LolitaThere is something consistently uncomfortable about Lolita right from the opening credits, depicting an adult male's hands putting polish on the toenails of a young girl, a plying romantic musical score playing over the sensual act. Uncomfortable, and unnervingly absurd, funny even; and this tone of black comedy and self-aware stylistic tone would become a hallmark of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, evidenced later by his next project, Dr. Strangelove. Lolita forces the audience to experience the mad story of the deranged Humbert Humbert (James Mason) from his perspective, whether we want to or not.
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Lolita is based on the book of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov, and I would say that it is my favorite novel, in which Nabokov provides one of the best examples of an unreliable narrator via Humbert Humbert. (Do you pronounce the surname differently?) In the story--as it is in the film--we are forced into a place where we are made uncomfortable witnesses and unwilling accomplices in our narrator's odyssey through 1950s New England. A foreigner himself from the "old world", Humbert takes a lodging at the home of Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) ultimately with the amoral intention of laying claim to her daughter, the "nymphet" Dolores, a.k.a. "Lolita" (Sue Lyon). Unlike the novel, where Humbert is truly a despicable, unconscionable monster, his counterpart in the 1962 film by Stanley Kubrick comes across as borderline sympathetic and almost seems to be the "normal center" in this crazy, post-war America..."almost" being the operative word. What Kubrick achieves in his portrayal of Humbert is ultimately giving the audience a sense of perspective--Humbert's perspective--to the viewer, so that the world around Humbert looks crazy, when we are well aware that Humbert is still, in the end, a pedophile...at least, that's what's implied. Humbert's view of America is based on his own perceptions of it, as though it were a caricature of americana. This is further made manifest in his romantic wistfulness, perverted by his obsession with the nymphet, Dolores "Lolita" Haze, and the paranoia at losing her that follows. Lolita is all about what is implied, contrasted with what is really being said or done, but the astute viewer will pick up on the thick innuendo and dark comedy intermingled with melodrama. And while the movie is tame by today's standards, the insinuations and tongue-in-cheek euphemisms will leave no shortage of raised eyebrows and snickering. The incomparable Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty gets some of the best suggestive dialogue and double entendres playing a simultaneous slime and seducer who would be at home in a smoking jacket and reading vintage Playboy. Adopting a variety of disguises throughout the film--but he is always Quilty--he seems to be a "glitch" in the story, or some other ephemeral force. Humbert doesn't seem to recognize that Quilty is Quilty, but we do. If our perspective of the film is supposed to be primarily that of Humbert's, why the dramatic irony? Because Humbert's world isn't really exclusively his own, just as it is with anyone, and he sticks like a thorn in his paw, the derailing his twisted dream with Lolita by, ironically, doing the very same thing, stoking his jealousy without his conscious knowledge. And then there is Lolita; Sue Lyon always appears to be wise beyond her years, keenly aware of the situation at hand, and quick to pick up on Humbert's attempts at deception. She may not call him out on his lies all of the time, but that's because she's also a teenager, and knows when to take advantage of a situation when she can.
