Lolita
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Movie Reviews of Lolita
Movie Review: Diluted Cautionary Tale Benefits from Smart Casting and Kubrick's Cinematic Élan
Summary: 4 Stars
There's always been a pall of prurience over Vladimir Nabokov's classic 1955 novel, and although the prurience was dialed down to mere naughtiness in the 1962 film adaptation, there is still that discomforting feeling of watching two pedophiliacs chasing after a very young girl. However, master director Stanley Kubrick wisely left out the book's more controversial aspects and entrusted the audience to use their fervent imaginations to fill in the action. This explains why the title character, a twelve-year-old nymphet in the book, has turned into a fifteen-year old screen siren played by an already anatomically developed, throaty-voiced Sue Lyon. The switch neutralizes some of the dramatic impact, but fortunately, Kubrick was able to elicit a quartet of fine performances to carry the story. Even though Nabokov is credited with the screenplay, Kubrick made a number of revisions to clarify the narrative flow and appease the censors. The result is far too long at 153 minutes, but it's still provocatively entertaining as it alternates between funny and eccentric. It's well worth seeing the caliber of Kubrick's cinematic work between 1960's Spartacus and 1964's Dr. Strangelove or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb.
The film opens with a shooting which we soon realize is the story's inevitable climax. After that, we flash back four years to the arrival of Professor Humbert Humbert in a small town in New Hampshire. A middle-aged British lecturer of French poetry, he has accepted a teaching job in Ohio for the fall and wants to relax in what he envisions to be a quiet setting for the summer. Humbert rents a room from Charlotte Haze, a blowsy, fortyish widow with immediate designs on him. However, his eye is drawn to her sexy, flirtatious daughter Lolita. Things go awry when Humbert decides to marry Charlotte to be near Lolita. When his true motivation is discovered, tragedy occurs, and Humbert and Lolita set out on a most acrimonious road trip to Ohio. Complications multiply with the periodic appearances of writer Claire Quilty, who also faces temptation with Lolita. For those unfamiliar with the novel, the story takes a surprising twist toward the end.
As Humbert, James Mason has the riskiest role, but he effectively manages to convey a dangerous sense of obsession throughout the film. Although his character is basically despicable, Mason still elicits a modicum of sympathy for his perverse weakness. Sue Lyon, fourteen during filming, not only looks right but also brings the necessary combination of precocious confidence and childish selfishness to the title role. You can see echoes of their taboo relationship between Lester and Angela in Sam Mendes' American Beauty. Donning a variety of disguises as Quilty and sporting a flat American accent, Peter Sellers easily steals all his scenes with comic malevolence. The surprising standout is Shelley Winters' performance as Charlotte. Instead of overdoing the character's desperation as you would normally expect from the actress' outsized persona, she is comparatively subtle in conveying Charlotte's needy nature. The only significant extra with the 2007 DVD is the original theatrical trailer which plays up the book's controversy.
Movie Review: Not the Novel, but a Good Film
Summary: 4 Stars
Maybe I'm more favorably disposed toward this film because I have no loyalty at all toward the novel. I had to put down the book, never to return, after the hotel scene in which Humbert screws his 12-year-old stepdaughter. That may be a vulgar way of putting it, but one of things I disliked about the novel was how the ugly facts of pedophila and child molestation got embellished in long passages of thick purple prose, the suffocating inner workings of Humbert's sick mind, which may ultimately have been the writer's objective but I found the whole premise too repulsive to continue.
As noted in another review here, Kubrick takes us out of Humbert's mind and observes Humbert objectively in context with others. And his Lolita is older than Nabokov's, looking more like 16, and acting like a wily and precocious femme fatale who makes fools of men of all ages. And since the men act like fools, it's natural that this would become a comedy, albeit a dark one. I can appreciate reviewers who object to the inclusion of Peter Sellers' shtick because it tends to trivialize the tone of the film; the bit with Sellers as the cliched Austrian psychoanalyst was maybe too TV, though the juxtaposition of this Goon Show-like character and Mason's carefully mannered, uptight Humbert was truly funny, especially the expression on Mason's face--almost as though he was thinking, "Kubrick, what the hell is going on here??". I think that Kubrick used Sellers to much better effect later in "Dr. Strangelove", which may have been the result of his experimenting with Sellers in "Lolita".
Anyway, on the whole the performances are good and there are great comedic moments. There is a tragic feel toward the end of the film as we see Humbert's pathetic attempts to maintain and protect his idealized life with Lolita as it rapidly falls apart, and Mason delivers a standout performance of this.
So, see the film on its own terms, don't expect the novel, and enjoy.
Movie Review: Does the novel justice
Summary: 4 Stars
I think Nabokov's Lolita is one of the greatest novels of all time, and Kubrick's film version does the book ample justice. James Mason is sublime as Humbert Humbert - an intellectual old world European emigre who finds himself in 1950s America on a professorship. His patrician aloofness rubs against the provincial Charlotte Hayes - a homely woman struggling with a recalcitrant daughter Lolita. The poor woman has no idea the depths of the obsession within Humbert's mind - all swirling high culture and depraved Eros. She gives him space in her house to write, and falls in love with him. Humbert is after something much darker - her brattish, nymphette daughter Lolita, but marries Mrs Hayes in order to maintain contact with the family.
The Nabokov style is encapsulated in the film: 'And when called upon to enjoy my promotion from lodger to lover, did I experience only bitterness and distaste? No. Mr. Humbert confesses to a certain titillation of his vanity, to some faint tenderness, even to a pattern of remorse, daintily running along the steel of his conspiratorial dagger.'
The movie, necessarily can't be as dark as the novel given the subject matter. Lolita is more high school prom queen than true pre-teen. Clare Quilty features as a chameleon rival, played with comic mastery by Peter Sellars. It is a different type of comedy than the novel - more laconic and at times slapstic (the cot in the bedroom scene) than truly dark chocolate subversive. But a Kubrick triumph in any case. And the notoriously hard to please Nabokov thought so too.
Movie Review: 3.5 stars out of 4
Summary: 4 Stars
The Bottom Line:
As long as you don't go into Lolita expecting to see Nabakov's novel put literally on screen, you'll probably be impressed by this fine (if a tad long) adaptation; the acting is top-notch, the B/W cinematography very effective and the conclusion surprisingly poignant
Movie Review: Muy buena!
Summary: 4 Stars
Había escuchado hablar mucho de esta película, pero no había podido verla. Pues bien, por fin la vi y no me decepcionó. Muy buena en todos los sentidos. Grandes actuaciones. La recomiendo.