Lolita

It is not really fair to judge Lolita in comparison with the book. Rewritten by Nabakov and directed by Stanley Kubrick, the screenplay can easily stand on its own. It is absurd, grotesque, and very funny, and it introduces a fine young actress, Sue Lyon.

The movie's opening scenes establish the unreal tone which Director Kubrick adeptly maintains for the remaining two hours. While the titles are flashed on the screen, Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is shown behind them giving a manicure treatment to Lolita (Sue Lyon). The movie proper opens with the scene that ends the book. Gun in pocket, James Mason stalks into Clare Quilty's (Peter Sellers) mansion, and commits an amusing if horrifying murder. Sellers is superb as he tries to talk the insane Humbert out of killing him--an unshaven, hungover ping-pong player.

Until Sellers reenters the narrative, however, the humor lags. Mason is disgustingly lecherous enough and Sue Lyon, as a blond-haired, blue-eyed, bud-breasted adolescent, succeeds in making sensitive, intelligent Humbert become just a dirty old man. Shelley Winters, however, as Lolita's mother and Humbert's aggressive, nymphomaniacal, and pscudointellectual suitor, over-acts too much; in trying so hard to make poor Mrs. Haze an interesting character, she becomes a bit tedious and tiresome.

A few scenes before Seller's reappearance are riotous, however. It is impossible not to laugh at the grotesque sight of an intoxicated Mason lying triumphant in a dirty bathtub, balancing his drink on his chest, following the death of his wife. A couple of neighbors come in to commiserate, and suddenly Humbert has to act sorry himself amidst his drunken stupor. Then the apologetic father of the cab driver who killed Mrs. Haze enters and offers to pay for the funeral expenses. Humbert, now quite confused, agrees, much to his benefactor's dismay.

Sellers turns up again--really for the first time--at the hotel where Humbert takes Lolita after her mother's death. With the collision of Mr. Swine, the desk man, Sellers starts his courtship of Lolita, the source of the remaining action in the movie. The hotel is the scene of a policemen's convention; and imitating a policeman, Sellers tries to worm information about Lolita out of Humbert. As Clare Quilty, Sellers is always impersonating somebody. These impersonations are the best things in the movie.

Although the censorship law prevents bodily contact between Humbert and Lolita, Kubrick and Nabakov do not leave as little as possible to the imagination. In the hotel scene Humbert tries desparately to arrange it so that there will be no roll-away bed for him. The eventual arrival of the bed late at night is funny enough, but even more amusing is the frightened face on Humbert the next morning when Lolita whispers in his ear presumably the very idea he was afraid to utter himself.

All in all, Nabakov and Kubrick have handled a lurid subject with humor and imagination. The result is very funny at times, though it hardly burns with a gem-like pale fire.