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Listen, Mac. You're drunk, and I'm a sick man. This pistol-packing farce is becoming a sort of nuisance.
~ Clare Quilty to Humbert Humbert before Humbert shoots him – Lolita, 1962
Quilty: Where the devil did you get her?

Humbert: I beg your pardon?
Quilty: I said, "The weather's getting better."
Humbert: Seems so.
Quilty: Who's the lassie?
Humbert: Um; my daughter.
Quilty: You lie, she is not.
Humbert: What?
Quilty: I said "July was hot."

~ Clare Quilty unsettles Humbert Humbert – Lolita, 1997.

Clare Quilty is the main antagonist of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial 1955 novel Lolita.

Clare is a sexually deviant playwright and protagonist Humbert Humbert's main rival for the affections of the title character, 12-year-old Dolores "Lolita" Haze.

In Stanley Kubrick's 1962 film adaptation of the novel, Quilty was portrayed by the late Peter Sellers, who also portrayed the title character in Kubrick's later film Dr. Strangelove. In Adrien Lyne's 1997 film adaptation, he was portrayed by Frank Langella, who also portrayed Bob Alexander in Dave, Boris Balkan in The Ninth Gate, Rodney Cole in Unknown, Dawg Brown in Cutthroat Island, and Skeletor in The Masters of the Universe live-action film.

Biography[]

Quilty-1997-01

Quilty unsettling Humbert - Lolita, 1997

Clare Quilty is a playwright and a friend (and former lover) of Charlotte Haze, the mother of Dolores "Lolita" Haze.

Quilty meets Charlotte's husband, Humbert Humbert, a closet pedophile who is obsessed with Dolores, during the party hosted by Charlotte. During the party, Clare is seen dancing with Vivian Darkbloom and trying to avoid Charlotte's awkward flirtation.

Quilty-1997-02

Quilty lurking in the shadows - Lolita, 1997

Humbert meets Clare again after Charlotte's death, at a hotel where he has taken Dolores, intending to rape her. They have a brief conversation in which Quilty insinuates that he knows of Humbert's true intentions. After Humbert and Dolores become lovers and move to a new town, Quilty follows them. He poses as Dr. Zempf, the resident psychologist at Dolores' school, to manipulate Humbert into letting Dolores be in the school play - which, in an apparent coincidence, was written by Quilty.

After the play's opening night, Humbert discovers Dolores with a boy, and he angrily takes her home. On the way, Dolores asks to make a phone call, and Humbert allows it, unaware that she is calling Quilty. She and Humbert move to another town, where Dolores apparently falls ill and has to go to a hospital. Humbert goes to visit her, only to find that she has been discharged by a man claiming to be her father. He immediately realizes that Dolores and Quilty have run away together, but when he tries to go after them, he discovers that their trail has gone cold.

Quilty-1997-03

Quilty manipulating Humbert - Lolita, 1997

Years later, Humbert receives a letter from Dolores, who reveals to him that she is married and pregnant with her husband's child. Humbert visit Dolores to gave her money and beg her to come back to him, but she refuses. When Humbert asks her why she ran away, she tells him that Quilty took her away by promising to make her a star, only to try to force her to perform in filmed child pornography; when she refused, he kicked her out. Humbert resolves to kill Quilty for what he has done.

Quilty-1997-04

Quilty shot dead - Lolita, 1997

Humbert shows up at Quilty's house, which is in disarray after a wild party the night before. Quilty staggers into his living room, so hung over that he does not at first even realize that Humbert is there. While he eventually sees Humbert, he does not recognize him, thinking that he is merely a straggler from the party. When Humbert reads Quilty a poem he wrote taking him to task for abusing Dolores, Quilty feigns interest until Humbert recites the last line, "You must die", and produces a gun. Terrified, Quilty first tries to laugh it aside as a joke, and then pleads innocence before finally attempting to flee. Nevertheless, Humbert catches up to him and shoots him dead, a crime for which he goes to prison, where he soon dies himself.

Gallery[]

Trivia[]

  • For the 1962 film, Sellers based Quilty's voice on that of the film's director, Stanley Kubrick.
  • With Kubrick's permission and encouragement, Sellers improvised in front of the camera which presumably led to the various disguises Quilty used to stalk Humbert and Lolita.
  • When James Mason, who played Humbert Humbert, realized that Sellers was stealing the film with his performance, he said that he should have taken the part of Clare Quilty himself instead of Humbert.
  • In the 1997 remake, director Adrian Lyne kept a full-frontal-nude-shot of Frank Langella. The actor was furious when he found out belatedly, and still gets quite embarrassed when this particular scene is mentioned in interviews.
  • Originally, French actor Gérard Depardieu was considered for the part of Clare Quilty in the 1997 film before Langella was cast.

External Links[]

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