"Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta."

Vladimir Nabokov's tragicomedy masterpiece Lolita endures as one of literature's greatest depictions of American contemporary culture, and the subject of one of cultural history's longest moral controversies.

Hailed for its witty, lyrical language since its publication in 1955, Lolita has also been condemned for its intimate portrait of a grown man's overpowering sexual obsession with his 12-year-old charge: the alluring "nymphet" of his dreams, Lolita.

The poetic, complex, richly allegorical work has been banned as obscene in many countries on four continents, and was particularly vilified in the U.S.

The novel's two daring film adaptations--by Stanley Kubrick in 1962 (starring Peter Sellers, Shelley Winters, James Mason and newcomer Sue Lyon) and now, director Adrian Lyne's undeniably brilliant 1997 cinematic achievement--have both faced similarly contentious and highly charged moral debate, long before audiences were given the opportunity to appreciate the works on their own merits.

In 1990, director Adrian Lyne and producer Mario Kassar set forth to make their new adaptation with the intention of remaining more loyal to the broken heart and soul of Nabokov's original work, than did the first-reviled, then revered, Kubrick film.

Lyne's vivid retelling of the Lolita saga--featuring Jeremy Irons, Melanie Griffith, Frank Langella and the unforgettable screen debut of Dominique Swain--remains intensely true to the novel's portrait of tormented souls adrift in 1947 Postwar America. It is largely culled directly from the book's pages under the guidance of screenwriter Stephen Schiff, following adaptations by such noted writers as Harold Pinter, James Dearden and David Mamet. The outstanding on-screen result is as poignant, alluring, disturbing and darkly comic as Nabokov intended.

"The novel is extraordinary," says the director, Adrian Lyne. "Nabokov's descriptions are so visceral, so tactile that he almost tells you how to shoot it. As I read the novel, I could often see where I would have put the camera. This is the first novel that I've read that I felt I could work from directly. It's breathtaking in so many senses, and it's yet a great challenge."

Adrian Lyne's Lolita is un grande, grandissimo film," says master composer Ennio Morricone from his studio base in Rome via a translator. "When Adrian came to Rome for the first time to show me two extraordinary scenes from this great film--one of them the wonderful first encounter between Lolita and Humbert--the meaning at the core of the movie was rendered perfectly clear. With my music I only had to follow on a high level the director's intentions to make Lolita a story of sincere and reciprocal love, even within the limits of the purity and malicious naivete of its young subject."

"My music follows the film's vicissitudes," Morricone continues. "It's sensual, romantic--with moderation and measure, lots of measure--dramatic with some humorous moments, never forgetting the experiences of the characters."

The famed, often-mimicked "Morricone style" is very much in evidence in his lush Lolita score, yet his techniques remain a guarded secret. "The orchestrations--as I always do in every film, without exception--are mine. And as usual my personality and my stylistic elements come to the surface." The peerless composer--who has scored such exemplary works as Cinema Paradiso, The Mission, Days of Heaven and the classic films by directors Sergio Leone and Bernardo Bertolucci--will, however, reveal this much of Lolita's musical components: "Chromatism and diatonism, dissonances and consonances, a catchy tune and one that is not, folklore, pop, classicism, et cetera. All these elements come together with equal and balanced measure."

It was the director's wish that the film's period pop songs perform a different duty. "The source music had to accomplish two things," says the film's Executive Music Producer, Stephan Goldman. "The songs had to amplify the romance, and also Lolita's desire to use youthful American culture to assert herself and rebel against the authority of the stuffy, professorial Humbert."

Perhap's the score's most haunting music is its primary love theme: an underlying tightrope both romantic and hauntingly disturbing, its sparce piano strikes jarring the uneasy conscience of the illicit lovers on the run. Morricone's score largely forges a musical bond between Lolita and Humbert with lush and memorably romantic tunes, with the notable exception the beginning and end bookend sequences. Here and throughout the film, the morbid presence of Quilty is "felt" through chromatic and dissonant sonic portayals. "It's a reflection of his own deviousness," says Morricone, who aptly chose to introduce the scoundrel's death with a brief "Requiem" utilizing children's voices. "But," Morricone ponders...
Is the "Requiem" only for Quilty?
Is it not also for Humbert Humbert?
I think so.

--Vicki Arkoff, Film Committee Chairperson, National Association of Recording Arts & Sciences

"While watching Ennio working with his orchestra in Rome on the music track for Lolita, I was struck by how similar the composer-conductor's job is to a director's. Most of musicians were people he knew, and he coaxed and cajoled a performance from them just as a director would with his actors. In fact, I think, Ennio would make a great director.

"I have always thought that the audience shouldn't be aware of the start of a music cue in a film, but rather that it should invisibly creep in, so that you don't know where a sound effect ends and the music begins. I've always hated those bombastic scores where the music crashes in, and you almost sense that there are two movies going on at once. Those music scores, rather than complimenting the visual, scream for attention, setting the music entirely apart from the story.

"Ennio, on the other hand, showed me how he blurs the entry of his strings: he staggers their entry. When you look at his written score, you see that instead of the instruments coming in at the same time (i.e. vertically), they come one after another (i.e. diagonally). It's a stunning effect that I don't think anyone else does.

"Ennio quite simply, for me, is the best. Thank you maestro. Thank you Ennio, my friend. Special thanks to Andrea Morricone for his patience with me when interpreting."

--Adrian Lyne

RealAudio Interview