Lolita

Rating:
Summary: Entertaining and controversial
Review: Lolita is a very entertaining and charming film. Sue Lyon is perfect as Lolita, as is the very talented James Mason in the role of Humbert Humbert. The book of the same name was very controversial back in the early 60's because it featured a middle aged man who was obsessed with the pre-teen daughter of his girlfriend. In the movie version, Lolita's age was increased by a few years, but even with this accomodation, the film still became cotroversial.

Rating:
Summary: "A lovely, lyrical, lilty name"
Review: The best Stanley Kubrick film I've ever seen in my life. James Mason is at his best in this film than in any other film I've seen him in. Sue Lyon is just beautiful and less sleezy than in the 1998 remake which I thought was the stupidest remake of a movie I saw. The film doesn't seem like it goes on for two-and-a-half hours, and, like the Motion Picture Guide says, it is fun and full of unexpected moments. I don't care if Vladimir wrote the screenplay differetly from the book, it's just a wonderful film about a man who is fatuously in love with a twelve-year-old.

Rating:
Summary: How did they ever make a film of Lolita ????
Review: That particular sly ad campain line heraladed the summer 62 release of, Kubricks film vision of author Nabakovs, tart writers exercise in memory.The public, teased into theaters, hoping nudity, and or foul language were to be presented, left befudled. Large lobby posters of a sunglassed Sue Lyons sucking a heart shaped lollypop didnt untangle this coded classic.The film; full of elegant framing, and brimming with witty, urbane language and action, not only retains its sublime seductiveness, but positively glows in its DVD form. The stark, pristine black and white image,transfered from what appears to be orginal master stock is a delight; as much a delight as its original "lollypop"promise. The intimacy of the new technology, welds itself to the intimacy of Humbert Humbert's diary, allowing the viewer to enter this made up "writer/filmakers collaborative world , and enjoy this meditative piece,about the impossibility ,though never escapable attempt ,to control an intrusive outside world through creative invention.

Rating:
Summary: Watch doomed Mason go to ruin over child-woman Lyons
Review: Kubrick may not have faithfully rendered his source material, but the story of an obsessive male falling for a woman who is far too young to fulfill his expectations is engrossing nonetheless. I was surprised to see how closely the track of this doomed relationship follows the scenario of that between alcoholic adults. This film is interesting when taken as a cautionary tale about the inevitabilities of any relationship between two immature people, blurred boundaries, selfishness, infidelities, lies and all.

LOLITA is well-made in some ways, frustrating in others. The shock value is largely gone today, since the film contains very little beyond innuendo. We know precisely what happens and when, of course, but it's all done in a very 50s-repressed filmic style. James Mason's Humbert Humbert is a neurotic when we first meet him, and whatever elements of his past have set him up to fall for Lolita at first sight are never really explained. We meet Lolita in the only lascivious shot of the movie, sunbathing in her back yard. Sue Lyons plays a younger teenager (a couple years older than the Lolita of the novel, actually) with a very accurate child-woman-like combination of boredom, pouting, self-absorption, giggling and see-sawing between moods. Shelley Winters is annoyingly right as the needy, pitiable mother, and Peter Sellers is good in a rare serious role as Lyon's other elder love interest who has no ethical compunction about interfering with Humbert's pursuit of Lolita.

Had Mason simply rented the room from the mother in order to dally with the underage girl, the story would not be nearly as disturbing, though perhaps just as controversial. But it takes a nasty turn when it becomes clear that Humbert is willing to marry the mother, whom he despises, in order to stay close to Lolita in hopes of a seduction. The fact that Humbert keeps a diary of his feelings only adds to our distaste for him -- this is not a man with whom the male audience can easily identify. His laughter while reading a love declaration from the mother says it all beautifully. Humbert is too sad, dissipated and cynical to be sympathetic. If his soul isn't already lost, he loses it by marrying the mother.

On the other hand, Humbert is second only to Lolita herself in our sympathies in this crowd. The mother is so unlikable that we are tempted to laugh and cheer aloud when she dies unexpectedly, and Peter Sellers' Quilty is such a jerk that we can't certainly root for him. So we are left to ponder the predicament of Humbert, and witness his foreordained demise.

Every beat with Lolita seems authentic to me. She is the troubled schoolgirl allowing herself to be flattered by older men, learning it is easier to tell them what they want to hear regardless of the truth, but never committing in her heart and doing exactly as she pleases in their absence. She cries like the little girl she still is when Humbert finally tells her that her mother has died. And she finally seeks a saner refuge with a boy her own age and opts for the decidedly less risky life of a wife and mother herself, still treating Humbert a little bit like a dad or a rich uncle.

The truest thing in the movie for me is the sequence in which Humbert visits Lolita, pregnant and married. The whole scene is a triumph and in a way the lesson of the movie summed up. Lolita survives and remains largely ignorant of the destruction she has inadvertantly been a party to as a child and the pain she continues to give poor, lost Humbert by never falling in love with him. She seems, in fact, the most grown up and the best armored of all the characters in this movie, but knowing what we know about the toll older men often take on underage girls, probably isn't as bullet-proof as she appears.

Readers and movie-goers often come to this story looking for titilllation and, I would imagine, go away either missing the point entirely or, hopefully, having learned something about the stupidity, the hopelessness, and the inevitable disappointment of pursuing a liason with an immature partner, innocent or not.

It is of considerable import that at the end of the story, Quilty is shot dead and Humbert dies an old man's death of heart failure in prison -- both men roundly humiliated -- while Lolita, who was always the master of her own fate, really, has grown up and charted a simple but appropriate life for herself with someone her age.

