Lolita (1962)

Lolita is an American 1962 black comedy-psychological drama film[9] directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the eponymous 1955 novel by Vladimir Nabokov.

The black-and-white film follows a middle-aged literature lecturer who writes as "Humbert Humbert" and has hebephilia. He is sexually infatuated with young, adolescent Dolores Haze (whom he calls "Lolita"). It stars James Mason as Humbert, Shelley Winters as Mrs. Haze, Peter Sellers as Quilty, and Sue Lyon (in her film debut) as Dolores "Lolita" Haze.

The novel was considered "unfilmable" when Kubrick acquired the rights around the time of its U.S. publication. Owing to restrictions imposed by the Motion Picture Production Code (1934–68), the film toned down the most provocative aspects, sometimes leaving much to the audience's imagination. Sue Lyon was 14 at the time of filming and played a 14-year-old, whereas the Lolita of Nabokov's novel is just 12 years old when Humbert Humbert first meets her.

Lolita polarized contemporary critics with its theme of child sexual abuse but was nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 35th Academy Awards. Years after its release, Kubrick expressed doubt that he would have attempted to make the film had he fully understood how severe the censorship limitations on it would be. Regardless, the film has since received critical acclaim. In the late 1990s, British director Adrian Lyne again adapted the novel to the big screen.

Plot
In a remote mansion, Clare Quilty, drunk and incoherent, plays Frédéric Chopin's Polonaise in A major, Op. 40, No. 1, on the piano before he is shot to death by Humbert "Hum" Humbert, a middle-aged European professor of French literature.

Four years earlier, Humbert arrives in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, intending to spend the summer before his professorship begins at Beardsley College, Ohio. He searches for a room to rent, and Charlotte Haze, a cloying, sexually frustrated widow, invites him to stay at her house. He declines until seeing her 14-year-old daughter, Dolores, affectionately nicknamed "Lolita", with whom he becomes infatuated.

To be close to Lolita, Humbert accepts Charlotte's offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household. However, Charlotte wants all of Humbert's time for herself and tells him that she will be sending Lolita to an all-girl sleepaway camp for the summer. After the Hazes depart for camp, the maid gives Humbert a letter from Charlotte, confessing her love for him and demanding he vacate at once unless he feels the same way. The letter says that if Humbert is still in the house when she returns, Charlotte will know her love is requited, and he must marry her. Though he roars with laughter while reading the sadly heartfelt yet characteristically overblown letter, Humbert marries Charlotte.

Things turn sour for the couple in the absence of the child: glum Humbert becomes more withdrawn, and Charlotte grows increasingly unfulfilled and upset. Charlotte discovers Humbert's diary entries detailing his passion for Lolita and describing Charlotte as "obnoxious" and "brainless". In an outburst, she runs outside, but is hit by a car and dies.

Humbert arrives to pick up Lolita from camp; she does not yet know her mother is dead. They stay the night in a hotel that is handling an overflow influx of police officers attending a convention. One of the guests, a pushy, abrasive stranger, insinuates himself upon Humbert and keeps steering the conversation to his "beautiful little daughter", who is asleep upstairs. The stranger implies that he too is a policeman and repeats, too often, that he thinks Humbert is "normal". Humbert escapes the man's advances. The next morning, Humbert and Lolita play a "game" she learned at camp, and it is implied that they have a sexual encounter. The next day, Humbert confesses to Lolita that her mother is not sick in a hospital, as he had previously told her, but dead. Grief-stricken, she stays with Humbert. The two commence a trip cross country, traveling from hotel to motel. In public, they act as father and daughter.

In the fall, Humbert reports to his position at Beardsley College, and enrolls Lolita in high school there. Before long, people begin to wonder about the relationship between the father and his over-protected daughter. Humbert worries about her involvement with the school play and with male classmates. One night he returns home to find Dr. Zempf, a pushy, abrasive stranger, sitting in his darkened living room. Zempf, speaking with a thick German accent, claims to be the psychologist from Lolita's school and wants to discuss her knowledge of "the facts of life". He convinces Humbert to allow Lolita to participate in the school play, for which she had been selected to play the leading role.

While attending a performance of the play, Humbert learns that Lolita has been lying about how she was spending her Saturday afternoons when she claimed to be at piano practice. They get into a row and Humbert decides to leave Beardsley College and take Lolita on the road again. Lolita objects at first but suddenly changes her mind and seems very enthusiastic. Once on the road, Humbert realizes they are being followed by a mysterious car that never drops away but never quite catches up. When Lolita becomes sick, he takes her to the hospital. However, when he returns to pick her up, she is gone. The nurse tells him she left with another man who claimed to be her uncle. Humbert is devastated, left without a clue as to her disappearance or whereabouts.

