Lolita

No es exactamente fascinante, pero sí lo suficientemente entretenida como para ver a dónde conduce la relación entre un caballero bondadoso con deseos ocultos y una adolescente virginal y naturalmente femenina que descubre su seducción. Una historia tranquila y suavemente contada, psicológicamente detallada y sutil, con sorprendentes momentos tragicómicos y el carácter misteriosamente ambiguo de Peter Sellers. Sin embargo, lo que encuentro reprobablemente ausente en la versión de Kubrick de Lolita es un espectro más abierto o al menos insinuado de su acercamiento íntimo, que solo podemos imaginar. El personaje principal, Humbert, sale más bien como un desgraciado impotente platónicamente enamorado que se aferra fanáticamente a su objeto de deseo simplemente porque no puede tenerlo él mismo. (18.09.2020)

One of Kubrick’s weakest films, very uncontroversial and tedious for today’s standards. Unlike others, I have no need to praise Peter Sellers, his Quilt annoyed me every time he was on screen (due of course to the nature of his character and not the performance). James Mason’s character, on the other hand, arouses all conceivable emotions during the film. The viewer’s experience was rather positive, but I don’t think I’ll watch it again. (12.06.2010)

I haven't read the book... And now I don't even have to. I can't imagine that it could be better than this all-round excellent film (for which Nabokov wrote the script himself). All in all, the film has excellent actors, a very hard to describe atmosphere (the only thing I wonder about the book is whether it is as bitterly funny in places) and Kubrick's astonishing ability to make a two and a half hour film run like a ninety minute film. Perfect. The opening scene between James Mason and Peter Sellers is one of the best that can be seen in Kubrick's work. (23.11.2014)

Sufficiently dramatic, sufficiently ironic, but surprisingly lacking in urgency and destiny, that's Kubrick's Lolita. I'm spoiled by Lyne's perfect remake, but when I see Humbert in Mason's unnecessarily restrained portrayal displaying unwarranted paranoid fits and when Shelley Winters, as Charlotte Haze, whines and overacts, everything boils within me. The biggest win is Lolita herself, whose bewitchingly charming actress can evoke in the viewer with her slightest smile exactly the feeling Humbert must have had when he first glimpsed her. The portrayal of Quilty is interesting too, as I remember him as an elusive omnipresent demon, and here, in Sellers' performance, he is a slimy snake, openly showing his face and implying his desires to Humbert's face. The final feelings, in the end, are mixed. The screenplay has very weak parts and minor inconsistencies, but it's not afraid to come up with amazingly sarcastic moments (chuckling while reading a love confession) or an all-telling romantic image (opening credits). But it is "only" a romantic drama and not a fateful confession full of desperate and escaping passion. 70% (27.08.2007)

I would have loved to see a Kubrick version of the legendary Lolita that would not have had to give in to the zealous initiative of the censors and fully reflected his visual genius. But even so, edited beyond recognition, this adaptation of Nabokov's masterful postmodern novel offers so much cinematic beauty, dense erotic atmosphere, breathtakingly stylized shots and cleverly written dialogue that it’s impossible to call it a "weak" Kubrick. Scenes that seem protracted and superfluous are in fact extremely sophisticated and fit perfectly, both in content and atmosphere, into a unique cinematic puzzle that gradually – now tragically, now with an innocently ironic sneer – reveals socially unacceptable motives, and which also quite naturally brings together several different genres, from crime-noir to adventure road-movie. Above all, the excellent James Mason, whose painstaking creation of an obsessed paedophile determines the emotional aspect of the film, and the great Peter Sellers, whose peculiar oratorical performances are among the absolute highlights of the story. In the end, Kubrick's Lolita is a rather intimate odyssey into the bowels of a strange character torn apart by mental illness that may not have the same scope of thought as a comprehensive book and is not always easy to follow, but its artistic value and formal refinement cannot be denied. 85% (07.04.2015)