Rating:
Summary: One of My Favorite B&W Classic Films...
Review: ....it is a great tragicomedy with fine acting all the way round, and although it is not a direct adaptation of the controversial novel, it stands as a great piece of work even if you were not aware of the ruckus it caused back in the day....you just want to slap Mason's Humbert not because he's so overcome with passion, but because he's so stupidly weak. Shirley Winters' blindness turns to tragedy and the multiple roles 'given' to Peter Sellers make "Lolita" fabulous. Compare with Kubrick's last effort, (and his nod to European film makers like Wertmiller and Bergman) "Eyes Wide Shut", you get the feel that Kubrick was best when he was not working on the Big Message Movie, or the art of film making. Great entertainment for one of those B&W film classics evenings...

Rating:
Summary: Kubrick's Lack-luster
Review: As much as I admire the work of Stanley Kubrick,I have to admit this if one of his lesser films. There are wonderful performances by James Mason and Sue Lyon. Though Shelley Winters' character did start to get on my nerves. I hope ALL women aren't as pushy as she was! And as for Peter Sellers. Well besides the first scene,he really started to annoy me. The main problem with the movie is the script which was written by Vladmir Nabokov,who also wrote the novel from which the movie is based on. But after a while you just start to not care about the characters invovled(at least I did). The script doesn't have any "heart". You don't care what happens to Mason or Lyon. Or anyone else in the movie. After a while Mason just seems pathetic chasing after a 14 year old girl. For what seemed to be a good begining,everything just seemed to go downhill from there. Maybe if there was more comedy to it. How about Woody Allen remaking the movie ..... Then maybe you might have something. From all of Kubrick's films this is one of a few you should stay away from. ** 1\2 out of *****

Rating:
Summary: "Yah-ya....whoa whoa yah yah..."
Review: It must be this movie's depection of the title character rather than the Nabokov version that the press drew on when they nicknamed Amy Fisher "the Long Island Lolita". Sue Lyon co-starred with Liz Taylor and Richard Burton in a later film, and movie mag articles of the time mentioned her shamelessly flirting with Burton in front of Taylor. It is this personna which Lyon brings to the title character rather than the object of a dirty old man's obsession that Nabokov gave us. Meanwhile, thoughout the picture, in all non-dialogue scenes, there's this insipid music on the soundtrack, whose only lyrics I quoted above. Was there a soundtrack album with this movie? Do I care?

Rating:
Summary: James Mason is brilliant
Review: Any movie adaptation of Nabokov's masterful novel would be inferior to the book, obviously. But this is really inferior, despite the fact a genius like Kubrick directed it. The high point of the film is *not* Peter Sellers, who is rather irritating here, but James Mason, who makes the perfect Humbert. If you read Nabokov's physical description of Humbert in the novel, Mason fits it to a "T" except he's slightly older than the actual character.

Sue Lyons is ridiculously "old" to play the part of a 12 year old nymphet. Lyons was 17 when filming began and looks every inch of it. Her perforance is surprisingly good considering her inexperience and the fact she never played a decent role after this one. Shelly Winters, as the sex-starved wife of Mason, is perfectly cast. The scene where she discovers Humbert's diary is delicious.

The greatest thing about "Lolita" is Mason, whose performance is elegant and quietly commanding. Watch him as he responds to Winters or Sue Lyons, he's brilliant even in repose.

Rating:
Summary: highly disturbing, especially for any parent of a girl
Review: I am not a prude and I enjoy eroticism. But I must say thatbeing a parent - especially the parent of three beautiful underagegirls - made this movie extremely disturbing for me.

Jeremy Irons is a fine actor and specializes in heavy drama. He brings a rich, deep element of artistry to his roles and makes no exception with Lolita. I never saw the earlier film or read the book, so I can't compare them with the movie. I guess I vaguely knew what the subject matter was going in so what should I expect, but with the big names in this movie, thought it was worth a shot. You can't help but pity Melanie Griffiths' character as the young girls mother. She and her daughter have this strange competetive relationship and her character's tragic ending is quite downplayed (as though the mother was just a one-sided, unnecessary obstacle in the story). And of course Jeremy Irons' character is simply using her to get into her daughter's pants. Sorry to be so blunt, but even with all the artsy additives, that's a child molester. Parents, stepfathers, uncles are expected to give respect to the rules and be the strong ones. Whether a 14 yr old girl is suffering from a hormone/romantic overload, it is the adult's place to draw the line.

I can't help being bothered by the whole situation - especially with the girl falling for the other gentleman who has an even more severe pathological condition than Jeremy Irons.

Perhaps the movie could have been more tolerable with less time spent in bed - less visual sexual situations and images which do not leave your mind after the movie's over. Those long, drawn-out "love scenes' you'd expect from a highly-charged romantic flick were unnecessary and purely included for the enjoyment of the voyeuristic audience. You end up feeling like you're just as guilty of the sick obsession he had with this way-too-young girl, and I'm sure anyone with a conscience (and a daughter) would have the same problems. I can certainly understand why there was controversy when this movie came out.

Rating:
Summary: Appropriate adaptation
Review: When asked what he thought of Kubrick's film of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov said it was a "first-rate" film by an "artist." Even though only about twenty percent of his script made it into the final movie product, Nabokov was obviously impressed. The theatrical trailers ask the question, "How did they ever make a film of Lolita?" The only way, in 1962, a movie could be made about such a controversial subject was if it was presented as a comedy. James Mason as Humbert Humbert is excellent--speaks volumes with his eyes. Perhaps Sue Lyon as Lolita is a bit too old--she certainly doesn't fit the strict definition of a nymphet (aged 9-14, as the book mentions), although she was, I believe, 13 when the filming started. Maybe Peter Sellers as Quilty isn't as serious as his character may warrant, and may steal some scenes with his impersonations. But so what? We're talking about a movie made in the early sixties--the theatre audience has certain expectations.