Some years later, Humbert receives a letter from Mrs. Richard T. Schiller, Lolita's married name. She writes that she is now married to a man named Dick and that she is pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert travels to their home and demands that she tell him who kidnapped her three years earlier. She tells him it was Clare Quilty, the man who was following them. A famous playwright, he had a fling with her mother in Ramsdale. She states Quilty is also the one who disguised himself as Dr. Zempf, the pushy stranger who kept crossing their path. Lolita admits she was infatuated by Quilty and also carried on an affair with him at Beardsley, then left the hospital with him when he promised her a Hollywood contract. However, he then demanded she join his bohemian lifestyle, including acting in his "art" films, which she refused.

Humbert begs Lolita to leave Schiller and come away with him. She refuses, reminding him that she has a baby due in three months, but apologizes for cheating. Humbert gives Lolita $13,000, explaining it is her money from the sale of her mother's house. He leaves to confront Quilty in his mansion. Intertitles explain that Humbert died of coronary thrombosis awaiting trial for Quilty's murder.

Cast
See also: List of recurring cast members in Stanley Kubrick films
James Mason as Humbert "Hum" Humbert
Shelley Winters as Charlotte Haze-Humbert
Sue Lyon as Dolores "Lolita" Haze
Peter Sellers as Clare Quilty / Dr. Zempf
Gary Cockrell as Richard "Dick" Schiller
Jerry Stovin as John Farlow, a Ramsdale lawyer
Diana Decker as Jean Farlow
Lois Maxwell as Nurse Mary Lore
Cec Linder as Dr. Keegee
Susanne Gibbs as Mona
Bill Greene as George Swine, the hotel night manager in Bryceton
Shirley Douglas as Mrs. Starch, the piano teacher in Ramsdale
Marianne Stone as Vivian Darkbloom, Quilty's companion
Marion Mathie as Miss Lebone
James Dyrenforth as Frederick Beale, Sr.
Maxine Holden as Miss Fromkiss, the hospital receptionist
John Harrison as Tom
Colin Maitland as Charlie Sedgewick
C. Denier Warren as Potts
Ed Bishop as an Ambulance Attendant
Production

Theatrical advertisement from 1962
Stanley Kubrick and James Harris acquired the right to Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita, a novel considered unfilmable, several years after it was first published in September 1955 in Paris by Maurice Girodias' Olympia Press, which specialized in pornographic literature. Initially considered a "dirty book" in an era when literary censorship meant jail time and fines for publishers, Lolita was not published in the United States until August 1958 by G.P. Putnam's Sons, after it had gradually established its literary reputation.

Nabokov had submitted the novel to Girodias after it was rejected by mainstream publishers. The book received no reviews until Graham Greene ranked it at one of the three best books of 1955 in the London Sunday Times. London Sunday Express editor John Gordon, in response to Greene, called it "the filthiest book I have ever read" and "sheer unrestrained pornography". The book was deemed pornography by the Home Office and British Customs officers were instructed to seize all copies entering the United Kingdom. France banned the novel for two years (1956-58). Lolita was not published in the UK until 1959.[10]

When Marlon Brando fired Kubrick from One-Eyed Jacks project in November 1958, the director issued a press release saying that he was resigning from Brando's picture "with deep regret" so that he could "commence work on Lolita".[11] Kubrick was hired by Kirk Douglas to replace director Anthony Mann on the epic Spartacus; he and Harris didn't put Lolita into production until 1961. Kubrick directed Laurence Olivier and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus, both of whom he considered for roles in his Lolita adaptation. It was filmed, in part, in Great Britain, and in Albany, New York.[5]

Direction
With Nabokov's consent, Kubrick changed the order in which events unfolded by moving what was the novel's ending to the start of the film. Kubrick determined that while this sacrificed a great ending, it helped maintain interest, as he believed that interest in the novel sagged after Humbert “seduced” Lolita halfway through.[12]

The second half contains an odyssey across the United States and though the novel was set in the 1940s, Kubrick gave it a contemporary setting, shooting many of the exterior scenes in England with some back-projected scenery shot in the United States, including upstate eastern New York, along NY 9N in the eastern Adirondacks, and a hilltop view of Albany from Rensselaer, on the east bank of the Hudson.[citation needed]

Some of the minor parts were played by Canadian and American actors, such as Cec Linder, Lois Maxwell, Jerry Stovin and Diana Decker, who were based in England at the time. Kubrick had to film in England, as much of the money to finance the movie was raised there, with the condition that it also be spent there.[12] In addition, Kubrick had been living in England since 1961 and suffered from a deathly fear of flying.[13] Hilfield Castle is featured in the film as Quilty's "Pavor Manor".

