Differing Perspectives on Humbert Humbert

One of the ostensible differences between the Lolita film version and Nabokov’s novel is that Humbert’s predilection for nymphs is not present in the film; in Kubrick’s version Humbert loves Lolita and Lolita only. One would think that if Kubrick removed this key aspect of the story for his adaptation, the whole structure of the work would collapse. However, Kubrick’s Lolita is a very interesting case of censorship, because rather than wallowing away in conventionality, Kubrick used the constraints of the production code to make a comment on censorship; ironically enough this actually relates to Nabokov’s themes in his novel. What makes the film interesting is that one can’t catch the inherent link between both book and film unless they pay close attention to the offhand moments and comments—the moments of double entendre.
Obviously, the book doesn’t need to use the device of double entendre in order to hint at moments of unconventional sexual promiscuity; the sexuality is right out in the open. Yet, the book still deals with the oppression of sexual freedom. (Ch. 5.) The movie doesn’t; Humbert can’t be shown as a pedophile because of the limitations of the production code. Therefore, the movie deals with something completely different and that is oppression of artistic expression. As time would tell in the case of A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick was certainly a director who believed in the director having complete artistic control of their film, no matter how reprehensible the subject matter may be. Kubrick’s Lolita deals with the horrible pat quality of 60’s culture, particularly in relation to art. It’s almost as if Kubrick felt so dissatisfied with film censorship and the general state of the culture at the time, that he felt that he should make a satire out of the whole situation; the statement that I got upon viewing the film is that, “Look how ludicrous it is to make a Lolita in the era of the 60’s. How can one make a tame version of one of the most risqué books ever written?” Unconventional sexual promiscuity was becoming quite prevalent at that time, in the culture opposed to the counterculture no less, and yet here’s a censored Lolita of all stories. I think Kubrick wouldn’t have it any other way—the difference between Kubrick and Nabokov is that Kubrick sees the hilarity in censorship, while Nobakov sees the torment and longing and frustration that eventually lead to Humbert’s madness because of sexual taboos. Kubrick is in some ways a satirist (especially considering that this film was made in his Dr. Strangelove Peter Sellers period.) He wants to make a Lolita in the most difficult period possible in which to tell that story, (the early Sixities being a time of copious amounts of film censorship being performed,) in order to make a comment on that period-why else does the story take place in the period that its set in, if only to show that the 60’s is in some ways a more conservative time period than the 20’s, in terms of the whitewashing of the sexual truth. It’s this form of frustration that leads to Humbert’s madness in the film.
In the hotel scene, there’s so much double entendre. For example, when Quilty is talking to George swine (an ironic name if ever there was one) the way they talk to each other is highly flirtatious. At one point Swine asks Quilty what he does with his excess energy. Quilty describes what his wife does to him in vague terms when they practice martial arts; he says that, “I sort of lay there in pain, but I love it.” When Humbert asks about the bed situation, Swine says that the double bed is very accommodating; “One night we had three ladies resting in one.” What everyone in that hotel alludes to is so obvious that this makes using double entendre rather ridiculous. However, Kubrick had no choice in the matter because of the censorship edicts of the time. Therefore, Kubrick is making a comment of how ridiculous it is to whitewash the sexual truth, especially in the counterculture era of the 60’s.
Actually, Quilty’s weapon of choice against Humbert is the whitewashing of the sexual truth. When Quilty speaks to Humbert in the guise of the police man, Kubrick has arranged the actors so that Humbert can’t see who’s talking to him. In this scene, as in all the scenes with both Sellers and Mason, Humbert is in such contrast to Quilty; Humbert is stiff while Quilty is very relaxed. In this scene Quilty represents the “official” world that constricts Humbert sexually. Yet, Quilty is the most reprehensible figure imaginable. This is Kubrick’s metaphor for how the whitewashing of the sexual truth and censorship is a joke because the people who do such a thing are far worse than the people being censored or restricted; censorship probably exists in order to make people who do not subscribe to the censorship code (which is a joke as this film clearly shows) look morally reprehensible Metaphorically, Kubrick composes a composition that represents this idea; it’s the close up over the shoulder shot of Quilty and his wife as they are hiding behind the newspaper from Humbert, who is in the background. They and their treacherous ways hide while Humbert is clearly visible. It’s ironic that James Mason is so courtly a gentleman and speaks with great enunciation, and yet he’s the one that’s ostracized from society; whereas Quilty is known by everyone to be a “genius.”
