There's just something about "Lolita"

"Lolita" from Stanley Kubrick is an exquisite portrayal of the debauchery inhabiting the bourgeoisie's bored hearts, in their quest of a flame that would give a meaning to their insipid lives mostly made of conventions and futile manners. The protagonist of the film is not a man to embarrass himself with futility, his quite unusual name, Humbert Humbert, indicates a heart more inclined to originality, to live a devouring passion rather than succumbing to the easy choice of being a good member of a rather despised community. "Lolita" is less about sex than a rebellious attitude incarnated by a forbidden passion, a passion that would make the straightest man adopt the most romantic attitude, just to conquer a lovely, beautiful, sensual but forbidden fruit … named Lolita …

A man said once that "we have the age of people who love us", this sentence, debatable or accurate, sounds like an excuse for Humbert, the serious and straight faced James Mason, to fall in love with the beautiful blonde fourteen-year old pearl, Dolores aka Lolita. Age is not a matter if she does have a fondness for him. But we all know this is wrong. I haven't personally read the novel from Nabokov, and in a way, it didn't interfere with my appreciation of the film, or influence it negatively, so I'm only judging the movie. And from the movie, all I can say is that Kubrick once again, proved again his directing talent by casting the delicious Sue Lyon for the titular role. She indeed looks young enough to make James Mason, in his early fifties then, look like an "old man", but sexy enough to create a masculine empathy towards Humbert. In the memorable garden scene, where Humbert and Lolita's eyes meet after she take off her sunglasses, I'm sure every man would have fallen in love with this dolly face, full of mystery and guilty temptations, incarnated by this soft and almost erotic "Lolita Ya-Ya" theme.

I mentioned masculine empathy, but this is would be ignoring another central character. Shelley Winters, portrays with a sympathetic poignancy Charlotte, the poor mother who felt for Humbert like he did for her daughter. Winters, as another cinematic victim of her own kindness, lives a reverse Oedipian situation, and is even more humiliated when Humbert starts using her in a complicated scheme whose only necessity is the possession of Lolita ... because this is the very effect of love at first sight, a profound desire to possess one person, that ultimately becomes obsessional. James Mason, in a brilliant performance, embodies the contradictions of a man whose apparent seriousness as a college professor is only a veil to cover the passion flamed by Lolita. The mother fell in love with the professor, ignoring how her daughter revealed the real Humbert. Doomed already, she naturally disappears, without Humbert's intervention as if God wanted Humbert to succeed. But in his long climbing to the possession of Lolita, Humbert will have a pebble in his shoe, Clare Quilty.

Quilty, played by Peter Sellers, is the antagonist of the film, from this category of innocent looking villains with no less devastating effects on the protagonists' projects. The severity of his acts can only be measured by the punishment he directly received from Humbert himself, an implacable sentence to death. We don't know the character enough to feel sorry for him, and Mason inspires such trust (indeed, a perfect casting choice) that we believe there's something weird in this character and he played a role damaging enough to get this comeuppance. But the question that haunts us all through the film is why this insistence? Why is he constantly harassing Humbert? Well, I admit, I felt sorry for Humbert, and wondered what were Quilty's motives. Until the revelation made me realize the obvious: that there's just something about Lolita…

Lolita is like a living passion igniting men's inner perversity, she's the epitome of the innocent sexiness, the forbidden fruit that looks so juicy and delicious that even disobedience would be worse than inaction. The effects she had on Humbert are the same on Quilty, but with a significant difference, she was in love with Quilty. Humbert went from such hardship to finally get Lolita, living with a woman he was mocking, lying, using respectability to mask his pervert nature, becoming a kind of lover submitted to Lolita's every desire, painting her feet nails, that it's heart-breaking to witness his realization that all he incarnated for her is what he was trying not to be: a fatherly figure. Lolita didn't love him but respected him, when Humbert might have preferred the opposite, even if it meant being an arrogant bastard like Quilty. Humbert's tears at the end, were joined by mine, because as forbidden and sinful as it was, that was the powerful and authentic portrayal of the devastating loss of one true love, forever.

The opening credits show beautiful little feet being nailed by masculine hands. This memorable overture perfectly illustrates the obsession that can govern our hearts when we fall in love, we can become a servant to our women, an object of suspicion for good society. Humbert didn't even care for suspicion, he was already living in a bourgeois world, where everything was made of pretending (the kind of superficiality that Kubrick will denounce 37 years after in "Eyes Wide Shut") All Humbert wanted was to be loved as the man of Lolita's life, but his obsession was like a self-destructive force. Humbert's jealousy turned him into a control freak that would naturally end with a separation, and a descent into madness.

It's a happy end for Lolita, who was more a victim of her nature that the passing of years will correct anyway, but for Humbert, it was just the flame that burnt his heart, corrupted his mind, and ravaged his soul, forever …