LOLITA
Stanley Kubrick (director)
1962

Lolita was made by Stanley Kubrick in 1962. It was Kubrick’s 7th feature coming just after Spartacus and just before Dr. Strangelove. Several of his works deal heavily with sex including Clockwork Orange and Eyes Wide Shut.

The film deals with the obsessive involvement with a middle aged poet (Humbert played by James Mason) and guest lecturer with a young girl (Lolita played by Sue Lyons) and the desperate almost equally obsessive involvement with her widowed mother (Charlotte Haze played by Shelly Winters) with the same poet.

The use of sexuality by the women plays a major part in the film. While Humbert obsesses about Lolita and Charlotte obsesses about Humbert tensions develop between the mother and daughter as the mother sees the daughter as a rival.

Lolita’s free wheeling sexuality involves her in a number of affairs to the dismay of Humbert who tries to possess her. Lolita, like Laura Manion in Anatomy of a Murder, is seen almost as property. Humbert restrictions on her grow and he tries to find ways to “buy” her affection but the youngster seems to be seeking romance among her peers. This again is illusion whereas in fact it is the older Clare Quilty with whom she is actually having and affair.

The film conceals and reveals visually the young Lolita who is first seen in a Bikini, a large hat and sunglasses sunning herself in the garden. She is the reason that Humbert decides to stay despite his dislike for her mother. His obsession with Lolita (and her obvious disruption of Charlotte’s attempt at privacy) drives the mother to send her away. In a desperate effort to find a way to stay near her, Humbert marries Charlotte.

Charlotte’s bedroom is dominated by a picture of her late (7 years late) husband and the urn of his ashes. She bemoans her infidelity to her husband but remarks on the fact that celibacy is really too much to ask. The women are as sex driven as the men and in fact maybe more so.

After Humbert marries Charlotte his infatuation with Lolita is clear. We see him in bed with Charlotte, but he stares at Lolita’s photo. His desire to rid himself of Charlotte is indicated by the pistol in the foreground of the shot, placed there by Charlotte.

The opening sequence of the film is followed by a flashback which takes the audience back 4 years earlier and tells the story of Humbert’s meeting with and ultimate romance and break up with Lolita. The film concludes with a re-showing of the first few seconds of the initial scene. A brief written epilogue completes the film as we learn the fate of Humbert - death. The destruction of the child lover is often the reward for the transgression.

Unlike films like Sunset Blvd. in which the entire story is virtually a flashback, Lolita seems to lack the fatalistic quality associated with Sunset Blvd. and other noir films. Although the noir films generally have an “everyday” guy go wrong (into crime) because of a femme fatale, Lolita doesn’t quite fit the bill. The criminal act is basically his involvement with an underage girl. The ultimate criminal act he is lured into is the murder of Quilty in the sequence which opens the film. The ability of the young girl’s ability to “lead him astray” is the point where the film slips somewhat away from the noir genre. But the idea that an underage girl has already mastered the techniques to do this is what complicates the film and leads to the question again of complicity in the act.

In another difference, Quilty, who is the person with whom Lolita has been having an affair and for whom she leaves Humbert is a comic figure playing many roles in the film – Clare Quilty who masquerades as the school psychologists, who follows Lolita and Humbert in their car, who calls Humbert in his motel room and who as “Uncle” take Lolita from the hospital are all kinds of deception which typify sex in films in which things are hidden and revealed

The film plays with sexual imagery and language throughout and calling the young girls camp “Camp Climax” is just one. Charlotte’s statement about feeling like a limp noodle resonates with Humbert who feels it applies to him as well! Statements made by Lolita about having lost her sweater “in the woods” are clear indications of her sexual activities in the all girls’ school with the one boy who actually works there and is the son of the woman who runs the camp.

Sexual symbolism in food great deal of discussion of eating, scene in car with bottle and potato chips Food associated with sex. See Tom Jones, Chef in Love, Cook, the Thief his Wife and her Lover etc.

Clothing as fetish – Initial shots of Lolita in Bikini, large hat. sun glasses.

Shoes often fetishes Some Freudian analyses raise issues about inserting foot into shoe – What does that mean about Cinderella?!?!!?!?!?

the film looks at the question of "possession" as opposed to love (a point made in Bullets over Broadway and Humbert's ultimate declaration that appears to mean he loves her (and not just lusts after her or wants her to show to other people) is his decision to giver her up basically forever and give her the money she and her husband need to start a new life in Alaska. Lolita too has grown and has realized that her stable life with her husband is something she can't just give up.