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very kind. There is a film in which they are at Oxford [A
Chump at Oxford, 1940]. In one scene the two of them are
sitting on a park bench in a labyrinthine garden and the
subsequent happenings conform to the labyrinth. A casual
villain puts his hand through the back of the bench and Laurel,
who is clasping his hands in an idiotic reverie, mistakes the
stranger's hand for one of his own hands, with all kinds of
complications because his own hand is also there. He has to
choose. The choice of a hand.
How many years bas it been since you saw that movie?
Thirty or forty years. [Nabokov then recalled, again in
precise detail, the opening scenes of County Hospital,
1932, in which Stan brings a gift of hardboiled eggs to relieve
the misery of hospitalized Oilie and consumes them himself,
salting them carefully.] More recently, on French TV I saw a
Laurel and Hardy short in which the "dubbers" had the atrocious
taste to have the two men speak fluent French with an English
accent. But I don't even remember if the best Laurel and Hardy
are talkies or not. On the whole, I think what I love about the
silent film is what comes through the mask of the talkies and,
vice versa, talkies are mute in my memory.
Did you only enjoy American films?
No. Dreyer's La Passion de Jeanne d'Arc [1928] was
superb, and I loved the French films of Renй Clair-- Sous
les Toits de Paris [1929], Le Million [1931], А
Nous la Libertй [1931]-- a new world, a new trend in
cinema.
A brilliant but self-effacing critic and scholar bas
described Invitation to a Beheading {1935-36] as
Zamiatin's We restaged by the Marx Brothers. Is it fair