572
PAULINE KAEL
that to sound paradoxical but merely descriptive.) Kubrick and company
have been attacked most for the area in which they have been simply
accurate: they could have done up Sue Lyon in childish schoolgirl
clothes, but the facts of American life are that adolescents and even
pre-adolescents wear nylons and make-up and two-piece strapless bathing
suits and have
figures.
Lolita
isn't a good movie but that's almost beside the point: excite–
ment is sustained by a brilliant idea, a new variant on the classic
chase theme-Quilty as Humbert's walking paranoia, the madness that
chases Humbert and is chased by him, over what should be the delusion–
ary landscape of the actual United States. This panoramic confusion of
normal and mad that can be experienced traveling around the country
is, unfortunately, lost: the film badly needs the towns and motels and
highways of the U.S. It suffers not only from the genteel English
landscapes, but possibly also from the photographic style of Oswald
Morris-perhaps justly famous, but subtly wrong (and too tasteful) for
Lolita.
It may seem like a dreadfully "uncinematic" idea, but I rather
wish that Kubrick, when he realized that he couldn't shoot in the U.S.
(the reasons must have been economic) had experimented with stylized
sets.
There
is
a paradox involved in the film
Lolita.
Stanley Kubrick
shows talents in new areas (theme and dialogue and comedy), and is
at his worst at what he's famous for.
The Killing
was a simple-minded
suspense film about a race-track robbery, but he structured it brilliantly
with each facet shining in place;
Paths of GloTfY
was a simple-minded
pacifist film, but he gave it nervous rhythm and a sense of urgency.
Lolita
is so clumsily structured that you begin to wonder what was
shot and then cut out, why other pieces were left in, and whether the
beginning was intended to be the end; and it is edited in so dilatory a
fashion that after the first hour, almost every scene seems to go on too
long. It's as if Kubrick lost his nerve.
If
he did, it's no wonder; the
wonder is, that with all the pressures on American moviemakers-the
pressures to evade, to conceal, to compromise, and to explain everything
for the literal-minded-he had the nerve to transform this satire on the
myths of love into the medium that has become consecrated to the
myths.
Lolita
is a wilder comedy for being, now, family entertainment.
Movie theatres belong to the same world as the highways and motels:
in first-run theatres, "for persons over 18 years of age" does not mean
that children are prohi:bited but simply that there are no reduced
prices for children. In second-run neighborhood theatres, "for persons
over 18 years of age" is amended by "unless accompanied by a member
of the family." That befits the story of Humbert Humbert.
