Word: hazing
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When Humbert Humbert (James Mason), a French professor who has come to New Hampshire to lodge for the summer before starting a lectureship, tours the home of prospective landlord Charlotte Haze (Sue Lyons), he is completely turned off by her blatant, grotesque and clingy personality. But one look at Haze's shrewd, sexy adolescent daughter, Dolores (a.k.a. Lo or Lolita, played by Shelley Winters), sensuously sunbathing on the front lawn, and Humbert is there to stay. The story plays out Humbert's pedophilic passions, and, when Lolita and he go on a cross-country escapade, it becomes an extended commentary...
...Kubrick quickly establishes Humbert's desirability to both of his women when the three of them see a horror movie and the mother and daughter each grip his hand in fright. Presaging what is to follow in one deft move, Humbert extricates his left hand from the older Mrs. Haze's clutch and places it on top of Lolita's hand...
...acting by all of the major characters in the film is superb. James Mason in the lead role provides a masterful portrayal of polish and perversion. As Lolita, Shelley Winters revels in the role of the clever, assertive and pouty nymphet. Sue Lyons' Charlotte Haze oozes visceral detestability to the point where the viewer empathizes with Humbert's disgust...
...course the sexual undertones range from subtle to blatant--to have time alone with Humbert, Charlotte Haze sends Lolita to Camp Climax, of all places. And Nabokov's narrative treats such themes as the role of the writer and the distinction between art and life, Freudian repression, myopia and the American obsession with the European Romantic...
McMurtry, a valuable, observant writer in his other fiction, is a couple of sizes better than that here. A muzzy golden haze -- perhaps just sunset through the dust thrown up by the hooves of horses and cattle -- surrounds the two books. This is not just legend mongering, although the author mongers better than most. The second novel is the lesser; no more, really, than a respectful conclusion. But in Streets of Laredo, as in Lonesome Dove, McMurtry plays fair. Evil is evil, death is death. Gone is gone. And though it is far more frightening, he manages to look...