Nabokov at the Movies: Film Perspectives in Fiction by Barbara s> Wyllie (review)

Abstract

950 SEER, 82, 4, 2004 appealmight have been groundedin a considerationof comic theory,as could the assertion that humour is irreverent: Milne's discussion of the film adaptationof Il'fand Petrov'sscreenplayfor h7he Circus (GrigoriiAleksandrov, 1936) shows this not always to be so. The same desire to rescue these writers fromthe politics of theirtime may lie behind the decision to splitthe book into two discrete parts, since the political and editorial forces preventing them from conducting satire were the same in both cases. The result, however, is that we lose any sense of the differentways in which these writersfashioned incredible comic art from the narrowly utilitarian satire and humour that prevailed in the I920S and I930s. Milne's 'de-politicizing' intent is clearly a reaction to a previous era of narrowlypoliticized Zoshchenko and Il'f-Petrovcriticismas is clear from the closing chapter of both parts of the book where posthumous reputations, editions of their works and public marks of recognition are discussed. Necessarily the list is incomplete: omissions include the statue of Zoshchenko erected at his grave in Sestroretsk,the founding of the Zoshchenko memorial apartment in St Petersburg and the various film adaptations of his work. Similarlysome of the film adaptationsof 7he Twelve Chairs are not mentioned, including a very successfultranspositionof the storyto Fidel Castro'sCuba by Tom,asGutierrezAlea (LasDocesillas,I962), possiblythe best testimonyto the universalappeal of the book. Queen Mary J.HiCKS University ofLondon Wyllie, Barbara.Nabokov at theMovies.FilmPerspectives inFiction.McFarland& Company, Jefferson, NC and London, 2003. x + 298 pp. Illustrations. Notes. Filmography.Bibliography.Index. $39.95 (paperback). ASKED which language he dreamed in, polyglot Vladimir Nabokov replied:'I don't think in any language; I think in images. I don't believe that people think in languages' (StrongOpinions, New York, 1974, P. I4). Throughout Nabokov's career, cinema, the medium of moving images, provided an inspirationand a paradigmfor assemblinghis thoughts in words. Earlyin his exile fromRussia,he foundworkasa movie extrain Berlin,and he maintained a lifelong affection for the kind of celluloid entertainmentsthat he disdained on the printed page. More than most other artists,Nabokov was a referential maniac,writingexquisitelycraftedprose -in Russian,French,andEnglishthat seems so rooted in the author's fastidiouschoice of words that it would defy adaptation into images. Yet Nabokov loved the movies, and so do many of hischaracters,asactors,producers,directors,andspectators.Moviemakers, who have tried to adapt BendSinister (I970), Despair(I978), King,Queen, Knave (1972), Laughter in theDark(twice, I969 and I999), Lolita(twice, I962 and 1997), TheLuzhin Defense (2000), and Maschenka (i 986), love Nabokov. BarbaraWyllie acknowledges that AlfredAppel, Jr's Nabokov's DarkCinema (New York, I974) is the pioneering study of Nabokov and film. However, she rejectsAppel's contention that Nabokov was negativelydisposed towardfilm, using it largely as symptomatic of his characters'penchant forposhlost' the REVIEWS 95I kitschyand meretricious.While contending thatNabokov was a filmbuffwho responded enthusiasticallyto the new medium thatwasborn in I895,just four yearsbefore he was, she documents the ambivalence towardfilm embodied in fiction throughout his career. In Nabokov's short stories and novels, film provides revelation and liberation while serving as an instrument and reflectionof hisprotagonists'distortionsand delusions. Despite its title, Nabokov attheMovies is not primarilya studyof the author's cinematic experiences. It offersno analysisof the solutionsdevised by Stanley Kubrick,Adrian Lyne, Rainer WernerFassbinder,and other directorswhen they tried to translate Nabokov's prose into film. And it has nothing to say about Nabokov's own attemptsat screenwriting,includingthe scriptforLolita that Kubrick commissioned him to create and then rejected, published posthumously in I997. Instead, Wyllie'sbook, which might more accurately be titled TheMoviesinNabokov, is a thorough examination of how Nabokov uses filmwithin his fictions, as a featureof the plot or as a stylistictrait.Many of Nabokov's workscentre on the makingof movies, but many also attemptto simulatecinematic techniques such asmontage, tracking,and lighting. WylliereadsNabokov asan essentiallyAmericanwriter,even in the Russian fiction he wrote before moving to the United Statesin I940. She accounts for the special affinitybetween Nabokov and American culture in the fact that both assimilated experience through cinematic templates. This is especially true of his most American work, Lolita, which Wyllie calls 'Nabokov's Hollywood novel' (p. I 26). She begins by examining how such early...