the original novel was more of context in a sexually advanced european culture. The young teenage girl is uber sexually advanced compared to still evolving american society even in the early 70', where hippie culture had not yet taken off!
The novel wasn't in the context of a "sexually advanced European culture". That was simply how Humbert rationalised what he was doing. In Humber's eyes, hebephilia is "cultured" and "sophisticated". In the novel, Humbert believes his "exotic" sexuality to be evidence of his extremely refined taste, his palate superior to the average man’s. But he has a massive superiority complex and everything he says is some kind of lie or delusion.
Lolita is 12 in the novel. Nothing Humbert does would actually be deemed right in Europe.
so though literally it captured the essense of it but could not come up with un-inhibited sexualism ala 'clock work orange' due to the conservative nature of times and reservations for a sexually sensitive radical subject!
I think the "essense" of the film is different to the novel. In the novel, you don't get much hint of the "real Lolita". We're only granted the warped perspective of a pompous guy who likes to dominate and overpower. The book's about a hebephile who sees nothing wrong with his behaviour and who has no real sympathy for the victim of his crimes. At one point he rapes Lolita and rationalises it as her initiating sex.
In the film, however, Lolita's a fairly headstrong 14-17 year old, and all the characters are manipulative predators. Lolita's mother wants Humbert, Humbert wants Lolita, Quilty wants Lolita and Lolita wants Quilty. All are on equal footing, all simultaneously victim and victor.
And everyone's desires gets someone else punished: Quilty dies, the mother dies, Humbert dies and Lolita's jaded. More than this, everyone's object of desire turns out to be twisted: Humbert's ideal (the idealised as "innocent" Lolita) turns out to have agency, Lolita's ideal (Quilty) isn't a suave actor but a creep who makes porn movies, Lolita's mom's ideal (Humbert) is a creep, and Quilty's ideal (Lolita) is disappointingly a "prude" who refuses to sleep with him. "Didn't it ever occur to you that you were not the center of my world," Lolita tells Humbert at the end of the film. The line might as well apply to all the characters in the film. In the film, all the characters are self-centered little predators.
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sanjay_kn
9 years ago
let me get my head around it. I had read the novel as a teenager( 23 years ago). And found it sexually quite explicit! there was no where to capture it to that extent without bordering upon porn. So the movie looked conservative in that aspect.
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