Pedophilia doesn't seem the likely subject of a film made in the early '60s, but there's almost a power in the censorship of "Lolita." Undoubtedly, the finished product did not represent the initial vision of neither director Stanley Kubrick nor Vladimir Nabokov, who penned the adaptation of his own novel, but the result is a film no less challenging.
The fact that "Lolita" had to rely on implied sexuality because anything that so much as visually suggested illegal sexual relations could not be filmed, actually makes the film stronger in ways. It puts a lot more weight on the shoulders of James Mason as Humbert Humbert, the professor inappropriately smitten with his landlady's daughter, to convey his lust without conveying his lust, but it also refocuses the story to the psychological profiles of both Humbert and Lolita (Sue Lyon) rather than what they did or didn't do.
Dolores "Lolita" Haze is the driving force both at times overtly and implicitly throughout the entire story. She lives with her widowed mother Charlotte (Shelley Winters) in the small town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire, where Humbert Humbert intends to spend the summer writing before he begins work as a professor. Looking for a place to rent, he finds the Hazes and agrees to stay after he sees Lolita, who's just 15 but completely physically mature. He's infatuated with the girl instantly and deals with her mother's sexual advances just to stay near her. Upset and implicitly jealous of Lolita, Mrs. Haze sends her away to summer camp. Faced with the possibility of never seeing Lolita again, Humbert marries Mrs. Haze.
Lolita seems like an average gum-chewing teenager, but she understands the power she has as an attractive young woman. Even before we first see her, Kubrick's camera-work is restless and frenetic as Charlotte tries to sell Humbert on staying at their home. When they both finally go out back where it happens that Lolita is out sunning in a bikini, the camera stays still on her (no ogling, of course) and everything changes.
Humbert's inappropriate motivations regarding Lolita are the most obvious, but even Mrs. Haze lets Lolita get to her. Much like Snow White and the Evil Queen, Charlotte is driven by jealousy because Lolita has her whole life ahead of her and she's young and beautiful, whereas Charlotte feels desperate and unloved in these seven years after her husband's death.
Then there's Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers). The film opens with Humbert shooting him to death, with regards to Lolita, and goes back four years earlier to tell the story from the beginning. Quilty appears throughout the story and the implied romantic link between he and Lolita grows stronger as the film goes on, although he remains on the periphery. Not too much, however, because Kubrick devotes a lot of attention to Sellers' performance. He's brilliant (and clearly the inspiration for Kubrick's "Dr. Strangelove," which would reunited the two a few years later), but his comedy does at times drastically change the tone of the film to humor and detract from the central characters' story.
没有评论:
发表评论