Lolita

Today I visited another Stanley Kubrick "classic", his 1962 adaptation of Lolita, Vladimir Nobokov's hugely controverisal novel about pedophilia and sexual obsession. I've never read the novel, so all comments are based on the film's cinematic qualities rather than its virtues or flaws as an adaptation. As such, I find myself let down yet again by a Kubrick film.

Professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) moves to a small New England town en route to a college lecturing job in the Midwest. He takes a room with Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), a bored and needy widow - and immediately falls for her precocious, flirtatious and gorgeous teenaged daughter Lolita (Sue Lyon). Humbert immediately grows attached to Lolita, and marries her mother in order to be nearby - but trouble arises when Charlotte threatens to send Lolita away to boarding school. Charlotte dies in a freak accident, and Humbert claims Lolita as his own, taking her on a trip across country and struggling to maintain his hold over her - being stalked all the way by playwright and Haze family friend Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers).

The story of Lolita remains very racy even by modern standards, and there's certainly the potential for a very good film here. Kubrick assembled an A-list of acting and technical talent and hired Nobokov himself to adapt his own novel to the screen. As with much of Kubrick's work, however, the results aren't nearly as successful as the material, talent and reputation involved promise. Maybe it's me.

There are elements of the film which work very well. The portrayal of Humbert in particular is quite interesting. He plays simultaneously a lover and father figure to Lolita, aggressively protecting a girl who triggers an obsessive desire in him, and the film's portrayal of their relationship is, for the most part, well-drawn. The pestering, nagging, perhaps nymphomaniacal Charlotte is not of interest to Humbert; she's too easy and conventional a conquest, and too old besides. Many films and novel equate the overbearing father with repressed incestuousness, but Lolita makes it overt, and does so with a large degree of effectiveness.

However, the film stumbles in a number of important areas. The movie has an odd view of Lolita as a character. She is first introduced sunbathing in a revealing swimsuit, immediately catching Humbert's eye, but the movie doesn't know whether to portray her as a willingly flirtatious nymphette, an unwitting victim, or just a confused kid who doesn't know what she's doing. The third option seems most likely, all things considered. The scenes of her troubled relationship with her mother are quite well-done, and she seems an adolescent first entering the adult world, with the confusions and stresses inherent; but that's about as well as the film does with her characterization, and after her mother's death she becomes a fairly typical teenager, making her relationship with Humbert strangely unsatisfying dramatically. Even as the movie succeeds in its portrayal of Humbert, Lolita fails to develop as a character, until the somewhat implausible conclusion - and the quantum leap of three years' time prevents it from having a great deal of effect.

The absolute worst problem of the film, however, is the pacing and length. The movie is simply interminable at its 153-minute length; at least as portrayed on film, there isn't enough material of interest to make it worthy of such a byzantine length, and the stilted, sloth-like pacing makes it even harder to take. The last half hour or so in particular drags and drags beyond all reason. Most novels lose a great deal in their transition to screen, even the best adaptations, so it's perhaps understandable as such in this case; but as the film went on I found myself less and less involved in the story and characters. A film may be interesting and thoughtful in what it has to say, but if it has trouble maintaining interest as entertainment than the point is largely moot. Such is the case here.

Technically, Kubrick's direction is quite fine. After his gruelling experience on Spartacus (referenced in a lengthy gag by Quilty in the film's opening), he returns to a much smaller scale work, and his maintains the gritty, noir-ish look of his earlier films, suggesting the claustrophobia and entrapment of the central relationship, and the darkness and perversity lurking in the corners. Kubrick can rarely be faulted for his direction or the technical aspects of his work, but quite often, as we have seen, his story and characterization leave a lot to be desired.

The film's biggest saving grace is James Mason. Mason portrays a difficult character perfectly, adding the necessary combination of creepiness, perversity and prudish possessiveness to Humbert. He's not exactly a sympathetic character, but Mason makes him fascinating all the same - a man so trapped by his own disgusting fantasies and obsessions that he can't even contemplate that what he's doing is wrong, or that Lolita might be a human beings with feelings and desires all her own. Mason's portrayal of Humbert goes right up there with James Stewart in Vertigo as one of the most disturbing and honestly frank cinematic manifestations of the male sexual ego.

Other cast members don't fare nearly as well. Shelley Winters gives a strong supporting turn as the clingy, even nymphomanical Charlotte - almost the exact opposite of a seemingly like role in Night of the Hunter - but she's put out of the way early on. Sue Lyon starts off okay as Lolita but gradually grows more irritating and unlikeable as the film goes along. The rest of the supporting cast aren't really worthy of note. The worst offender is Peter Sellers, whose portrayal of Quilty is beyond annoying. Yes, Sellers is a master of disguise and, in the right role a great comic actor, but he's intensely irritating throughout, seemingly begging and even worse, his character seems at best tertiary to the storyline. Kubrick did much better work with Sellers in Doctor Strangelove a few years later, where giving Sellers' chameleon-like abilities free rein enhanced rather than hurt the film. Here, his shameless clowning and accents simply distract from the material.

Lolita goes in the same bin as Barry Lyndon and The Killing for Stanley Kubrick films that were rather a let-down. It was worth watching perhaps once, but it's not a film I'd care to return to any time soon. And for myself anyway, that epitaph adequately sums up much of Kubrick's oeuvre.

Rating: 6/10 - Use Your Own Discretion