The dramatic musical score--with the theme by Bob Harris--in Lolita feels somewhat out of place for a comedy; it has more in common with a romantic film, which "technically" Lolita could be construed as, but only in the most demented of ways. The purpose of this is to similarly put us inside the head of the detestable Humbert Humbert, just as Nabokov did with is first-person perspective of the narrator in the novel. This is a sly subversion on Kubrick's part; the camera is taken for granted as a mechanism to provide us an objective perspective, but when we can't trust the narrator in the book, how do you convey that in the film? In short, by turning the world around Humbert into his own delusion, manifest in extreme character portrayals and especially in the music which exemplifies his own sentimentality and perverse fascination with Lolita. Scenes mirror his perception of the world around him, like some earlier scenes upon Humbert's arrival in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, when he first catches sight of the nymphet in repose, Lolita, sunbathing in a bikini, staring back at the perverse old man from behind cat's eye sunglasses. The scenes that follow are quick and light, like a budding romance, with plenty of playful wordplay and double entendre--"cherry pies", indeed--because that is evocative of Humbert's desired perception of his life with Lolita. And as loud and obnoxious as Charlotte Haze can be--notice the clever sight gag when she is yelling about her daughter to the taciturn Humbert while he cracks walnuts--she still shines through as a helpless romantic, lonely, and a widow of a husband somewhat older than herself...shadows of her daughter's trials to come. When Lolita debuted in 1962, the British Board of Film Censors gave the movie an "X" rating--which meant no one under sixteen could see it--and the movie was highly censored during production and afterwards. Lolita represents a notable early example of a film being condemned for corrupting the moral fiber, condoning depravity, and other sweeping claims, by a vocal contingent of the public prior to its inception, and even afterward by those who looked to judge the film and its creators on content without context. While comical, while even occasionally sweet, Lolita does not honestly endear us to Humbert, nor his perversity. We are conscious of Humbert's guilt, because we begin to witness the repercussions of child abuse as we watch Lolita struggle under the oppressive weight of her step-father/molester. Time has been gracious with Lolita, and it is an enjoyable film that tells a story with a moral that also manages to occupy that rare place of being funny and sad, doing more than simply rehashing the novel, but doing what the best adaptations do: putting the story in a different--but equal--perspective.
Recommended for: Literary adaptation buffs, and for people who like a dark comedy and sly melodrama with plenty of coy humor tempered with a sad underpinning of exploited youth.
The dramatic musical score--with the theme by Bob Harris--in Lolita feels somewhat out of place for a comedy; it has more in common with a romantic film, which "technically" Lolita could be construed as, but only in the most demented of ways. The purpose of this is to similarly put us inside the head of the detestable Humbert Humbert, just as Nabokov did with is first-person perspective of the narrator in the novel. This is a sly subversion on Kubrick's part; the camera is taken for granted as a mechanism to provide us an objective perspective, but when we can't trust the narrator in the book, how do you convey that in the film? In short, by turning the world around Humbert into his own delusion, manifest in extreme character portrayals and especially in the music which exemplifies his own sentimentality and perverse fascination with Lolita. Scenes mirror his perception of the world around him, like some earlier scenes upon Humbert's arrival in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, when he first catches sight of the nymphet in repose, Lolita, sunbathing in a bikini, staring back at the perverse old man from behind cat's eye sunglasses. The scenes that follow are quick and light, like a budding romance, with plenty of playful wordplay and double entendre--"cherry pies", indeed--because that is evocative of Humbert's desired perception of his life with Lolita. And as loud and obnoxious as Charlotte Haze can be--notice the clever sight gag when she is yelling about her daughter to the taciturn Humbert while he cracks walnuts--she still shines through as a helpless romantic, lonely, and a widow of a husband somewhat older than herself...shadows of her daughter's trials to come. When Lolita debuted in 1962, the British Board of Film Censors gave the movie an "X" rating--which meant no one under sixteen could see it--and the movie was highly censored during production and afterwards. Lolita represents a notable early example of a film being condemned for corrupting the moral fiber, condoning depravity, and other sweeping claims, by a vocal contingent of the public prior to its inception, and even afterward by those who looked to judge the film and its creators on content without context. While comical, while even occasionally sweet, Lolita does not honestly endear us to Humbert, nor his perversity. We are conscious of Humbert's guilt, because we begin to witness the repercussions of child abuse as we watch Lolita struggle under the oppressive weight of her step-father/molester. Time has been gracious with Lolita, and it is an enjoyable film that tells a story with a moral that also manages to occupy that rare place of being funny and sad, doing more than simply rehashing the novel, but doing what the best adaptations do: putting the story in a different--but equal--perspective.
Recommended for: Literary adaptation buffs, and for people who like a dark comedy and sly melodrama with plenty of coy humor tempered with a sad underpinning of exploited youth.