Stanley Kubrick's "Lolita"

Note: My thoughts on Lolita were originally posted in my sidebar and was written a few weeks ago.

I really enjoyed Kubrick's 1962 version of Lolita. Shelley Winters blew me away as Charlotte Haze, Lolita's mother. I'd seen Winters in The Night of the Hunter, another great movie, but she wasn't onscreen for very long. Winters played Charlotte as both a disgusting and pitiful woman.

James Mason was also excellent as Humbert Humbert. His Humbert struck me as being a much more despicable than Jeremy Irons's Humbert in Adrian Lyne's version of the story. Now that I think about it, I would say the same goes for the two Lolitas. I could sympathize with Dominique Swain's Lolita, but as far as I can remember, Sue Lyon's Lolita was closer to the precocious brat depicted in Nabokov's novel.

Filed in: Movies