Ludger Tolksdorf: "Fifty years ago to the day, the German
weekly DER SPIEGEL ran an intriguing news item that must have been intended for
April Fool's Day:
VLADIMIR NABOKOV, 62, US professor of literature and
novelist (“Lolita”), has written the screenplay for a film by director and
Bardot ex-husband Roger Vadim, based on the Proust novel “The Walk by
Swann’s Place”. ...I would have liked to see that film!
JM: The reference to Vadim and Bardot was familiar and I
managed to locate it in "Strong, Opinions," Vintage International p. 162.
Probably there are other details about the project involving
Vadim elsewhere ( In Brian Boyd's biography - most certainly)
Interviewer: "I recall that nothing came of yet
another option on Laughter in the Dark when the producer engaged Roger
Vadim, circa 1960 - Bardot as Margot? - and of course the novel finally reached
the no-longer silent screen in 1969, under the direction of Tony Richardson,
adapted by Edward Bond, and starring Nicol Williamson and Anna Karina
(interesting name, that), the setting changed from old Berlin to Richardson's
own mod London. I assume that you saw the movie."
Nabokov: Yes, I did. That name is interesting. In
the novel there is a film in which my heroine is given a small part, and I would
like my readers to brood over my singular power of prophecy, for the name of the
leading lady (Dorianna Karenina) in the picture invented by me in 1931
prefigured that of the actress (Anna Karina) who was to play Margot forty years
later in the film Laughter in the Dark, which I views at a private
screening in Montreux."
The idea of Nabokov writing the screen-play for "The Walk by Swann's Place"
is tittilating enough! Worth watching... Great "April Fool's Day" hoax (in
March?)