The camera obscura translated from Latin - "dark room." The nature of the amazing optical phenomenon underlies this ancient prototype of the camera. This is an absolutely insulated box with a tiny hole in one of the walls through which an inverted image of what is located outside is projected onto the opposite wall.
Camera obscura ... Nabokov used it as a central metaphor in the 1933 novel, bearing the same name.
The action takes place in Berlin at the end of the twenties. With a successful specialist in the field of art, and in particular painting, Bruno Kretschmar there was a banal story - he was swallowed by a passion for sixteen-year-old Magda, a girl from a dysfunctional family with a dark past. The feeling so captured him that he leaves the family, leaving his wife and daughter.
After the wife of Annelise gives way to her husband's young mistress, the couple moves to live in the house of Krechmar. In addition, Bruno invests money in a dubious film project in which Magda receives a secondary role.
Soon, Magda accidentally meets the first lover who once left her, a young cartoonist Gorn, to whom he is still indifferent. She begins to secretly meet with Gorn, deceiving, but still using the money of Kretschmar, especially since the thirty-year-old Gorn has no money, but a lot of debts.
Krechmar and Magda go on a car trip to Europe, and Horn rides with them as a driver. They continue to cynically deceive Bruno, lulling his jealousy with the false homosexuality of the cartoonist.
Soon, Krechmar accidentally learns about the betrayal of Magda and, in a fit of jealous rage, tries to kill her. The girl reassures him, but Bruno insists on an immediate departure, without waiting for Horn. On the road, Kretschmar does not cope with the management, which becomes the cause of the accident, in which Bruno goes blind.
Horn wrote a hurt letter to Bruno, in which he once again confirmed his homosexuality and said that he was going to America, although in fact he continued the journey with Magda and Kretschmar. After discharge from the hospital, blind Bruno is prescribed by doctors to rest, which is what the criminal duo uses. They rent a mansion in Switzerland, in a mountainous remote area, and the three of them live in it, and the presence of the Horn is a mystery to the blind Bruno.
As all senses, including hearing, become aggravated, Kretschmar has painful suspicions, but Magda and Horn cynically mock him. Exhausted and crazy with jealousy, Bruno saves Max, brother-in-law. He returns him to Berlin to his first wife Annelise, who still loves him.
But upon learning that Magda was arriving in Berlin for things, Kretschmar, offended by her treason, was trying to kill her. Magda takes the gun away from him, a shot sounds during a short fight, and Bruno falls dead.
Inspired by an artistic experiment, Vladimir Nabokov (The Obscura Camera) tried to create a work devoid of edification and moralizing, which is not characteristic of literary works of Russian literature. The author coldly and impartially depicts a distorted perception of a hero seized with passion.
The first meeting of the heroes took place in the velvet dusk of the cinema. The light of the flashlight fragmentarily snatched either the gleam of an eye or the softly outlined cheek of a girl, which reminded him of the painting of old masters. Do not forget that Kretschmar is an art critic.
The dark hall of the cinema - this is the camera obscura hero. Being in the wrong world, turned upside down, he is forced to obey his distorted logic. Sensual blindness lasts so long that, in the end, it turns into physical blindness. Remaining blind literally, Kretschmar, whom the camera obscura released only before his death, finally “saw” the world as it is.