LOLITA (1962)

LOLITA (1962)
Dir. Stanley Kubrick
★★

Source: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056193/mediaindex

Based off a novel by Vladimir Nabokov, Lolita tells the story of a British professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) who becomes obsessed with teenager Lolita Haze (Sue Lyons).

I was impressed at how Kubrick managed to manoeuvre a film of such dark content (& questionable morals ahaha) past the Hays Code (that's their censorship board back then) without leaving Humbert's lust for Lolita to question. The lack of visual explicitness was replaced by the lingering gaze of the camera on Lolita's feet and of course the words of Humbert's diary.

Lyons also put up a great performance by effortlessly shifting between a "Nymphet" and displaying the innocence of Lolita's actual age.

However, the movie became quite painful to watch towards the end; almost like it reached its climax an act too early and is just telling the story for the sake of reaching The End.

Stanley Kubrick has never failed to make me uncomfortable, and he succeeded again this time with Lolita… just not with as much finesse as I was expecting. Then again, movie adaptations have always struggled to one-up their original written form, so kudos for Kubrick for trying but I'd still pick the book if I had an entire day to spare (which I do, during this CB lol).