Review of Lolita

The Hollywood Production Code was once the bane of American filmmakers. Aside from the immediate annoyance of censoring controversial scenes, the Code also had the long-term effect of stifling new trends in film. Most think that the code only dealt with nudity or cursing. Its reach was much more invasive than that. Criminals could never get away with a heist, religion was never criticized, childbirth could not be depicted, and any reference to intimacy were cut out. For almost forty years, no one could even hope to adapt a classic play such Oedipus Rex in Hollywood.

How, then, did Stanley Kubrick ever manage to make a film about a middle-aged professor who only marries a woman in order to seduce her fourteen year old daughter?

Although the American release of Blowup is often seen as the final nail in the coffin of the Code, there is a respectable line of films that helped with the mortuary process: Hitchcock’s Psycho, Nichol’s Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, and most certainly, Kubrick’s Lolita.

The novel Lolita, written by Russian emigrant Vladimir Nabokov, is often cited as one of the finest literary works of the twentieth century–despite its subject matter. This aside is important. As the American public grumbled about its immoral pretext, the novel still sold 100,000 copies in the first three weeks of publication.

It was this amalgamation of disgust and fascination that gave Kubrick hope that a film adaptation could succeed in America. In retrospect, Kubrick stated that if he know how much grief the Production Code would cause him, he would have given up.

The film opens as an elegantly-dressed man arrives at a mansion and sneaks in through an unlocked front door. The interior is the aftermath of a Bacchanal party. Expensive statues are draped with bawdy items. Endless bottles and crystal glasses litter the floor, clattering as the man accidentally trips over them. He calls for Clare Quilty. Someone plays a harpsichord upstairs. The man hurries upstairs and finds the disheveled master of the house.

The intruder is named Humbert. He has come to kill Quilty. Much to Humbert’s surprise, Quilty doesn’t take him seriously in the least.

He watches in astonishment as Quilty stumbles about, acting like an idiot. Humbert hands his victim his death sentence, which Quilty reads out loud in a mock western drawl. According to Humbert, Quilty is being put to death for defiling and corrupting an innocent.

Tiring of the games, Humbert shoots Quilty, who runs up the stairs and cowers behind a Gainsborough painting. Humbert unloads the pistol; bullets pierce through the painting. Quilty screams.

The narration flashes back four years and opens as Humbert Humbert arrives at a typical suburban New England home. He is seeking boarding and is, at first, unimpressed by the faux sophistication that the middle-class hostess, Charlotte Haze, tries to peddle. Her offer includes a congenital atmosphere, a garden, and her home-baked cherry pies. He’s about about to dismiss Haze when she insists that he at least sees her “flower garden.” Humbert walks out on the patio only to see Charlotte’s daughter, Lolita, sunbathing on the lawn.

He’s sold.

“What was the decisive factor?” Charlotte asks Humbert. “My garden?” Humbert pauses for a moment and replies, “I think it was your cherry pies.”

The censors weren’t known for their perceptiveness.

Humbert and Charlotte wed and it seems to be a happy marriage, provided you are as blind as Mrs. Haze. There is a good deal of humor in the exchanges between the debonair European and an aging American woman more concerned for her own romance than her daughter. There is a telling scene when Humbert, Charlotte, and Lolita are at a drive-in movie and a scary scene is playing. Both Lolita and Charlotte grab Humbert’s hands. Humbert pulls his hand away from Charlotte and places it on Lolita’s.

Circumstances eventually allow for Humbert and Lolita to take a road trip. Pressures from both within and without begin to threaten the delicate illusion that the European has built for himself. One constant, albeit unknown, threat to Humbert is the distinguished Clare Quinty–a writer “friend” of Charlotte and, perhaps, Lolita. He hounds the couple over the miles, appearing in different disguises and landing sly verbal jabs at Humbert. One night, Lolita disappears after being hospitalized with the flu. We know the culprit, but Humbert is left in the dark until two years later, when a typewritten note arrives from Lolita.

When he finds what happens, Humbert becomes intent on killing Quilty.

Much like Nabokov, Kubrick faced the difficult challenge of getting people to see past a morally impious plot and to realize a story that is both tragic and comedic in its overall effect. The characters of Humbert and Lolita are played more innocently and manipulatively than one would think. The moral line becomes more of a haze.

Is Lolita smut? No. Is it a morality tale? In a manner of speaking, yes. It doesn’t attempt to stand aside and ignorantly preach. Its morality is in forcing the viewer to identify with an individual one would dismiss out of hand as a monster, only to then lead both the character and the reader by hand to an unavoidable truth. Who took this girl’s innocence? Humbert would like to think it was Quilty. However, with the conclusion of the story, we now know what the look was in Humbert’s eyes when he stared at an incoherent, sniveling Quilty: recognition.