A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a fourteen-year-old nymphet.A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a fourteen-year-old nymphet.A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a fourteen-year-old nymphet.
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Terry Kilburn
- Manas Man
- (as Terence Kilburn)
Humbert Humbert forces a confrontation with a man, whose name he has just recently learned, in this man's home. The events that led to this standoff began four years earlier. Middle aged Humbert, a European, arrives in the United States where he has secured at job at Beardsley College in Beardsley, Ohio as a Professor of French Literature. Before he begins his post in the fall, he decides to spend the summer in the resort town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire. He is given the name of Charlotte Haze as someone who is renting a room in her home for the summer. He finds that Charlotte, widowed now for seven years, is a woman who puts on airs. Among the demonstration of those airs is throwing around the name of Clare Quilty, a television and stage script writer, who came to speak at her women's club meeting and who she implies is now a friend. Those airs also mask being lonely, especially as she is a sexually aggressive and liberated woman. Humbert considers Charlotte a proverbial "joke" but decides to rent the room upon meeting Charlotte's provocative daughter, Dolores Haze - more frequently referred to as Lolita - who he first spots in a bikini tanning in the back yard. He is immediately infatuated with Lolita, with who he becomes obsessed in a sexual manner despite her age, she being just into her teens. He will also learn that Charlotte has the exact same feelings for him. While Charlotte does whatever she can to be alone with Humbert, Humbert does the same with Lolita. As the summer progresses, Humbert, based on the circumstances, decides to enter into a relationship with Charlotte just to be near Lolita. In that new arrangement, Humbert has to figure out how to achieve his goal of being with Lolita with Charlotte out of the way. As things begin to go Humbert's way, he is unaware that Charlotte is not the only thing standing in his way between him and Lolita, that other thing being Lolita's possible interest in other boys, and other members of the male sex, young or old, who may have their own designs on Lolita. —Huggo
Top review
An unsparring and beautiful film
One year after Lolita was released, Stanley Kubrick cut his ties with producer James B. Harris after starting Doctor Strangelove., thus only making his own films. Lolita is Kubrick's apparent transition from making money type of pictures (Paths of Glory) to art (Doctor Strangelove. It seems like Humbert and Lolita are the only sane characters while everyone else is sane. As the troubled Humbert, James Mason shines, turning in a performance of emotional capacity that even generates sympathy for him. As Lolita's oddball and energetic mother, Shirley Winters also does very well; creating a sort of hate for her. Sue Lynon plays Lolita with a nice sort of childness, yet at the same time she shows a sort of maturity not usually shown done by an actress of that age. And of course there's Peter Sellers as the eccentric Clarence Quilty, who's downright hilarious and very strange. The script provides fleshed out characters, and at the same time not always letting the viewer know what's going on. Stanley Kubrick's direction is beautiful and cold, letting the viewer have emotions instead of telling them what to feel. Stanley Kubrick doesn't come back to these proffesionall and well- spoken characters until Barry Lyndon (1975). Unfortunately, this film ends up getting repeating and dull. The photography provides a sort of gloss to it that few films have, and also the editing is rapid- fire. 9.5/10
helpful•2821
- Blade_Le_Flambeur
- May 17, 2003
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