Lolita

Rating:
Summary: Running Time
Review: Hi,
I have a copy of Lolita released by WarnerVideo. Its running time goes for only 147 minutes - the original goes for 152 minutes. Why has this movie of 1962 been cut in this way.
How can I obtain a version of this movie that runs for the whole time.

thanks.

Rating:
Summary: Can love cross age frontiers?
Review: In this film, Stanley Kubrick tackles an important and controversial problem : the love of a middle-aged man for a teenage girl who is rather a titillating character. The man falls in a trap and does not know how to get out of it. He marries the widowed mother to put his hands on the girl. But he becomes the absolute slave of his love and tries to enslave the girl without understanding she has only played with him against her mother and is still playing with him even if the mother is dead now. But Kubrick does not try to explain, to excuse, to understand the psychological reasoning or functioning of the man or the girl. He only gives us a rather cold and distant account of what happens. This shows how the girl is manipulated and also in a way frustrated and traumatised by the experience, and she has another older lover well hidden and leading her to all kinds of lies and fake attitudes. The girl will be led by her failing in capturing an older man as a sole and exclusive lover, she means of course the secret one who tries to get her involved in some kind of kinky filming, into accepting a love affair, mariage and family with a younger man, a man of her age, who is exactly the antagon of her own social position and of the older men she has been involved with : he is poor, he has bad hearing, he has no money and no prospect in society, he has no education, he is exclusively manual and his big dream is to go to Alaska to get some real opportunities there.
When the older man, realises that she is beyond any reach from him, he cracks up and gives her everything he has since he is not going to need anything for what he intends. And he intends his own justice, to destroy the man who supposedly soiled Lolita, in fact prevented him from capturing Lolita, because he is still convinced he could have done it. And he does kill him.
In this film there is no justification or no condemnation of love from an older man for a teenage girl. There is only the cold description of the consequences which are seen as definitely negative. The film also shows how the girl is playing with fire and manipulating older men to either compete with her mother or experiment with life. She is in a way a sexual bomb that will in the end accept the yoke of mariage provided it is with someone who is the opposite of all those men. She wants, in a way, to start from scratch, though she begs for money from her stepfather.
Such a non-committing approach is in a way a provocation in our society where we consider older men must not deal with teenage girls, adults must not get sexually involved with teenagers, love cannot exist between adults and teenagers. We are confronted to a lot of questions and no answers. In other words the film is unethical but thought raking.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University of Perpignan

Rating:
Summary: It was boring.
Review: 'Lolita' was pretty boring. The scenes with Peter Sellers were pretty funny. He was a fantastic actor.

Rating:
Summary: Who is the manipulative one here?
Review: I haven't read the book, yet, but I always thought Lolita was the manipulative one. Her stepfather seems the be one forcing the issue -- manipulative, creepy, obsessive. He is the one driving all the action, & she rides along semi-passively for most part. I imagined her the experienced seductress. She's more of a teenybopper half-heartedly playing mind games because she can.

Rating:
Summary: A Beastly Adaptation
Review: This 1962 version of Lolita absolutely pales in comparison to the 1998 version, and to the novel itself.. James Mason as Humbert Humbert is wooden, and Sue Lyon barely even begins to capture the petulant yet erotic character of Lolita. The entire first half of the film builds upon the relationship between Humbert Humbert and Charlotte Haze (Lolita's mother). In the book the relationship between the two is incidental, and simply a part of the complicated plan to deliver Lolita into the sole care of Humbert. A good deal of time is spent exploring the character of Claire Quilty, which manages to ruin much of the surprise of the ending of the story. His character should have remained mysterious (as it did in the 1998 version) in order to create more effect for the ultimate outcome. Instead, Peter Sellers portrays him in a very Jerry Lewis like fashion, making the devious and sleazy child abductor into a comical and annoying character. Why would Lolita be attracted to this imbecile? The plot is lost in the dialog, and at the end the audience is left wanting. Why is Humbert Humbert so hurt by the loss of Lolita? He never really seemed like he tolerated her that much anyway.

Unless you're a Kubrick fan, I'd recommend staying away from this one. It's disappointing in so many ways that would take pages and pages to cover. Try instead the 1998 version. It's beautifully filmed, and strongly performed, and gives a much better vision to what you find in the novel.

Rating:
Summary: A Nabokubrickian Delight: "Lolita"
Review: "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" asked the original tagline of Stanley Kubrick's 1962 screen adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial classic novel. The answer: they didn't.

