http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/adapting-nabokov   Nabokov and the Movies, John Colapinto. Jan.2015

The axiom that great novels make bad movie adaptations has not been entirely true for Vladimir Nabokov, whose books depend to a surprising degree on plot-heavy narratives (not to say cravenly pulpy story lines) that lend themselves well to the screen. Take “Lolita”…

[…] the film version of “King, Queen, Knave”—directed by Jerzy Skolimowski and starring David Niven and Gina Lollobrigida—was released in 1972. But trying to force Nabokov’s exquisitely controlled satire of bourgeois materialism and conventionality into a slapstick would-be youth comedy was a grave error. The movie is a sloppy, slapdash affair that badly squanders its source material (and its actors), and it serves as a reminder of all that could be bad about early-seventies movies. Everyone involved seems desperate to appear young and with-it. You can see for yourself—the entire movie has been uploaded to YouTube.