June
2006
#246 of Rico’s 256 Favorite Films: Lolita (1962) - Stanley Kubrick2
The first time I watched Lolita I did not know it was a Kubrick film, but it only took me 10 minutes to realize it was. His unique style shined through as nobody else from that era worked the camera like he could.
The film is about novelist Humbert Humbert, played by James Mason, whom falls in love with a 16-year-old girl named Lolita (Sue Lyon). He can’t let his feelings for the girl be known, but he desperately wants to stay near her. So he marries her mother Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). Humbert believes he has everything figured out, but then an odd man named Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) rolls into town and proceeds to ruin everything.
The subject matter may not be most comfortable to watch, but I assure you the movie is never graphic. Just a few innuendos and some jokes you may feel a bit guilty laughing at, but it never goes overboard. Much was left to the imagination.
It’s hardly fashionable anymore to suggest that the child in this situation is anything but a victim. But Nabokov (the author of the book) and Kubrick make it quite clear that Lolita is as much predator as prey. She uses Humbert, just as much as he uses her. The most tragic aspect of the story is that Humbert is truly in love with her, and his taboo obsession with the nymphet is what dooms him.
While the film centers on Humbert’s and Lolita’s relationship, it is Winters and Sellers that steal the show. Winters’ character desperately wants to be loved, so she throws herself at who she thinks is a respectable man. Her joy turns to jealousy and anger as she realizes she is not the one he loves. Sellers is simply hilarious as the man that tries to steal Lolita away. His character takes on different personalities, and serves as a preview for the excellent work he did later in Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.”