Sure, film and novel share many of the same characteristics. But within this loose framework there are a boatload of differences between the Kubrickian "Lolita" and the Nabokovian "Lolita". Don't get me wrong, though. I am not accusing Kubrick of trashing Nabokov's vision. In fact, Nabokov wrote the screenplay for the film version. But I am pointing out that, despite their claims at having overcome impossible hurdles to make the film, "Lolita", as written, could never have been filmed in 1962. Kubrick and Co., however, did the best they possibly could.

So what, exactly, do they miss? Well, the most glaring example is that they cut short when it comes time to show the least bit of physical affection between Lo and Humbert Humbert, never mind the more explicit intimacy. Whether it came from external pressures or internal pragmatism, the film does its best to imply contact between HH and Lo, rather than show it. The often cited shot of HH holding Charlotte in his arms while looking longingly at a picture of Lo on the bedside table over Charlotte's shoulder is a good example of this.

But the biggest thing missing, and the only editorial decision they made that I feel harms the film, is that HH's psychology, why he desires a 12 (changed for the movie to 14) year old girl, is never explained. No mention is ever made of his childhood crush Annabel. And there is only one brief reference to his coining of the term 'nymphet' which resulted from this crush. The film Humbert's pedophilia seems to have appeared, fully formed, the first moment he saw Lolita sunbathing in the backyard. Although his actions are largely unforgivable, an effort to explain them may have served the film better. Still, this is but a minor quibble in a film that, while not painstakingly faithful to its source material, at least gets the spirit and tone just right.

A lot of credit is due to Nabokov (with Kubrick's help), for constructing a screenplay that retains the literary prose style of his novel (its strength) while adding and shaping and reconstructing the novel's story (its weakness) into a strong cinematic narrative. Nabokov delights in tossing in names of people and places that appear to explicitly to judge the characters. Lo spends a summer at 'Camp Climax'. A hotel clerk is named 'George Swine'. The night nurse at the hospital where Lo is taken ill is called 'Nurse Fromkiss'. These deft touches (deft as a sledgehammer) further prove the notion, one I though all along, that "Lolita" doesn't take itself seriously. It's an absurd story, and should be taken as such.

This absurdity is best portrayed in Peter Sellers' performance. Or rather, performances. Like he does in "Dr. Strangelove", Sellers basically plays three parts for Kubrick here. In each, Sellers' prodigious ability to disappear into a role is put on full display. His Claire Quilty is a credible American television writer, bored by his own celebrity and powerful enough to get away with a whole lot of mischief. Quilty is a man of many disguises, one offshoot being the rambling, paranoid hotel guest, who tries every trick in the book to share more of HH's (and, by association, Lo's) company. Another offshoot is the delicious Dr. Zempf, ostensibly the psychological counselor at Lo's school, who pays HH one wonderfully madcap visit at his home. It's only one scene, but "Dr. Zempf" nearly steals the film, as Sellers, it appears, does a genius stream-of-conscious improv that befuddles HH and, quite possibly, the audience too.

Sue Lyon, as the nymphet around whom the story revolves, is a lot older than Lo was in the book. Well, two years older. But when those two years are between 12 and 14, it makes a big difference. Her Lolita is conscious of her power, and, as the film goes along, is more willing to use and abuse it to her advantage. She, at times, can also be a rather bland presence. There's a lot of emptiness behind her eyes, and I can't yet figure out of this is a drawback or a boon to her character. Still, Lyon has an untapped quality to her that gives her a realistic quality despite her mostly amateurish acting.

James Mason, as Humbert, has the suave but weathered looks and the English gentility that the character requires. He's humourous and charming, if a bit shy, during the film's first half. But Mason ably degenerates into a... well... a degenerate as the second half begins. The aspect of Mason that's most suited to bringing HH to the big screen is his voice. Put to good use as the villain in Hitchcock's "North by Northwest", where it's rolling lilt perfectly conveyed that character's evil, here it manages to be both suave and creepy. HH is nothing if not suave and creepy, and Mason captures that perfectly.

This being a Kubrick movie, you'd expect a lot of flashy, but necessary, camera work. Besides the opening scene, his camera is reserved. "Lolita", for the most part, is staged like a play. The camera sits still and looks, capturing lengthy scenes of dialogue like a voyeur. It's a technique that works very well, for "Lolita" is nothing if not a forbidden entertainment.

While generally considered one of Kubrick's lesser works, it does mark the end of his early, pulpy films, and sets the stage for his later, more literary "masterpieces". The first time Kubrick deigned to adapt a book to film, a method that would later yield the grand "successes" of "2001: A Space Odyssey", "A Clockwork Orange", and "The Shining", "Lolita" is as much a success as the prude times allowed it to be. Which is to say, ultimately, an unqualified one.

