Both movies, Kubrick's and Lyne's, present a
fateful encounter bt. Quilty and HH from the start.
VN's script indicates it and probably this
important choice, unlike what is told in the novel, has
been followed by the two different directors. In this way we automatically assume that there is an
independent lecturer, play-wright Quilty, brother to an ivory dentist,
who has enjoyed Charlotte Haze's favors, who has enough time and money to follow
HH in order to steal his unique (to his eyes) Lolita, and lay the trails
for a paper-chase...
What strikes me, now, is that by having the
confrontation bt. Q and HH from the very first and HH's arrest, Quilty's real
existence becomes unquestionable. This is not so clear in the novel. We
have HH's "Confessions" prefaced by John Ray Jr. and that's all.
We have a secondary information that HH was arrested
because he murdered Quilty. He was not jailed because he seduced a
minor. All these informations derive from HH's confessions which
alternate moments of sanity and dellusional constructions addressed to an
imaginary jury.
Lolita has been studied very thoroughly so there is
nothing new left to be asked and which has not been commented and
explained elsewhere. While going thru
VN's Lolita screen-script today and retaining a lingering echo
of Pale Fire, I could not avoid thinking about the other fateful
encounter in which Shade is murdered by Gradus while Kinbote watches ( to
explain "Pale Fire's" supposedly missing last line.)
In a way we could consider the novel "Pale Fire" as
resulting from Kinbote's "Confessions" while imprisioned in his Cedarn
cave-cell.
(How about that for a kriptomnesiac
shock?)