Listening to Stanley Kubrick (11 page)

James Harris, Kubrick’s producing partner, suggested they use, as the love theme of the film, a song written by James’s brother Bob Harris.
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Kubrick agreed and then set about hiring Bernard Herrmann to complete the score, using the love theme as a centerpiece, as Gerald Fried had done with the song “Once” in
Killer’s Kiss
. Whatever interest Herrmann might have had in the project vanished when Kubrick told him about Bob Harris’s tune. Herrmann, who was vocal in his disapproval of using popular music in film scores, refused to take the job.
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Instead, Kubrick hired composer and arranger Nelson Riddle. Kubrick was aware of Riddle’s work on Frank Sinatra’s albums
In the Wee Small Hours
and
Only the Lonely
,
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but Riddle had also done some work in film, notably
Ocean’s Eleven
(1960). Kubrick must have reasoned that Riddle wouldn’t object to using arrangements of the preexistent theme for the film, and of course Riddle handled the job with aplomb. Riddle even brought in orchestrator Gil Grau, with whom he had worked on many projects, to help.

The collaboration between Nelson Riddle and Stanley Kubrick worked smoothly, with Riddle willing to make concessions to serve the needs of the film, willing even to change a theme from a minor key to a major key at the producers’ request. Harris and Kubrick were concerned that the mood of the music, if too dark, might make Humbert seem even more distasteful and sinister. As Riddle biographer Peter Levinson states, “they believed any form of dissonance in the music would make Humbert Humbert appear too lascivious to the audience.”
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The mood of the score, both in the love theme and the pop elements, seems more ironic than serious, and the film has a great deal of wry humor in it, as did Nabokov’s novel.

Lolita
was one of Riddle’s first film projects, but his work in film and television often took a backseat to his work as an arranger. For eleven years (1950–1961), he acted as “house arranger” for Capitol Records and worked with more than twenty artists in this capacity,
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preparing arrangements for singers like Nat “King” Cole, Frank Sinatra, and Judy Garland.
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He continued to create such arrangements into the 1980s (having particular success with Linda Ronstadt), while working on the occasional television special or film score when time permitted. He was nominated for a number of Academy Awards and took home the statue in 1975 for his adapted score to
The Great Gatsby
.
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A complete discography of his work in film and television is available on his official website.
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Synopsis and Score Description for
Lolita

At the opening of the film, we see a young girl’s feet and hear a lushly orchestrated version of Bob Harris’s love theme. While hands reach out to paint the toenails the theme is played by “piano and strings in a warmly romantic vein with more than a hint of the Rachmaninov used throughout
Brief Encounter
.”
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The choice of the visual for the opening is suggestive of the intimacy between Humbert and Lolita without being obvious. It also implies transformation and artifice and Humbert’s active role in Lolita’s transformation from child to “nymphet.”
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The music begins low in the orchestra and gradually moves up through an arpeggio—that travels seamlessly through the orchestra—until it blossoms into the theme, played on piano with string accompaniment. Lolita’s foot rests gently on Humbert’s hand—which wears a wedding ring. As we reach the end of the credit sequence, the music swells on Nabokov’s card and on James Harris’s as well. Kubrick’s card arrives just as the music resolves on its final cadence, and Humbert begins to paint the last toenail.

The credits and song end, and Humbert drives down a foggy road to Clare Quilty’s house. Upon entering, Quilty’s theme begins, a dissonant yet carousel-like tune on the organ and dulcimer (with tense strings in the background), to which Humbert adds a harp glissando (he sees a harp in the room and runs his fingers along it). The mansion is odd and disorienting to Humbert, who stumbles around in the mess, knocking over discarded bottles and glasses. The music, which is without a central home pitch, seems to represent both the disarray of the house and Humbert’s confusion. At Humbert’s call, Quilty appears from under a sheet. When asked if he is Quilty, he responds, “No, I’m Spartacus.” This is obviously an ad lib from the brilliant Peter Sellers, who plays Quilty. Perhaps because of Peter Sellers, or because Kubrick wanted to make Quilty’s involvement in the narrative more obvious in the film, Quilty’s role is much expanded from his part in the novel. James Mason’s Humbert Humbert is grief stricken, and confused enough to play a brief game of Ping-Pong with Quilty before pulling a gun. The underscore fades out and disappears for the rest of this scene, except for Quilty’s brief stint at the piano, in which he plays the opening of Chopin’s Polonaise op. 40, no. 1 (“Military”). He claims to have recently written the piece and suggests that Humbert help him come up with lyrics for it so that they might share in the profits if the song makes it to the hit parade. After suggesting some insipid lyrics about the moon being blue, Quilty throws a bottle at Humbert and attempts to run up the stairs.

