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Subject: LA Times -- Kubrick's 'Lolita': An Acting Showcase ...
Date: Wed, 24 Apr 2002 13:54:37 -0400
From: "Sandy P. Klein" <spklein52@hotmail.com>
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[Los Angeles Times - latimes.com]
http://www.calendarlive.com/top/1,1419,L-LATimes-Search-X!ArticleDetail-50183,00.html
SCREENING ROOM
Kubrick's 'Lolita': An Acting Showcase
The director's 1962 film highlights the talents of James Mason, Shelley
Winters and Peter Sellers.
By KEVIN THOMAS, Times Staff Writer
The American Cinematheque's "Grand Master: The Films of Stanley
Kubrick" continues at the Egyptian tonight at 7:30 with the presentation
of "Lolita" (1962). When Kubrick brought the controversial Vladimir
Nabokov novel to the screen, he cast 15-year-old newcomer Sue Lyon in
the title role without specifying her age, which in the book was only
12. Most critics said that Lyon looked closer to 17, thus undercutting
the impact of the exquisite torture Nabokov's middle-aged Humbert
Humbert endured in his fixation on what the novelist described famously
as a "nymphet."
Kubrick did not make things easier for himself by shooting much of
the film in England, even though it is in part a road movie. He thus
denied himself access to roadside Americana--always a ripe target for
satire--which could have counterpointed Nabokov's consideration of the
deadly, darkly humorous absurdities of unrequited passion, heightened by
puritanical American mores.
Even so, "Lolita" is worth a look on the big screen, just as it was
when first released, thanks to its sophisticated sensibility and James
Mason's heroic portrayal of Humbert and the impressive work of Shelley
Winters and Peter Sellers. Lyon is pretty good as the "older" revised
Lolita, but at 153 minutes, the film is too long.
Mason's Humbert is a professor of French literature who's a
visiting lecturer at a New England college. He checks out a room for
rent in the large, tasteless home of Charlotte Haze (Winters), a vulgar,
man-hungry widow with literary pretensions.
In the film's signature shot, Humbert sees Lolita lounging in a
two-piece bathing suit in the backyard, and Charlotte asks innocently,
"What was the deciding factor?" when he abruptly agrees to take the
room--and thus commences his tormented odyssey.
"Lolita" reminds us what a remarkable actor Mason was in his range
and insight into the characters he played, and Winters is hilarious yet
oddly touching as the impossibly shrill, foolish and possessive
Charlotte, as dense as Humbert is perceptive. Early on, Sellers' Quilty,
an eccentric writer, also a guest of the college, becomes Humbert's
determined nemesis for reasons of his own. Quilty's various disguises
allow Sellers to show off his wondrous way with accents. (323)
