Based on Nabakov's book, it's the story of pedophile Humbert Humbert's fascination with young Lolita. He enters her life looking for boarding. He stays and even marries her mother just to be near her. When her mother dies, he takes advantage of his position as her stepfather. We follow them until Lolita makes her escape and Humbert takes his revenge on the agent of her escape.

That Lolita in the film was 15 rather than 12.
The humor in the film perhaps made it easier to watch, but, to me, trivialized the subject matter.

See the more recent version to see if it's a better treatment or not.

Uncomfortable. Given the subject, I'd say that's a good thing.

Did a fine job.

The hardest part of reviewing this film is remembering that most of what I didn't like about it is because of when it was made. This was still a tabu subject in 1962 and films were definitely not as graphic as today.

I would not want it to be more graphic. That part was good, but I felt the acting was also too restrained. Shelly Winters' was perhaps the only unrestrained role. In the parts where Humbert was with others, his restraint was understandable. When alone with Lolita, however, he still seemed too nice.

Lolita was a hard role for anyone. Within the restraints of the time, I think the actress did a fine job, but it was still not real enough. Her behavior didn't seem to change much from what it was before Humbert's arrival. Her unhappiness did not seem to have any deeper misery to it and her happiness had no underlying pain. Is this because the story is Humbert's narration? To provide only Humbert's view is wrong to me. Let his narration give his view and let the viewer see the truth. But again, it may have been because it was 1962 and treating this subject at all was difficult.

While I very much like Peter Sellers and I think he did the Clare Quilty character very well, I felt the Dr. Zempf character was out of place. Even though it was Quilty playing the part, it was too comical and lacked the seriousness to be convincing. If I'd been Humbert, I would have questioned who he was a lot more. And I think Quilty would have tried to be more real, even though his own reasons were apparently as perverted as Humbert's.

Over all the film was well made and provides a non-winking, not quite whispered view on a difficult subject. It's worth watching to pick up attitudes of the '50's and '60's, but I would not want this to be someone's only look at pedophilia. As a film, it's entertaining (though sometimes uncomfortable), but the subject deserves a serious look as well.

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Created Jan 29, 2006 at 6:12pm • Submit your own review...