It's disturbing that Sue Lyon was just 14 when filming started, but her performance is impressive, and Shelley Winters is also strong. There are several places the film suffers from the Production Code, and we never really feel the sickness of lust from Mason, but Director Stanley Kubrick does get a number of allusions in, and perhaps it's better that the majority of it was left to the imagination.
The film is far too long at 152 minutes, and another screenwriter should have been used instead of Nabokov.
The point is to show how ridiculous an infatuation can make a man behave, even if it is taboo, bringing him to humiliation, but the road trip, being pursued, and the recurring character played by Peter Sellers, who is so endearing in the beginning, eventually gets over-used and annoying. Unfortunately, after an event I won't describe to avoid spoiling it, the film drags on and gets a bit ridiculous. The tension between his forbidden attraction, concealed in sly glances and little gestures, all while Winters practically throws herself at him, is fantastic. Like the book, the film is strongest in the beginning, as Humbert Humbert (James Mason) takes a room with a widow (Shelley Winters), only after spotting her teenage daughter (Sue Lyon) lounging around in a bikini.
0 kommentar(er)
