdale. When Vivian announces herself, Quillty says, "My collaborator, my evening shadow. Her name looks like an anagram. But she's a real woman--or anyway a real person. You're an inch taller than me, aren't you m'dear?" Vivian says that her niece, Mona, goes to school with Humbert. Quilty remarks that, "You know the first thing people usually say when I'm introduced to them is how much they like, or simply adore, my Nymphet on TV." When Humbert says he has a vague recollection of it, Quilty responds, "Good for you. I often wonder what is technically more vague--a vague recollection or a vague premonition." Humbert responds that some of his best friends are phantoms. Quilty lights himself a cigarette, that he remarks is not a Drome, but a special Spanish blend made for him and his urgent needs.

The book gives some description of the school play.

I did not bother to read the complete text of The Enchanted Hunters, the playlet in which Dolores Haze was assigned the part of a farmer's daughter who imagines herself to be a woodland witch, or Diana, or something, and who, having got hold of a book on hypnotism, plunges a number of lost hunters into various entertaining trances before falling in her turn under the spell of a vagabond poet (Mona Dahl)...The coincidence of the title with the name of an unforgettable inn was pleasant in a sad little way...I assumed the playlet was just another, practically anonymous version of some banal legend. Nothing prevented one, of course, from supposing that in quest of an attractive name the founder of the hotel had been immediately and solely influenced by the chance fantasy of the second-rate muralist he had hired, and that subsequently the hotel's name had suggested the play's title. But in my credulous, simple, benevolent mind I happened to twist it the other way around, and without giving the whole matter much thought really, supposed that mural, name and title had all been derived from a common source, from some local tradition, which I, an alien unversed in New Eneland lore, would not be supposed to know...actually The Enchanted Hunters was a quite recent and technically original composition which had been produced for the first time only three or four months ago by a highbrow group in New York. To me--inasmuch as I could judge from my charmer's part--it seemed to be a pretty dismal kind of fancy work, with echoes from Lenormand and Maeterlinck and various quiet British dreamers. The red-capped, uniformly attired hunters, of which one was a banker, another a plumber, a third a policeman, a fourth an undertaker, a fifth an underwriter, a sixth an escaped convict...went through a complete change of mind in Dolly's Dell, and remembered their real lives only as dreams or nightmares from which little Diana had aroused them; but a seventh Hunter (in a green cap, the fool) was a Young Poet, and he insisted, much to Diana's annoyance, that she and the entertainment provided (dancing nymphs, and elves, and monsters) were his, the Poet's invention. I understand that finally, in utter disgust at this cocksureness, barefooted Dolores was to lead check-trousered Mona to the paternal farm behind the Perilous Forest to prove to the braggard she was not a poet's fancy, but a rustic, down-to-brown-earth lass--and a last minute kiss was to enforce the play's profound message, namely, that mirage and reality merge in love.

Lolita, herself, eventually asks Humbert if he remembers the name of the hotel where he raped her, and asks was it The Enchanted Hunters, then rolls away on her bike laughing.

Return to the top of the page

Chess and The Queen

In the book, one night Humbert is playing chess with Gaston, "mopping up Gustave's--I mean Gaston's--king's side", when he gets a call from Miss Emperor, the piano teacher, asking if Lo is coming to her next piano lesson as she had missed previous lessons. Upset by this, Humbert almost loses his queen but succeeds in achieving a draw. He then goes home for a confrontation with Lolita and she says she has been rehearsing the play with Mona. Which leads to the next scene, the fight, for, in the book, Lolita is never even in the play. She and Humbert instead skip town.

Kubrick switches this scene to be the one early in the film in which Charlotte, playing chess with Humbert, loses her king and is in threat of losing her queen.

Return to the top of the page

The Enchanted Hunters as versus The Hunted Enchanters

Nabokov often speaks of the writer as being an enchanter. While his Humbert is one of the enchanted. In book and screenplay, the play is The Enchanted Hunters, echoing the hotel at which Humbert and Lolita stayed. Kubrick switches it around so that in the movie the play is The Hunted Enchanters.

Return to the top of the page

The Play and Semiramis

Nabokov's description of the play in the book has been abandoned. Lolita has no name in it. All we know is a satyr removes his horns and she and Semiramis lead him to the Dark Kingdom.

Semiramis, daughter of a fish-goddess, an ancient queen, some believed of Babylon, is a shadowy individual who has been represented as lustful, and an alchemist with a knowledge of plants.

She appeared in The Divine Comedy as one condemned to hell for her lust. The wife of Ninus, after his death she married her son.

