Tempered Taboo

Replacing Sex with Suggestion in Nabokov's Lolita

The tagline for the 1962 production of Stanley Kubrick's film asked the practical but tantalizing question, "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?" After all, Vladimir Nabokov's novel had been (and remains today) one of the most vilified works of fiction of the 20th century. The story of sex between a 12 year-old girl and a man three times her age was enough to have the book banned from Paris in 1956, and not printed in its entirety in the United States or England until 1958. Because the novel's subject is taboo, Kubrick did the only thing possible: he had Nabokov write the screenplay. (Of course, Kubrick rewrote much after Nabokov's first draft.) By concentrating on story, rather than the inner turmoil of the narrator, the film version of Lolita takes on an airbrushed quality. The image remains the same, but the blemishes have been artfully disguised.

Nabokov's novel is a confession of its writer, H. H., who has penned the manuscript while awaiting sentencing for a crime of murder. The writer does not concern himself with his current situation, but focuses on the past and his obsession with a girl named Lolita. The early parts of the novel are a psychological case study of Humbert Humbert (as he calls himself), tracing his infatuation of young girls: from an interrupted encounter with a summer love named Annabel at age 13 to his various unsuccessful relationships in its wake. Following a disastrous marriage (and some time in mental institutions) Humbert leaves France for America. The house where he is supposed to stay suffers a fire and he is thrown in to a neighbor's home. The house and the neighbor have nothing to offer Humbert, until he meets the landlady's daughter Lolita.

It should be mentioned here that in a scant 30 or so pages, the reader has delved so deeply into the past (and the mind) of Humbert that his uncontrollable desires are quite familiar. By the time Lolita is introduced, Humbert's reaction is expected and the reader knows that this is not merely the wandering eye of an older man attracted to a pretty girl. His lusts are more visceral, fleshy. One only has to consider his past with prostitutes to understand the lengths he has gone to in satisfying this craving.

Here is the first point in which Kubrick diverts from Nabokov's novel. Whereas Nabokov takes great strides to make Humbert a compelling psychological character, Kubrick introduces him at the end of the story, hunting down Quilty. Placing the denouement of the story at the beginning shows the desperation and obsession that will overcome Humbert, but does nothing to tell us about who he was before the story begins. Instead, Kubrick flashes back four years as Humbert arrives in Ramsdale seeking a room for the summer. There is no background to his character and no suggestion of the struggle in his heart.

There is no overt lechery by Humbert on behalf of Lolita. If a viewer were to see the film without knowledge of the book, it is quite possible that the viewer would be unable to discern any "inappropriate" connection between Humbert (James Mason) and Lolita (Sue Lyon). While he certainly shows interest in her (eyeing her as she hula hoops, holding her hand at the drive-in, etc.) this could be perceived merely as a lonely man trying to reclaim some part of his lost youth. Battling with censors, Kubrick was forced to make his Lolita a more "acceptable" 14 years old, rather than the 12 year-old in Nabokov's story. As a slightly older girl, Lyon's portrayal of Lolita allows for some sexuality to come through. Regardless, Mason plays Humbert with a respectable European air that makes his doting on Lolita seem almost paternal. His love for her can nearly be seen as innocent. Only a brief scene of his writing in his diary gives viewers a clue as to what Humbert really has on his mind:

"Narrator (Humbert): What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, a veteran nymphet perhaps, this mixture in my Lolita of tender, dreamy childishness and a kind of eerie vulgarity. I know it is madness to keep this journal, but it gives me a strange thrill to do so."

(Lolita, 1962)

By contrast, the Humbert in Nabokov's novel is a tortured man, distracted by his scheming desires to rid himself of Charlotte and obtain Lolita. After he finally finds himself free of Charlotte (fate providing the perfect murder), he finds himself even worse off than before. When Lolita was a dream he indulged the fantasy of her. Finding her proverbially dropped in his lap, he is overcome by feelings of guilt and fear.

"I should have understood that Lolita had already proved to be something quite different from innocent Annabel, and that the nymphean evil breathing through every pore of the fey child that I had prepared for my secret delectation, would make the secrecy impossible, and the delectation lethal." (Pg. 124-125)

This is the Humbert that Kubrick chooses to hide from viewers. Instead of a tortured man awake all night while trying to creep closer to Lolita in the hotel bed, Kubrick gives us a comedic moment when Humbert and the hotel bellboy must unfold an uncooperative cot without waking her. In the morning, when Lolita wakes Humbert, there is a playfulness to her as she alludes to the "games" she learned at camp. She whispers to Humbert, and it becomes a sexy one-sided conversation for viewers. When she finally offers to share her game with him, Kubrick fades to black.

Now Kubrick can leave no room for speculation. While the words "sex" and "rape" are not used, the exchange between Humbert and Lolita afterward make it clear that something happened. The rape is shocking, but it is softened by two facts: 1) Lolita was clearly not a virgin, and 2) she seduced Humbert. As the novel was written as a "confession," one wonders if the author can be believed when he claims that Lolita seduced him, but it is of no matter. In the novel he is clearly the predator. Whether he made the first move or not, the point is moot because he put himself in the very same bed as Lolita. In the film, however, Humbert sleeps on the collapsible cot. One could speculate that Humbert was a victim of circumstance, overcome by improper desires at an opportune time.

Kubrick also suggests that all adults, not merely Humbert, have their own kinky fetishes. Early in the film, Jean Farlow (Diana Decker) suggests to Humbert that she and her husband are very "broad minded." Is she suggesting that they "swing" and are interested in doing something with Humbert and Charlotte (Shelly Winters)? As Humbert watches Lolita, amid the "Patty Duke"-like innocence of her school dance, he is more at home than at his lodging where - later - poor Humbert is practically molested by Charlotte. Elsewhere in the film, at The Enchanted Hunters, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) confides in a hotel clerk that he and his companion like to practice judo and "play rough":

"Quilty: She's a yellow belt. I'm a green belt. That's the way nature made it. What happens is, she throws me all over the place.
Swine: She throws you all over the place?
Quilty: Yes. What she does, she gets me in a, sort of, thing called a sweeping ankle throw. She sweeps my ankles away from under me. I go down with one helluva bang.
Swine: Doesn't it hurt?
Quilty: Well, I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it. I really love it. I lay there hovering between consciousness and unconsciousness. It's really the greatest."

(Lolita, 1962)

Taking advantage of the story's "scandal," Kubrick injects suggestiveness in unsuspecting moments. A scene finds Humbert and Charlotte (now married) in bed one morning, but while holding her he is looking at a photograph of Lolita. The implied longing is daring and effective. Likewise, a later scene in which Jean and John come to Humbert after the death of Charlotte finds him naked in the tub. As the camera focuses on Humbert, only half-hidden by a shower curtain, we hear Jean's voice as she pleads with him to think of Lolita.

For much of Kubrick's Lolita, the audience must draw the conclusions for themselves. Nothing is said, or needs to be said, because Kubrick's film did not spring forth in a vacuum. Audiences in 1962 were well aware of Nabokov's infamous novel. The film, by contrast, becomes a shared innuendo filled with suggestion, but nothing so bold as a naked breast or a glimpse of sex. Despite its taboo subject, Kubrick's Lolita is tame by today's standards. Perhaps the best film that could be made at the time, it fails to capture the nuance of the book and the tortured soul of Humbert Humbert.