It’s the authoritative figure that Quilty is playing that makes Humbert paranoid; surely Humbert knows in the back of his mind that this man is more reprehensible than he is. It’s this nagging truth that results in his paranoia that his Lolita will be taken from him; in the book the reverse occurs—in the book Humbert is paranoid about what he will do on his own volition to the woman. In fact, the Humbert of the film played by James Mason, is very sympathetic not just because of the performer, but the fact that in the film Humbert loves Lolita and Lolita only. There is no mention of Humbert’s plan to one day have little nymphets with his Lolita for his sexual predilection, as there is in the book. Humbert’s being more sympathetic in the film actually enhances the idea that he’s very much unaware of how dangerous and perverse the real world is. This is felt in the shot where Quilty’s poster is hanging behind Humbert while he’s crying his eyes out in lolita’s room; he’s unawares at the fact that Quilty is Lolita’s true love. In the film, Quilty represents that subterranean reality that is going to take Humbert’s Lolita unawares away from him. Quilty gets away with this because he has been disguised to appear like a normal upstanding citizen. It’s the contrived play that basically kills two birds with one stone by taking Lolita away from Humbert while making him mad in the process-in effect making him look like the social undesirable pervert that Quilty really is. A person like Dolores never will realize this sad fact because she believes in whitewashing the sexual truth as well; this is what makes her death a truly tragic one. You don’t have any of this criticism of society in the book because Humbert truly is that social undesirable pervert.
Quilty is simply not as prominent a character in the book, and when he is the reader may not even be aware of his presence (it seems that the reverse occurs in the film with Peter Sellers great performance. In the film, his wild improvisatory scenes are not censored, while the sexuality in the film is.) The Quilty in the film is so despicable that he actually makes Humbert come off rather well in the film. What ends up happening in Kubrick’s version is that Humbert ends up becoming a tragic character who has been ostracized by society, opposed to snide and repulsive as he is in the book. The Humbert characteristics in the book are actually attributed more towards Quilty in the film. Kubrick’s vision of Lolita is that society allows it for a man like Quilty to get away scot free. (I don’t think the Quilty of the novel really has that much power.) I think it’s this sad fact that gives the film a real emotional substance that bypasses the hip satire elements, as in the scene when Humbert tries to take Lolita out of the hospital but is disallowed by the “official” security officers. Kubrick continually tries to criticize society opposed to criticizing Humbert, and he does this through clever means. In the scene, Humbert is the one who is given close ups that can’t help but build empathy for him, while the security guards are shot in long shot. They are not individualized in anyway. They are the faceless censoring threat of Humbert’s passion. In the book, it’s Humbert Humbert who is the hip satirist with no emotion in him. In the novel, Humbert is the one who condescends towards Lolita’s intelligence (pg. 117), opposed to James Mason’s Humbert who is interested in educating Lolita of the ways of the world, like in the scene where he reads her poetry. It helps that Humbert rarely is the narrator of the film, because we don’t see his view of how everyone is not as perceptive about the ways of the world as he is.
One of the main differences between the two versions is that they are created by artists in two different mediums. In the novel, the reader can’t help but feel a cold antipathy towards Humbert when he makes a comment like, “there she was with her ruined looks and her adult, rope-veined narrow hands and her unkempt armpits, there she was (my Lolita!), hopelessly worn at seventeen, with the baby, dreaming already in her of becoming a big shot and retiring around 2020 A.D…” (pg. 277.) In the last scene in the film, the audience feels sympathy for Humbert because they are not hearing his narration. Without the distraction of the narration, the audience pays more attention to what Humbert is saying in this scene; when he says to Lolita that, “I’m not making fun of you,” it appears as if he means it because he does not make a witty retort in his mind to undercut the sentiment, like in the novel. For what is the primary basis of the narration, but an undercutting of sentiment for defense mechanism purposes? Humbert refuses to show his emotions like someone like Dolores in that last scene in the novel; whereas in the film I for one was not thinking about Dolores in that last scene. I was thinking about how sad and depressing it is that of all people, Humbert is the one that gets short changed by society. Without the narration and the idea of Humbert being a nymphomaniac, Lolita appears very crass when she says, “stop crying,” to Humbert in the last scene; that stop crying is basically society’s reprimand of Humbert showing any uncensored emotion. One begins to lose sympathy for Lolita in the film because she begins to resemble everyone else; she’s simply part of the censoring body known as society.
What’s interesting about the film is that the untrustworthy narrator aspect of the story is not present (Robert Stam article); how could it be considering that Kubrick was not writing a novel? However, this does not necessarily mean that Kubrick’s film is a weak adaptation. Because of the constraits put upon him, Kubrick had an intriguing idea in regards to censorship and stylistic constraint and what it does to an audience’s perception of a person like Humbert. Consequently, the film is completely different from Nobakov’s book, because Nobakov didn’t have to face such considerations.