In Voltaire's play, having an affair with Assur, she murdered her husband, the king. Their son, Ninias, was preserved by being taken away from the palace. Fifteen years later, Assur is plotting to kill Semiramis as she's failed to marry him and make him king. Semiramis instead plans to marry a warrior who she doesn't realize to be her son, she believing her son to be dead. Warned away from the marriage by Ninus' ghost, Ninias determines to avenge his father's death by killing Assur, and instead accidentally kills Semiramis.

So it seems Semiramis is yet another incarnation of the Oedipus myth. Sometimes she marries her son. In literature, sometimes the Oedipal destiny is averted by supernatural assistance.

Perhaps of some interest, considering how the play in the book was supposed to have concerned a poet, and here instead we've only the name Sermiramis, are several plays from about 1918 by an Olive Tilford Dargan, collected in the book, Semiramis and Other Plays. I've no idea what Semiramis is about, but another play, The Poet, is about none other than Edgar Allan Poe and young Virginia Clemm. Poe, having been rejected by a woman named Helen, becomes fixated upon Virginia. Pleading with her mother to be allowed to marry her, her mother objecting as she's only a child, Poe insists Virginia, rather than being mortal, is an immortal sister to Psyche. They marry and the play follows through to Virginia's death and his subsequent decay. The point of its staging largely escapes me except to give an actor a character in which he can rave then rave some more. I gather, from a letter she wrote concerning it, that Olive's intention was to vindicate Poe's life through the passion of his work.

This is Vivian Darkbloom's (Nabakov's alter) final appearance in the film, and what we may have is a play less concerned with Humbert's destruction (for it certainly has to do with that) than the enchanter artist/author succumbing to the enchantment of his subject/muse. Lolita, the nymph, positively leers as she takes the stage, the goat shearing himself of his horns, telling her she has no more reason to tremble due him.

Roy means King, so if we're looking for chess references we could look upon this as a checkmate.

Return to the top of the page

A FAMILY ROW

400 MLS From interior, Lolita and Humbert enter the house. (1:53:25)

He grabs her arm as she starts to go up the stairs to the second floor.

HUMBERT: You're not going upstairs.

LOLITA: Yes, I am!

HUMBERT: We're going to have a little talk.

LOLITA: Let go of me!

As they pass through the black of the separating wall.

LOLITA (off screen): You're hurting my arm!

HUMBERT: Stop shouting!

LOLITA: You let me go, you jerk! Let go of me!

HUMBERT: Sit down! Now you're going to answer a few questions.

LOLITA: You've got a big, fat nerve dragging me away.

HUMBERT: Stop this silly noise! Stop it!

LOLITA: Who do you think you are, not letting me go to the party?

HUMBERT: Do you want the police to come here? (He closes the rear door.) Stop that shouting.

LOLITA: Yes! Why can't you leave me alone?

HUMBERT: Shut your filthy mouth you horrid little psychopath!

LOLITA: Don't tell me what to do! You're a nauseating creep!

HUMBERT: I promise you one thing, you're not going to see these filthy boys anymore, I'll tell you that. That's one thing that...

LOLITA: Oh, yeah? Well, I've got news for you. I'll do anything I want to, anytime I want to, with anyone I want to...

HUBMBERT: Shut your filthy mouth!

A knocking.

LOLITA: ...and you can't stop me!

HUMBERT: Shut up!

403 MS Front door from the inside as Humbert goes to answer it. (1:57:53)

HUMBERT: Oh, Miss Lebone.

LEBONE: Dr. Humbert, may I come in?

HUMBERT: What can I do for you?

LEBONE: Well, this is a little awkward to say, but I'm, well, I thought you ought to know, this noise, I can hear every word next door.

HUMBERT: Well, we were having a family row.

LEBONE: Yeah.

HUMBERT: The child's voice is very shrill when she gets upset.

LEBONE: Yes, of course, well, I understand perfectly, but, well, I, I happen to have company and he's a minister of the church, and you know...

HUMBERT: Perhaps you can convey my apologies to him, and, you know, we were quarrelling about piano lessons.

LEBONE: Well, hello, dear!

LOLITA (putting on her coat as she passes and exits): Hello, Miss Lebone. (To Humbert.) Goodnight!

LEBONE: What a pretty getup!

HUMBERT: She was in the school play tonight.

LEBONE: Oh, yes, of course, the school play. Dr. Humbert, I do hope you don't think that I'm presuming on our good neighbor relations, but, well, I think I ought tell you that the neighbors are beginning to get a little curious about you and your girl.

HUMBERT: I can't think why they should do that.

LEBONE: Well, you know how people talk. I must get back to my guest. Would you care to join us for a little while?

