Two Years After Fuss, Lyne’s ‘Lolita’ Goes on Sale

Director Adrian Lyne (“Fatal Attraction”) knew that making a new version of the classic Vladimir Nabokov novel, “Lolita,” would stir up controversy. He set out anyway to tell anew the story of a middle-aged teacher and his love affair with a teenage nymphet.

“Doing a version of a novel that Stanley Kubrick had already done--and Kubrick is hailed as a genius--I knew it wouldn’t be an easy road. It certainly hasn’t let me down,” Lyne reflected recently.

Despite a strong cast--including Jeremy Irons as Humbert Humbert, Dominique Swain as the 14-year-old Lolita, Melanie Griffith as Lolita’s dominating mother and Frank Langella as the evil Clare Quilty--no one in America initially wanted to distribute the 1997 film. Finally last year, Showtime showed the movie and it was given a small theatrical release by Samuel Goldwyn Pictures.

Though Blockbuster released the film on video earlier this year, it was only available for rental in the chain’s stores. This week, Trimark is offering the movie for sale on VHS ($15) and DVD ($25). The latter features Lyne’s commentary, deleted scenes, a documentary and even casting footage between Irons and Swain, who was all of 15 when she did the movie.

“I wasn’t really prepared for the sort of paranoia that surrounded the subject matter,” admits Lyne. “I think the climate in America was different three years ago. Everybody now talks about violence, but at that time, because of the JonBenet Ramsey case, there was an obsession with pedophilia. So there was a certain amount of paranoia.”

Despite all the controversy, Lyne argues that his “Lolita” is not a salacious film. “I just wanted to do a film that reflected the novel, really,” he explains. “The novel manages to be many things. It manages to be horrific in what this man does to the kid, and it manages to be funny and tragic and, in the end, a love story.”

Lyne believes the film’s morally ambiguous tone may have scared people away. “It doesn’t have a sort of posturizing, moralizing tone,” he says.

What the film does have is a towering performance from Irons. Lyne believes Irons was able to express his passion for Lolita much more than James Mason could in Kubrick’s 1962 version.

“His was a sniveling sort of wretch of a man,” Lyne says of Mason’s portrayal. “You never sensed Mason loved her. I think at the end, when Jeremy sees she’s pregnant and ‘polluted,’ as Nabokov says, with another man’s child--had she wanted him, he would have stayed with her.”

Lyne hopes “Lolita” will finally reach an audience on VHS and DVD. “I do think it is a film that, hopefully, will grow in people’s minds as the years go on,” he says.

“I made another film, ‘Jacob’s Ladder,’ which wasn’t a big success when it came out. But it’s a film I speak about now more than maybe any of the others I have done. It’s a film that people have grown to enjoy.”