Filmic Turpitude

Why hasn't more of Nabokov's fiction found its way to experimental cinema? Combine the theatricality and visual splendor of everything he wrote with smart, tech-savvy Nabokovians and good things happen. This quarter, on a whim, I told my class they could choose between writing an in-class midterm essay and creating a short film inspired by Nabokov.

Among the episodes that came back to me was Mary Manu's tragicomic stop-action sequence from Invitation to a Beheading, starring the stoical LEGO Cincinnatus C. No heads are severed, but I think the juxtaposition of reality and artifice illustrates Cincinnatus' gnostical turpitude beautifully. You can practically hear the poor grinning LEGO cry (a la Blok), "Help, I am bleeding to death with cranberry juice."