Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9110 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-06-01
• Rating: Suitable for 15 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Formats: Dubbed, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, Romanian, Spanish
• Dubbed in: French, Italian
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 147 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Stanley Kubrick's 1961 version of Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov's notorious 1953 novel, prompted a scandal in its day: even to address the issue of paedophilia on screen was deemed to be as perverted as the hapless protagonist Humbert Humbert. James Mason plays Humbert, the suave English Professor whose gentlemanly exterior peels away as quickly as his scruples once exposed to Sue Lyons' well-developed teenage beauty. In order to be close to her, he marries her mother, the lonely and pathetically pretentious Charlotte (Shelley Winters) only for her to expire conveniently, leaving Humbert free to embark on a motel-to-motel trek across America with Lolita in tow, evading suspicions that theirs is more than a father-daughter relationship. Peter Sellers, meanwhile, gives a Dr Strangelove-type tour de force performance as Clare Quilty, a TV writer also in pursuit of Lolita, who harasses Humbert under several guises, including a psychiatrist.

As a movie, Lolita is flawed, albeit interestingly so. The sexual innuendo (a summer camp called Camp Climax, for example) seems jarring and pointless, while Sellers' comic turn detracts from any sense of guilt, tension or tragedy. It's as if the real purpose of the film is to offer a sort of silent, mocking laughter at the wretched Humbert and systematically divest him of his dignity. By the end, he is a babbling wretch while Sue Lyons' Lolita is pragmatic and self-possessed. It's Mason and Lyons' performances, which lift the film from its mess of structural difficulties. Decades on, their central relationship still makes for pitifully compulsive viewing.

On the DVD: Few extras, sadly, though the brief original trailer is excellent, built around the question, "How could they make a film out of Lolita?". The original black and white picture and mono sound are excellent. --David Stubbs

Special Features
1.66 Wide Screen
DVD 9
French\Italian
English\Italian
English
Region 2
Mono English French Italian
Mono
Interactive Menus
Scene Access
Trailer
Arabic\Bulgarian\Dutch\English\French\German\Italian\Portuguese\Romanian\Spanish

Synopsis
Stanley Kubrick's adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's controversial LOLITA is a wicked satire of sexual obsession, sadomasochism, and fetishism. When mild-mannered professor Humbert Humbert (James Mason) arrives in the small town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire, he is immediately set upon by his landlady, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters), and her adolescent daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon). Although Humbert gets involved with Charlotte, it is Lolita with whom he becomes obsessed. When Charlotte sends her daughter away to summer camp (the aptly named Camp Climax), Humbert becomes consumed with jealousy. When he finally takes Lolita out of camp and heads out alone with her, he is pestered along the way by Clare Quilty (played magnificently by Peter Sellers), who threatens to expose him. But nothing can break the hold Lolita has over Humbert.
From the opening credits sequence--a close-up of a man's hand (with a wedding ring) carefully polishing a young girl's toenails--Kubrick's LOLITA burns with sexual energy that is biting, ironic, and darkly comic as it follows the debasement of an intelligent, worldly man in a series of carefully choreographed long takes that boils over with psychosexual tension. Although little physical contact is shown, Kubrick hints at it beautifully, especially in the drive-in scene in which both Charlotte and Lolita grab on to Humbert's hands. And yet given the serious nature of the subject matter, Kubrick pauses long enough to include a riotous slapstick scene of Humbert and a bellhop struggling over a cot as Lolita sleeps quietly on the bed, as well as Quilty playing Ping-Pong with a seemingly endless supply of balls. Stanley Kubrick's highly controversial masterwork is a fascinating look at pedophilia and sexual taboos that lead to obsession and murder.