Casting
James Mason was the first choice of Kubrick and producer Harris for the role of Humbert Humbert, but he initially declined due to a Broadway engagement while recommending his daughter, Portland, for the role of Lolita.[14] Laurence Olivier, who co-starred in Kubrick's Spartacus, was offered the part but turned it down, apparently on the advice of his agents who also represented Kubrick.[citation needed]

Kubrick then considered Peter Ustinov, who won an Oscar for Spartacus, but decided against him. Harris suggested David Niven, who accepted the part but withdrew for fear that the sponsors of his TV show, Four Star Playhouse (1952), would object to the subject matter. Noël Coward and Rex Harrison were also considered.[15]

Mason got the part of Humbert Humbert when he withdrew from the play.[citation needed]

The role of Clare Quilty was greatly expanded from that in the novel and Kubrick allowed Sellers to adopt a variety of disguises throughout the film. Early on in the film, Quilty appears as himself: a conceited, avant-garde playwright with a superior manner. Later he is an inquisitive policeman on the porch of the hotel, where Humbert and Lolita are staying. Next he is the intrusive Beardsley High School psychologist, Doctor Zempf. He persuades Humbert to give Lolita more freedom in her after-school activities.[16] He is seen as a photographer backstage at Lolita's play. Later in the film, he is an anonymous phone caller conducting a survey.

Jill Haworth was asked to take the role of Lolita but she was under contract to Otto Preminger and he said "no".[17] Hayley Mills was offered the role but her parents refused permission for her to do it.[18] Joey Heatherton, Sandra Dee, and Tuesday Weld also were potential candidates for the role.[citation needed]

Although Vladimir Nabokov originally thought that Sue Lyon was the right selection to play Lolita, years later Nabokov said that the ideal Lolita would have been Catherine Demongeot, a young French actress who had played the child Zazie in Louis Malle's Zazie in the Metro (1960). Demongeot was four years younger than Lyon.[19]

Lyon's Age
Producer James Harris explained that 14 year-old Sue Lyon, who looked older than her age, was cast as, "We knew we must make [Lolita] a sex object [...] where everyone in the audience could understand why everyone would want to jump on her."[20] He also said, in a 2015 Film Comment interview, "We made sure when we cast her that she was a definite sex object, not something that could be interpreted as being perverted."[21]

Harris said that he and Kubrick, through casting, changed Nabokov's book as "we wanted it to come off as a love story and to feel very sympathetic with Humbert."[22]

Censorship

Lolita kisses Humbert goodnight as he plays chess with her mother. His line in the scene is "I take your Queen." Chess, a recurring motif in Nabokov's novels, was also a favorite pastime of director Stanley Kubrick.
At the time the film was released, the ratings system was not in effect and the Hays Code, dating back to the 1930s, governed movie production. The censorship of the time inhibited Kubrick's direction; Kubrick later commented that, "because of all the pressure over the Production Code and the Catholic Legion of Decency at the time, I believe I didn't sufficiently dramatize the erotic aspect of Humbert's relationship with Lolita. If I could do the film over again, I would have stressed the erotic component of their relationship with the same weight Nabokov did."[12] Kubrick hinted at the nature of their relationship indirectly, through double entendre and visual cues such as Humbert painting Lolita's toes. In a 1972 Newsweek interview (after the ratings system had been introduced in late 1968), Kubrick said that he "probably wouldn't have made the film" had he realized in advance how difficult the censorship problems would be.[23]

The film is deliberately vague over Lolita's age. Kubrick commented, "I think that some people had the mental picture of a nine-year-old, but Lolita was twelve and a half in the book; Sue Lyon was thirteen." Actually, Lyon was 14 by the time filming started and 15 when it finished.[24] Although passed without cuts, Lolita was rated "X" by the British Board of Film Censors when released in 1962, meaning no one under 16 years of age was permitted to watch.[25]

Voice-over narration
Humbert uses the term "nymphet" to describe Lolita, which he explains and uses in the novel; it appears twice in the movie and its meaning is left undefined.[26] In a voice-over on the morning after the Ramsdale High School dance, Humbert confides in his diary, "What drives me insane is the twofold nature of this nymphet, of every 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. And only a loving wife could decipher my microscopic script."