Humbert shoots Quilty, at first in the leg but then fatally, after Quilty hides behind a painting. This has the practical purpose of saving the audience from seeing Quilty’s death (and certainly must have pleased the ratings board), but also allows Humbert to attack the artifice, to shoot the artificial image of Quilty who fooled and eluded him in the previous years.

The title card “Four Years Earlier” and the subsequent shot of a plane flying over New York are accompanied by jaunty traveling music. Once Humbert arrives in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, at the home of Charlotte Haze, the music disappears. The next cue features a pop song that was written by Riddle and Harris called “Lolita Ya-Ya.” This song, in various versions, forms the main theme for the first part of the narrative. Charlotte Haze has been trying to charm her potential lodger while showing him around the house. She seems to be oblivious to his discomfort and distaste for her, but he politely asks for her phone number (so that he might “think it over”) and reluctantly agrees to see the garden. It is there that Humbert and the audience first see Lolita. She is iconic in her bikini, large sun hat, and sunglasses. She sits on a blanket, reading a book, and when Humbert sees her, he seems entranced by her young beauty. “Lolita Ya-Ya” is sourced from the transistor radio that sits on the blanket beside her. Charlotte asks her to turn down the music, which she does, allowing Humbert and Charlotte to talk about the rent. Pulling off her sunglasses (not the heart-shaped glasses from the movie poster, but ones in a more cat-eye shape), Lolita wordlessly regards Humbert and Charlotte for the rest of the scene. This is the song that plays as Humbert begins his subtle seduction of Lolita.

“Lolita Ya-Ya” was recorded as a single, featuring Sue Lyon, the actress who played Lolita, on vocals. The catchy bubble gum pop song was likely meant as ironic counterpoint to Humbert’s high-class taste in art and literature.
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In Riddle’s biography, Levinson explains that the song “perfectly captured the humor of Humbert’s lust for the teenybopper” but also provided satirical commentary on the insipid simplicity of contemporary popular music.
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Despite the irony, “Lolita Ya-Ya” enjoyed some success as a single.
Cash Box
(a competitor to
Billboard
magazine) gave “Lolita Ya-Ya” a B+ calling it a “cute item from the upcoming ‘Lolita’ flick. . . . [It] is presented with an enjoyable sprightly rock-a-cha touch by the full ork and chanting chorus. Catchy cut.” Lyon also sang the B side of that 45 rpm record, “Turn Off the Moon,” which was composed by Harris with lyrics by Al Stillman (Stillman wrote lyrics for many hit songs, including “Chances Are,” made famous by Johnny Mathis).
Cash Box
gave it a B.
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The absurdity of the song might strike the older viewer—its only lyrics are “ya ya wo wo ya ya”—but this quality magnifies the improbability of Humbert’s having happened upon a house in Ramsdale in which a nymphet lives.
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Although it is not discussed or addressed in the film, the Humbert of the novel offers an explanation from his past as an excuse for his love of nymphets. He is not attracted to nymphets
because of
Lolita; she is merely the quintessential example of the elusive nymphet he first saw in his young love, Annabel Leigh.
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Nabokov took pains to include information about Annabel in the screenplay, using a few precious pages to describe the relationship between young Humbert and Annabel.
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A brief scene follows in which we see a sequence from the horror film
The Curse of Frankenstein
(1957) in which the monster tears off the bandages on his face, revealing the deformed visage underneath. (Perhaps Humbert is a monster in a mask?) Charlotte and Lolita flank Humbert in the front seat of the car at the drive-in. Each woman grabs one of Humbert’s hands during a scary moment, Humbert’s hand wriggling out of Charlotte’s grip to comfort Lolita. The moment turns even more awkward as Charlotte reaches out for Humbert and accidentally grabs Lolita’s hand instead. The film cue has its own music, which comes to a neat end at the close of the scene. The music for the clip was likely written by Riddle, although it matches very closely with James Bernard’s score from the original film. Riddle’s cue has louder stings and is in general more dynamic, a quality that helps suggest what is happening on the movie screen, since we are watching Charlotte, Lolita, and Humbert for most of the scene. “Lolita Ya-Ya” next appears a minute later as Charlotte and Humbert play chess. Lolita kisses Humbert goodnight, and Charlotte seems to like playing house with him. The song continues through the next scene as Lolita is hula-hooping, Humbert surreptitiously peering over his book at her.

