What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so. And only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script.-James Mason as Humbert Humbert, Lolita 1962
Lolita was considered to be a very controversial film when it came out in 1962. During that time there wasn't a lot of lenience in the MPAA. When the film Lolita is mentioned, it is fairly common to assume it is a movie about pedophilia. In reality, nothing further from the truth, Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel is one of the most gripping depictions of love and its tragic consequences. While researching about this adaptation of the film, I found that the censors were threatening to give it an 'X' rating if the film showed any sexuality or expressions of sexuality between the middle-aged Humbert Humbert and young teenager Lolita. The movie was also deemed so inappropriate and obscene when it was finally filmed and screened, that actress Sue Lyon (Lolita) wasn't even allowed into the movie premiere of Lolita because she was under age.
Lolita is a great film, and is a window to Stanley Kubrick's talent and genius as a film maker. The acting is sensational in Lolita with extraordinary performances all around. James Mason is marvelous in the lead role as the conflicted Humbert Humbert. Mason perhaps provides one of the most powerful and hard to play roles in his career. Oscar winner and screen legend Shelly Winters is undeniably brilliant as Charlotte Haze. Winters really does a lot with her role, and she stands out in the scenes she's in. It's amazing that she didn't even get an Academy Award nomination for her role as the oblivious and pitiful Charlotte Haze. Sue Lyon is immortalized as the nymphet Lolita and just projects this image of innocence and sexuality that is amazing.
The story is tragic is evident from the prologue, where an Englishman, Humbert Humbert coldly executes the whimsical Clare Quilty after asking him if he remembers a certain Dolores "Lolita" Haze and what he did to her. Mason's character then starts narrating the events preceding the murder four years ago. Lolita, based on novel by Vladimir Nobokov (who also provided the film's screenplay), follows a middle-aged novelist, Humbert Humbert who is looking for a place to rent out for a couple months while he begins writing his new novel. He eventually finds a place, a house with a room up for rent. The house belongs to Charlotte Haze, a middle-aged widow who has an eye for Humbert, but that's the problem. Charlotte has a fourteen-year-old daughter (Lolita’s age in the novel is twelve but in the film she is fourteen) whom Humbert becomes immediately madly obsessed with. Humbert eventually marries Charlotte, only to get close to Lolita. Charlotte is oblivious to this, and Humbert and Lolita start up a relationship and Humbert becomes even more in love with Lolita. Humbert convinces himself that life can always continue this way, but he has some competition with Charlotte's ex-boyfriend, a famous television game show host, Clare Quilty, who is also obsessed with young Lolita.
The real stand-out of the film is, Peter Sellers. He was perfect for the role of the sex-hungry Clare Quilty. Instead of playing the tricky pedophile with sick and creepy air, he takes a risk and plays his role in a comedic way and with a sense of likableness, that only an actor like Sellers could do. Peter Sellers was one of his time's greatest actors, and he really steals every scene he is featured in.
Vladimir Nobokov's screenplay is wonderfully well-written and was faithful to his novel, and Stanley Kubrick's brilliant direction is nothing short of meticulous. The film is neat, beautiful, and bold.
The film has shortcomings though. It is very long, and there are some dry scenes here and there. Another weakness is that Kubrick refused to shoot outside of his new homeland, England, and only some skimpy second-unit shots are used to convey the sense of motion across the United States. The novel describes perfectly some quotidian images from American: a red neon sign in the shape of a coffee pot blinking on and off, the shadows of poplar leaves across a small town in the afternoon sunshine. All this local color is missing from the movie.
Kubrick implies but never shows anything between Humbert and Lolita, leaving it to the viewer to decide if they have engagede in a sexual relationship or not. It could be something perverse, or it could just be a normal father-daughter connection, only with the father being a little more protective than usual. This is also why the bond between Humbert and Lolita is more affecting than expected. However bizarre the professor's behavior may seem, his feelings are sincere. He is not portrayed as a monster who is compulsively drawn to underage girls, he just happened to fall for one and Mason portrays this weird mentality with a tenderness that nearly makes one forget how "wrong" the whole premise is supposed to be. Lyon as Lolita transforms from promiscuous sex-kitten to loving stepdaughter with such conviction that is rarely seen in such a young actress, making the passage look natural and unforced.
In the end, as always with Kubrick, this film demands reviewing because there is something new that the viewer didn't notice the first time. In the case of Lolita, the main pleasure derives from how the story is told. Sometimes films about love and sex are much better without any explicit scenes, the multiple interpretations making them fresh and re-watchable decades after they were first released.
The complaints about the bit of slapstick when the hotel porter brings a folding cot to Humbert's room and the two men try to unfold it without waking the sleeping Lolita. It's been criticized by some as not fitting the template, but I think it fits perfectly with the tone of the film. The situation itself is absurd: Humbert is grimly determined to seduce Lolita while at the same time drifting in and out of sleep. In the novel the scene is hilarious and poetic at the same time. Humbert lies next to Lolita and listens to the night noises of the hotel, the clattering elevator, the guy in the next room puking up his liquor into the toilet, the loud ladies in the hallway; and if you can't have those prose jokes you can at least have a hotel porter bonked on the head by a cot that insists on folding itself back together. The novel is richly comic and Kubrick's movie comes close to capturing some of its humor as well as the poignency.
Reviewed by Rainey
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