Rating:
Summary: Kubrick's underrated masterpiece
Review: Stanley Kubrick's film version of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial novel LOLITA is one of his most under-rated masterpieces. Boasting fantastic performances by James Mason, Shelley Winters and Peter Sellers, it is a fantastic social commentary.

Humbert Humbert (James Mason - NORTH BY NORTHWEST, A STAR IS BORN) is newly-arrived in America. Deciding to start afresh in a small town in New Hampshire, he inquires at the house of the floozy Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters - THE POSEIDON ADVENTURE, WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH HELEN?) about the possibility of renting her spare room. The clinch to the deal according to Humbert is Charlotte's beautiful young daughter with the "lovely, lyrical, lilting name" - Lolita (Sue Lyon).

Soon Humbert and Charlotte are married but he still feels very attracted to young Lolita. After Charlotte convieniently gets run over and killed by a car, Humbert takes Lolita and starts again in another town. But the mysterious Claire Quilty (Peter Sellers - DR STRANGELOVE, THERE'S A GIRL IN MY SOUP) is always lurking in the background.

The DVD includes the trailer.

Rating:
Summary: Not worth the time
Review: Having read the book, I naturally wanted to see the film. Unfortunatly, I have very few good things to say about the film adaptation. I was wholly disappointed with this film, especially since Nabokov wrote the screen treatment. I'm not a big Kubrick fan, but I have enjoyed most of his movies. This one, I'm afraid, is not worth bothering with. The direction is rather sketchy with odd black-outs denoting chapters or segments of the film. The sudden naration of Humbert's diary is ill-conceived and the acting is over the top too often.

The characters are mere skeletons of what they were in the novel. What made the book so paralyzing was taken out. One is made to sympathize with Humbert rather than hate him. Lolita, on the other hand, is shawn to be a temptress and not as a child who is forced into Humberts cruel world.

Unless one has read the book or is a die-hard Kubrick fan, stay away from this film.

Rating:
Summary: Compelling Well-Acted ,and Enjoyably Slighty Creepy Drama
Review: All actors very good indeed.Shot in cool,stark black and white.Not too many longeurs,good music and Peter Sellers a stand-out.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST-OWN DVD!
Review: If you are a big fan of lolita subject movies, then this DVD is a MUST HAVE!!!So far I have found THREE "5 Star" lolita-subject movies at amazon. My #1 favorite "Lolita (1997)", a very close second #2 "Beau-Pere", and a distant third place #3, this DVD, "Lolita (1962). I must confess, that if it was not for the rarity of this subject matter on DVD, I would give this DVD about FOUR (4) STARS, due to its lack of EROTIC STEAM. But being thankfull to have a third lolita-subject movie in my collection, I will give it FIVE (5) STARS.NUDITY: Their was absolutely NO NUDITY in this movie. In "Beau-Pere", there were plenty of topless scenes, a scene of her nude butt walking to the shower, and even some scenes of her laying on top of the guy half naked and doing it!STEAMY SCENES: Their was also no scenes in this movie of a steamy erotic nature. The scenes did not go above the level of a "playfull coy flirt". In the 1997 remake of "Lolita", their was plenty of hot steamy scenes. The girl did not have to be half naked to generate erotic steam. The sexy poses, mannerisms, touching, rubbing, kissing, face expressions were VERY HOT!!!STORY and PLOT: What gives this movie its 4 or 5 star rating and it's advantage over the other two movies mentioned is its clever and ingenious plot. This movie had the better story line and character development. The story ended just like a very clever detective story.ROMANCE: However, their was plenty of sweet romance. If their was no romance between the girl and guy---no matter how great the story---this movie would get a THREE STAR rating and would not even count as a lolita-subject movie and would be a total waste.QUESTION: Why do so many reviewers give the story line and even much detail about the movie, taking up much space, when the person reading the review already knows what the movie is about? Or if he does not, he can go to many other places to find out what the movie is about. REVIEWS are intended, and SHOULD stick to discussing the pro's and con's of the movie and a measurement of how good the movie is. Each movie review should be a UNIQUE REPORT, and not a re-telling and re-telling of the story and plot.SUMMARY: If you like movies about an older guy and a teenage girl who share a relationship, then this movie is FOR YOU! BUY IT TODAY! This movie is full of sweet and cute romance scenes. Their is also the rage and jealousy stuff. The chemistry and acting of the characters are OUTSTANDING!ENJOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!