Film Forum

U.S., 1962
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Peter Sellers, Sue Lyon
Screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel of the same name
DCP. Approx. 152 min.

James Mason’s Humbert Humbert has at last found the ideal woman; only trouble is she’s — how old? — and comes equipped with hot-to-trot culture vulture mom Shelley Winters. And why is Peter Sellers’ egomaniacal intellectual Clare Quilty (“Sellers at his most inspired.” – Pauline Kael) always popping up? “How did they ever make a movie of LOLITA?” squealed the original ads for Kubrick’s adaptation of Nabokov’s “unfilmable” novel.

Reviews

“Mason is highly impressive as Humbert Humbert - all repressed passion and furrowed brow - and Winters contributes just the right amount of vulgarity as Lo's mother.”
– Geoff Andrews, Time Out