Built-in obsolescence in Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, USA, 1962.
I have a problem with Stanly Kubrick's Lolita (1962):
Recently I saw Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange (1971) which is a fascinating film about a dystopian world where teenage gangs roam town and countryside in search of sensation. They find that when they break into property, rape, steal and destroy. One day the main character is caught red-handed, given a prison sentence and subjected to an experimental method to cure him of his violent impulses. The film is based on the book A Clockwork Orange by Antony Burgess, published in 1962. I found the film as interesting as the book.
Lolita was written by Vladimir Nabokov and published in 1955. Kubrick shot the film in 1962. The film deals with a middle-aged professor of Literature who is infatuated with the fourteen year old daughter of his landlady. He completely loses it the first time he sees her when she is sunbathing in the garden. The plot follows the relationship between the middle-aged professor who behaves like a complete fool when he starts and continues to have a, sexual, relationship with the teenager. Of course this brings him nothing but trouble. The girl isn't really interested in him at all.
The subject matter of Lolita must have been pretty outrageous in the fifties or the the early sixties. There are greater differences between the book and film in the case of Lolita, than between the book and film in the case of A Clockwork Orange. Fact is that Lolita is a rather boring film. This is probably because the visual presentation of Lolita is obsolete now.
I suppose that after the sexual revolution starting "with the Beatles' first l.p." in 1964, it was easier to show images that were considered risqué before. For me, in 2019, the real story of sexual infatuation and statutory rape is indicated, but it does not hit you like the acts of violence of the gang in A Clockwork Orange do. It does not help that neither James Mason nor Sue Lyon seems to be up to the challenge of playing the professor and the seductive schoolgirl.
Lolita is a film that hasn't aged well.
I suppose that after the sexual revolution starting "with the Beatles' first l.p." in 1964, it was easier to show images that were considered risqué before. For me, in 2019, the real story of sexual infatuation and statutory rape is indicated, but it does not hit you like the acts of violence of the gang in A Clockwork Orange do. It does not help that neither James Mason nor Sue Lyon seems to be up to the challenge of playing the professor and the seductive schoolgirl.
Lolita is a film that hasn't aged well.