HUMBERT: That's very nice of you, thank you very much, but I'll take a rain check on it.

LEBONE: Oh, right. Well, goodnight!

HUMBERT: Goodnight.

Humbert also exits and closes the door. Crossfade to shot 404.

Return to the top of the page

Comparing Nabokov and Kubrick

This is a spectacular fight and there is nothing like it in the screenplay. Again, as with much of the action, certain feelings belonging to the characters in the screenplay are switched about. In the screenplay, an agitated Humbert says Lolita can't torment him like she has been, that he will not surrender. Lolita simply goes and gets herself something to eat. In the kitchen, Humbert goes on about his being a fool in supplying so many opportunities for Lolita to meet whomever...bike rides etc. She simply walks out and goes to the living room. He follows her and tells her she's ruining their relationship and jeapordizing her own safety. "I don't know, nor wish to know, what young hoodlum, Roy or Foy, you are dating in secret. But all this must stop or else anything might happen." The window is given as being open and that Humbert's voice rises to a hysterical pitch. When Lolita attempts to run out of the room he grabs her wrist, telling her he'll break it if her must but she will listen, that they will leave the next day and go start a new life in Mexico. She twists away and runs out of the house, going to the gas station.

The confrontation with Ms. Lebone is earlier, after the bumping into Quilty and Vivian and before the play. An old lady with a "hawk eye", she first stops Humbert to talk to him about his jungle of dandelions. Humbert protests they are immigrants, as are they all, and deserving of kindness. Lebone doesn't buy this one bit, then gets on to inquiring if his pretty little girl gets enough sleep.

I notice the light in her bedroom off and on, off and on, at all hours of the night. That is her bedroom window, isn't it. There's a string dangling from your pocket.

Humbert says that every time he undoes a parcel he puts the string in his pocket, and Lebone continues on, insisting that "Dolly" come over to her house and read the books her mother gave her when she was a child, which would be more wholesome than listening to the radio at full blast.

In the book, Lebone is again an old lady and in narrative is described as asking questions about the family and giving Lolita books to read that her mother had given her.

Now, onto the fight. As I was saying in the previous section, there is no big night of the play in the book. Before the play is put on, Humbert finds out Lolita has missed piano rehearsals and confronts her. They do have a big blow out in which he grabs her.

From that moment, I stopped restraining my voice, and we continued yelling at each other, and she said unprintable things. She said she loathed me. She made monstrous faces at me, inflating her cheeks and producing a diabolical plopping sound. She said I had attempted to violate her several times when I was her mother's roomer. She said she was sure I had murdered her mother...It was a strident and hateful scene. I held her by her knobby wrist and she kept turning and twisting it this way and that...but I held her quite hard and in fact hurt her rather badly...and once or twice she jerked her arm so violently that I feared her wrist might snap...and our voices were drowning the telephone, and when I grew aware of its ringing she instantly escaped.

Now calls Fenton Lebone, incognito, who complains about the noise. Humbert hears Lolita escape out the front door. Rushing out to locate her, he finds her at a telephone booth.

Return to the top of the page

THE PAY TELEPHONE CALL AT THE ESSO

404 LS Lolita on a pay telephone. (1:59:16)

We hear a train engine's churning as it passes, a dog barking, Humbert running through the gas station and up to the phone booth.

405 MS Humbert forces open the door. (1:59:27)

The light in the booth goes off as he does so. Lolita hangs up the phone. In the background is a BRAKES sign with an outstretched palm of a hand as if indicating STOP. To the side is the price 14 which reminds of Lolita's age.

HUMBERT: All right. Come on, we're going home.

LOLITA: Wait a minute.

HUMBERT: I forbade you to go to that party, didn't I?

LOLITA: I wasn't going to the party.

HUMBERT: Who were you talking to just now?

LOLITA: I tried to call you.

HUMBERT: You were speaking to somebody just now on the telephone. Who was that?

We hear again as if the chugging of the train, but then it goes away.

LOLITA: I got a wrong number. Listen, I've decided something.

HUMBERT: Yes?

LOLITA: I want to leave school.

HUMBERT: You what?

LOLITA: I don't want you to be mad at me anymore. Everything's going to be great from now on.

HUMBERT: You mean that?

LOLITA: I hate school, and I hate the play. I really do. I never want to go back.

HUMBERT: That's good.

LOLITA: Let's leave tomorrow. We can go for a long trip, and we'll go wherever I want to, won't we?

HUMBERT: Yes, my darling.

LOLITA: Are you glad?

HUMBERT: Yes, of course I am.

LOLITA: To hell with the play! See what I mean?

HUMBERT: Yes, that's good!

LOLITA: Let's go home. I feel sort of romantic.