When the ersatz family of Charlotte, Humbert, and Lolita attends the summer dance, the music is sourced on-screen with a live band. Lolita dances with a boy named Kenny to Nelson Riddle’s song “There’s No You.” Charlotte tells Humbert that Lolita and Kenny might begin going steady that evening, to Humbert’s dismay. Charlotte’s friends Jean and John Farlow arrive and say hello. The band’s next song is a more up-tempo number called on the soundtrack “Quilty’s Caper.” Charlotte spots Quilty dancing with a sour-faced dark haired woman and cuts in. Despite having had a brief fling with Charlotte, Quilty must be reminded who she is, but then remembers that she has a daughter with a “lovely, lyrical, lilting name.” In his screenplay, Nabokov describes Quilty as “a tremendously successful phony.”
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Quilty, Charlotte reminds us, is an artist. He is able to see pretense, because pretense and artifice are the currency of the artist.
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After her awkward exchange with Quilty, Charlotte, who has conspired with the Farlows to get Lolita out of the house for the evening, attempts to get Humbert alone. Riddle’s song “Put Your Dreams Away” plays in the background as Charlotte convinces Humbert to return home without Lolita, who has been invited to the Farlows’. At the Haze house, Charlotte turns on some music, a cue on the soundtrack called “Shelly Winters Cha Cha,” so that she might dance with Humbert. (Nabokov had specifically mentioned a cha-cha in his screenplay; it is one of the few details that Kubrick retained.) Her attempts to seduce him are made in earnest but seem ridiculous, especially in the presence of the music. The final “cha cha cha” of the song happens just as Lolita arrives back unexpectedly. This spoils Charlotte’s plan, and she and Lolita argue. When Lolita finally goes to bed, Humbert quickly decides to go to bed as well, to Charlotte’s bitter disappointment.

For a scene in which Humbert and Charlotte eat dinner, and in which she explains that Lolita will be attending camp for the rest of the summer, Riddle has provided subtle and quiet “Music to Eat By.” The following morning, Lolita, who is about to leave for camp, runs into Humbert’s arms to the surging music of the love theme. This is its first appearance since the opening credits. It continues after her departure (she tells him, “Don’t forget me,” just as she runs off) as Humbert goes into Lolita’s room and sits on her bed. The maid delivers a note from Charlotte, which Humbert reads aloud. It is her confession of love for him. He laughs at it, and the music is again the ironic counterpoint; the love theme does not play for Humbert and Charlotte. It is meant for Humbert and Lolita. He will do anything to be with Lolita, even marry her mother. In the next scene, some time has passed and Charlotte and Humbert have already returned from their honeymoon. On this particular morning, they argue, and Charlotte reads Humbert’s diary, in which he has detailed his feelings about Lolita. He tries to calm Charlotte down with a drink, with Riddle’s subtle ominous underscore underneath. The cue is called, appropriately, “The Last Martini,” because the phone rings, informing Humbert that Charlotte, who has run out of the house, has been hit by a car and killed.

As Humbert lounges in the bathtub with a drink some time later, “Lolita Ya-Ya” re-appears. It plays through the scene as the Farlows come to offer their condolences. They are very upset, and become even more so when they see a loaded gun (which had belonged to Charlotte) in the bathroom. Thinking he is contemplating suicide, they tell him he must go on for Lolita’s sake. The music, going through various, ever-higher modulations, glosses over the funeral and brings us right to the moment in which Humbert picks up Lolita from Camp Climax. It fades out for a moment, to allow the dialogue between Humbert and Charlie (with whom Lolita confesses to have been “revoltingly unfaithful”), but begins again soon, and continues playing as they drive in the car as if the song were on the radio. The atmosphere remains light because Humbert tells Lolita only that Charlotte isn’t well, not that she has died.