Slideshow
LOLITA
U.S., 1962
Directed by Stanley Kubrick
Screenplay by Vladimir Nabokov, based on his novel of the same name
Starring James Mason, Shelley Winters, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers
Approx. 153 min. DCP.
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.
Presented with support from The Ada Katz Fund for Literature in Film
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
“An inspired Peter Sellers creates a new comic pattern — a crazy quilt of psychological, sociological commentary so 'hip' it’s surrealist.”
– Pauline Kael, The New Yorker
“Sellers' turn here is a reminder of his true potential.”
– Damon Wise, The Guardian