Vladimir Nabokov
Birth : 1899-04-22, Saint Petersburg, Russia
Death : 1977-07-02
History
Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (1899-1977) was a Russian-born multilingual novelist, poet, translator, critic and entomologist considered the foremost of the post-1917 émigré authors. Born in Imperial Russia in 1899, Nabokov wrote his first nine novels in Russian while living in Berlin. He achieved international acclaim and prominence after moving to the United States, where he began writing in English. Nabokov was a professor of Russian literature at Cornell University from 1948 to 1959, before returning to Europe in 1961, where he settled in Montreux, Switzerland.
Beginning with King, Queen, Knave (1928), his writing began to feature intricate stylistic devices. His novels are principally concerned with the problem of art itself, presented in various disguises, as in Invitation to a Beheading (1938). Parody is frequent in The Gift (1937–38) and later works. His novels written in English include the notorious best seller Lolita (1955), which brought him wealth and international fame; Pale Fire (1962); and Ada (1969). His episodic novel about an émigré professor of Russian in the United States, Pnin (1957), is to some extent based on his experiences as a literature professor. His critical works include a monumental translation of and commentary on Aleksandr Pushkin’s Evgeny Onegin.
Self - Writer (archive footage)
A fresh new look at Lolita, the famous and controversial novel published in 1955 by Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov (1891-1977), a masterpiece of English-language literature that has been constantly misinterpreted by countless readers who have mistakenly turned its young heroine into an erotic icon.
Self (archive footage)
About the Gabriel Matzneff affair and pedophilia in French culture and society from the 1950s to the present day. "It was not very difficult to know who Matzneff was at the time." Vanessa Springora denounces thus, in an interview with the Parisian , the support which benefited the writer Gabriel Matzneff , in the years 1970 and 1980. The author fifties then maintains an affair with the young girl, aged 14 years. A relationship under control that the editor tells in Le Consentement (éd. Grasset), published Thursday. "After having analyzed the work " , the Paris public prosecutor's office announced Friday January 3 the opening of an investigation for "rapes committed on the person of a minor of 15 years".
Story
A game of destiny or cosmic justice?
Story
The Second World War is over. But after each war the human destinies are left. This film is about two of them. The former officer of the Wehrmacht. The former prisoner of the Nazi concentration camp.
Book
Workaholic geologist Timothy Deveraux is estranged from his wife, psychotherapist Antoinette. She seduces the big doctor, Dr. Sam Long, before telling him that she is married. The two share a close bond with ecological conservation, so when an arson incident comes up, Timothy feels compelled to destroy the mining company of his new Australian employer.
Writer
Novel
The action of a controversial novel "Lolita", of the famous Russian writer Vladimir Nabokov, reset to present day Russia. A mother and her daughter are running short of money and are thankful that they could rent a room to a writer. The mother is lonely and the daughter is coming of age. The mother immediately gets in love with him, which causing to the daughter a terrible jealousy. And then the daughter chooses the most unfailing weapon - she tries to discourage him from her mother. She tries to get his attention by parading around without panties, asking his help with her shower, and rubbing up against him and flashing him whenever her mother is not looking. She is even trying to convince her mom, that since she is becoming a woman, that he should teach her some of the finer points of love. Could the grown man resist the charms of a 14 year-old nymphet?
Writer
In a Berlin rooming house filled with an assortment of seriocomic Russian émigrés, Lev Ganin, a vigorous young officer poised between his past and his future, relives his first love affair. His memories of Mary are suffused with the freshness of youth and the idyllic ambience of pre-revolutionary Russia. In stark contrast is the decidedly unappealing boarder living in the room next to Ganin's, who, he discovers, is Mary's husband, temporarily separated from her by the Revolution but expecting her imminent arrival from Russia.
Writer
Based upon the novel by Vladimir Nabokov, a chess grandmaster travels to Italy in the 1920s to play in a tournament and falls in love.
Story
Follows an extraordinary weekend in the not-so-extraordinary life of Jinho. The story unravels around the fatalistic pattern of our meek hero's existence-where a chance meeting with the devil offers Jinho an escape hatch to his daily humdrum, and a shot at his greatest fantasy: a night of unbridled passion with all the women of his choosing as his personal sex slaves. Jinho's shy and idiosyncratic character, however, belie the true greed and foolery of his own desires-and steeped in his "Sysphus-esque" lack of self-knowledge, he falls prey to the glitter of the forbidden fruit.
Novel
Urbane professor Humbert Humbert marries a New England widow to be near her nymphet daughter.
Writer
About a young boy growing up to become a great artist. Set basically in St. Petersburg and a country dacha in Vyra during the aftermath of the 1905 Russian Revolution.
Novel
Film adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's debut novel, 'Mary'.
Novel
Berlin, 1930, during the rise of Nazism. Hermann Hermann, a Russian emigrant and chocolate manufacturer, married to the capricious Lydia, loses his temper more and more every day when dealing with his workers and other businessmen; until he meets Felix, a vagrant, who seems to be physically identical to him; a disconcerting fact that leads Hermann Hermann to plot a particular way out of a fake world he actually hates.
Novel
Cincinnatus C., a thirty-year-old teacher, has been found guilty of the crime "gnostical turpitude", and will be executed in twenty days time.
Writer
Based on a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, this English-language satirical drama details the experiences of Frank (John Moulder Brown), a young orphan who finds himself deep in the romantic clutches of his uncle's sensual wife. After Frank's parents die, he goes to live with his aunt Martha (Gina Lollabrigida) and uncle Charles (David Niven). Sexy Martha entices Frank into her embrace then wants him to kill her husband so that they can live off of his money. Frank wouldn't mind so much, but he really likes his uncle.
Novel
In a fictitious European city known as Padukgrad, where a government arises following the rise of a philosophy known as "Ekwilism", which discourages the idea of anyone being different from anyone else, and promotes the state as the prominent good in society.
Writer
Swinging London in the 1960's. Deals with the affection of a middle-aged man for a very young woman, resulting in a mutually parasitic relationship.
Novel
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
Screenplay
Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.
Cameo (uncredited)
With an international chess tournament in progress, a young man becomes completely obsessed with the game. His fiancée has no interest in it, and becomes frustrated and depressed by his neglect of her, but wherever she goes she finds that she cannot escape chess. On the brink of giving up, she meets the world champion, Capablanca himself, with interesting results.
Novel
A young theater usherette and her former lover devise a scheme to emotionally and financially destroy a wealthy art dealer.