Crossfade to shot 406.

Return to the top of the page

Comparing Nabokov and Kubrick

This scene in the film condenses several scenes in the screenplay that are interrupted by the phone call from Quilty.

In the screenplay, after his argument with her, Humbert follows Lolita to the phone booth. She tells him she was trying to reach him at home.

HUMBERT: You did? That's odd. I saw you speaking, I saw your lips move.

LOLITA: Yes, I got the wrong number. Look, I don't want you to be mad at me any more. Everything is going to be all right from now on. I've reached a great decision.

At that point they return home. Next the staircase, Lolita tells him to carry her upstairs, that she's feeling romantic. The telephone rings and when Humbert suggests they let it ring she demands he answer it. It's now we have the dialogue with Quilty. When this is done, an upset Humbert tells Lolita it must have been a hoax, to which she insists that they must get away. She suggests to Mexico, where she was conceived.

HUMBERT: I'm sure I'll find a lecturing job there. Marvelous! I know a Spanish poet in Mexico City. He is full of black bulls and symbols, and as corny as a matador. But he is influential.

Lolita says all right, as long as she traces out their route, which should take them through Arizona where she wants to see the Indian dances at Elphinstone.

In the book, after their argument, Humbert pursues Lolita, finding her in the telephone booth. Lolita says she tried to reach him at home and that she's made a great decision. She wants to leave school. She hates it and the play (which is still in rehearsals). They must go at once, on a long trip, but this time they will go wherever she wants to go.

Return to the top of the page

The Curious Case of Jack Brewster

Who the hell is Jack Brewster? Brewster only appears in the book with Quilty asking if Humbert is Jack Brewster, Humbert saying he is, and Quilty saying he doesn't look like Jack Brewster--despite his probably knowing this is Humbert, and he calls Humbert Brewster another couple of times during that assassination scene when we are quite sure he knows who Humbert is.

Kubrick goes so far as to make a character of Brewster, one who Quilty sends for some Kodachrome Type A. The reason I raise here the question of "Who is Jack Brewster", rather than after the school play, is due the name of the Esso gas station to which Lolita has retreated to make her phone call, which is Jacksons.

Humbert's real name, if you will remember, is Jean-Jacques Humbert.

There's a curious section in the book where Humbert, by then living with Rita, his lover after Lolita has fled, wakes up one morning to find a squalid kind of character at the end of their bed. He has no memory of how the squalid character got there, and neither seemingly does Rita. On top of this, the squalid character is given as completely amnesiac. He insinuates that Humbert and Rita somehow had "purloined his (worthless) identity." They take the man to the hospital. A year later he is still there, "isolated from his personal past", and has been named Jack Humbertson.

The son of Jean-Jacques Humbert. Which we aren't to take literally.

This incident compels Humbert to explore memory in a paper called "Mimir and Memory"...

...in which I suggested among other things that seemed original and important to that splendid review's benevolent readers, a theory of perceptual time based on the circulation of the blood and conceptually depending (to fill up this nutshell) on the mind's being conscious not only of matter but also of its own self, thus creating a continuous spanning of two points (the storable future and the stored past).

Mimir is The Remember, who was beheaded and thereafter Odin carried that wise head around which gifted him with secret knowledge. There are numerous examples of the oracular head in literature.

The Esso station may hint itself at the esoteric, The Online Etymology Dictionary gives "from esotero 'more within,' comparative adverb of eso 'within'...".

Of course Lolita is lying to Humbert. She's called Quilty. But on another level, the level on which Quilty operates as a shadow of Humbert, the level on which Humbert is confused with Jack Brewster (who went out for Kodachrome Type A in the film, and who is said, in the book, to have a brother with a telephone company), the level on which Quilty complains about people invading his house and making phone calls, there's more going on.

In the book, though Quilty has asked him if he is "Jack Brewster", Humbert replies, "Je suis Monsieur Brustere." Bruster seems to be, though a variant of Brewster (a brewer), an occupational name for an embroiderer, from Old French brouder, which has a relationship with braiding, weaving, twisting together. Nabokov knew his words and if he made the switch from Brewster to Brustere, I imagine there was a reason, for the book is full of endless word play.

What one can reason is that Kubrick understood the significance and importance of Brewster or else he wouldn't have invented a part for him as the man who goes to buy the Kodachrome Type A.

November 2014 transferred to html. Originally posted sometime before 2012. Approx 9800 words or 20 single-spaced pages. A 75 minute read at 130 wpm.

Return to the top of the page

Go to Part 6
Go to Table of Contents of the analysis (and supplemental posts)
Link to the main TOC page for all the analyses