Screenplay adaptation
See also: Lolita
The screenplay is credited to Nabokov, although very little of what he provided (later published in a shortened version[1][2]) was used in the film itself.[27] Nabokov, following the success of the novel, moved out to Hollywood and penned a script for a film adaptation between March and September 1960. The first draft was extremely long—over 400 pages. As producer Harris remarked, "You couldn't make it. You couldn't lift it".[28] Nabokov remained polite about the film in public but in a 1962 interview before seeing the film, commented that it may turn out to be "the swerves of a scenic drive as perceived by the horizontal passenger of an ambulance".[29]

Music
The music for the film was composed by Nelson Riddle and Bob Harris (the main theme was solely by Bob Harris), and performed by Riddle's orchestra. The recurring dance number first heard on the radio when Humbert meets Lolita in the garden later became a hit single under the name "Lolita Ya Ya" with Sue Lyon credited with the singing on the single version.[30] The flip side was a 60s-style light rock song called "Turn off the Moon" penned by Harris and Al Stillman and also sung by Sue Lyon. "Lolita Ya Ya" was later recorded by other bands; it was also a hit single for The Ventures, reaching 61 on the Billboard Hot 100.[31] A review in Billboard stated, "There've been a number of versions of the title tune from the hit film Lolita but this figures the strongest to date. The usual Ventures guitar sound is neatly augmented with voices."[32]

Reception
Original trailer for Lolita
Lolita premiered on June 13, 1962, in New York City (the copyright date onscreen is 1961). It performed fairly well with little advertising, relying mostly on word-of-mouth; many critics seemed uninterested or dismissive of the film while others gave it glowing reviews. However, the film was very controversial, due to the hebephilia-related content.[33][34]

Among the positive reviews, Bosley Crowther of The New York Times wrote that the film was "conspicuously different" from the novel and had "some strange confusions of style and mood", but nevertheless had "a rare power, a garbled but often moving push toward an off-beat communication."[35] Richard L. Coe of The Washington Post called it "a peculiarly brilliant film", with a tone "not of hatred, but of mocking true. Director and author have a viewpoint on modern life that is not flattering but it is not despising, either. It is regret for the human comedy."[36] Philip K. Scheuer of the Los Angeles Times declared that the film "manages to hit peaks of comedy shrilly dissonant but on an adult level, that are rare indeed, and at the same time to underline the tragedy in human communication, human communion, between people who've got their signals hopelessly crossed."[37] The Monthly Film Bulletin wrote that the primary themes of the film were "obsession and incongruity", and since Kubrick was "an intellectual director with little feeling for erotic tension ... one is the more readily disposed to accept Kubrick's alternative approach as legitimate."[38] In a generally positive review for The New Yorker, Brendan Gill wrote that "Kubrick is wonderfully self-confident; his camera having conveyed to us within the first five minutes that it can perform any wonders its master may require of it, he proceeds to offer us a succession of scenes broadly sketched and broadly acted for laughs, and laugh we do, no matter how morbid the circumstances."[39] Arlene Croce in Sight & Sound wrote that "Lolita is—in its way—a good film." She found Nabokov's screenplay "a model of adaptation" and the cast "near-perfect", though she described Kubrick's attempts at eroticism as "perfunctory and misguided" and thought his "gift for visual comedy is as faint as his depiction of sensuality."[40]

Variety had a mixed assessment, calling the film "occasionally amusing but shapeless", and likening it to "a bee from which the stinger has been removed. It still buzzes with a sort of promising irreverence, but it lacks the power to shock and eventually makes very little point either as comedy or satire."[41] Harrison's Reports was negative, writing, "You don't have to be an emulating, prissyish uncle from Dubuque to say that the film leaves you with a feeling that is repulsively disgusting in much of its telling," adding that "even if the exhibitor makes a dollar on the booking, he may feel a sense of shame as he plods his weary way down to the bank."[42] Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called Lolita "tantalizingly unsatisfactory".[43]

The film has been re-appraised by critics over time, and currently has a score of 91% on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes based on 44 reviews and with an average rating of 7.9/10. The critical consensus reads: "Kubrick's Lolita adapts its seemingly unadaptable source material with a sly comedic touch and a sterling performance by James Mason that transforms the controversial novel into something refreshingly new without sacrificing its essential edge."[44] Metacritic gives the film a score of 79 out of 100, based on reviews by 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[45] Filmmaker David Lynch has said that Lolita is his favourite Kubrick film.[46] Sofia Coppola has also cited Lolita as one of her favorite films,[47] as has Paul Thomas Anderson.[48]

The film was a commercial success. Produced on a budget of around $2 million, Lolita grossed $9,250,000 domestically.[5][8] During its initial run, the movie earned an estimated $4.5 million in North American rentals.[49]

Years after the film's release it has been re-released on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray.