Lolita (1962 film)

Lolita is a 1962 British-American film directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Sue Lyon and James Mason. It is based on the novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov (who also wrote a script for the film that was mutilated and rewritten by director and producer James B. Harris).

Plot

Sue Lyon, in a promotional image Lolita.

Middle-aged Anglo-French novelist Humbert (James Mason) decides to spend a summer in Ramsdale, New Hampshire, before returning to his job teaching French literature in the fall. While he is looking for a house to rent a room, he arrives at the house of Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). He is not very convinced to rent the room there, but at the moment when Charlotte is going to show him the garden, there is Charlotte's daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon), a 14-year-old blonde teenager, for whom Humbert becomes sexually obsessed. He decides to rent the room in Charlotte's house, to be close to Lolita who, after several activities together, invite him to a party where Humbert finds out that Lolita has the son of the Farlows, a family friend of Charlotte's and There is also Clare Quilty Peter Sellers, a prestigious playwright who was also a tenant of Charlotte with whom he had a relationship and to whom he expresses his wishes to see Lolita again. Charlotte falls in love with Humbert, but he only thinks of Lolita, who on the one hand plays along with him and on the other makes him suffer after having an argument with Charlotte who as punishment decides to take her to a summer camp; Lolita says goodbye to Humbert who, full of hope and pain for such an action, lies down in Lolita's bed where the black servant of the house gives her a letter from Charlotte where the latter proposes to her and Humbert laughs out loud while reading with joy the letter from his future wife. Finally Humbert will marry Charlotte and so he can always be close to Lolita after she is back from the camp.

Some time after the wedding, Charlotte becomes more obsessed with Humbert (who has sex with her while looking at Lolita's photo) and shows him her late husband Harold Haze's gun. Charlotte begins to stress Humbert after telling him that after the summer she plans to send Lolita to a permanent boarding school and from there to a university, thus thwarting Humbert's depraved plans who, when threatened by Charlotte, decides to murder her with the late Harold Haze's gun. and argue that they were playing and did not know that the gun was loaded. Going to look for her in the bathtub with such intentions, he discovers that she was not there and, on the contrary, she was in her room reading her diary where he expresses his love for Lolita and his disgust for Charlotte, whom he nicknames "cow".; or "the unbearable mother"; Charlotte violently confronts him and tells him that he will never see Lolita again and then runs away while Humbert desperately prepared a martini for her to try to calm her down. That's when they call him to tell him that his wife died, he thinks it's a joke, but then when he leaves On the rainy street, he realizes that Charlotte, driven by desperation, crossed the street without knowing that she would be hit by a car, thus losing her life.

The Farlows visit Humbert to whom they reveal that Charlotte was depressed because she had little time to live because she was missing a kidney, just then the father of the driver who murdered whom Humbert forgives and offers him to pay in return arrives the funeral. Humbert inherits Charlotte's mortgage and keeps custody of Lolita whom he decides to pick up at the summer camp, and take her with him to an agent hotel, without telling her anything about her mother's death, coincidentally Clare Quilty is also there. under the same conditions as him. At the hotel while Humbert waits for a spare bed, he has a talk with Clare Quilty who hints to him about the pedophile relationship they have, then Humbert silently brings the spare bed, and then tries to sleep next to his stepdaughter in the other bed, Lolita. tells him to sleep in the spare bed; At dawn Lolita tells him that she had sexual relations with Charlie, the son of the manager of the summer camp and proposes to do the same. Leaving the hotel, Lolita finds out what happened to her mother under the version of her stepfather who comforts her and takes her to the city where he works as a French literature teacher. That is where the problems begin, Lolita is enrolled in another school and begins to have friendships that cause unhealthy jealousy in Humbert, who, driven by his obsession, is losing his sanity trying to excessively control Lolita with whom he has strong arguments after the The supposed school principal convinces him to allow Lolita to act in the play directed by Clare Quilty and Peter Sellers.

This situation causes Humbert to quit his job and decide to go on a trip so as not to settle anywhere and keep Lolita with him all the time. In the middle of the trip, Humbert discovers that they are being followed by a mysterious car for 3 days, he diverts the road to a gas station where he later observes from the bathroom that that car is approaching and Lolita talks to its driver, on a road he confronts her and she tells him He says that it was someone lost who asked him if he had a map, in which the car follows them again and Humbert derails the tires due to speeding, leaving him at the mercy of the car that stops meters from them, Humbert remains in his car together with Lolita, although he plans to go out and confront him after noticing that the mysterious driver does not get out, the car leaves and Humbert is unable to verify anything after feeling severe pain in his arm that could be a future heart attack according to Lolita.

Lolita says she contracted a disease and is admitted to a hospital, the next day a sick and desperate Humbert visits her to tell her his plans to flee with her to Mexico; however, at night, while she is sleeping, she receives a call from an unknown policeman who tells him that they have a file on him and they know about their relationship, Humbert decides to flee that same night and looks for Lolita in the hospital, however they tell him that an uncle took her in the middle of the day, Humbert knows that it is a lie, he goes into despair while confronting the doctors who immobilize him and he is forced to pretend to be drunk to avoid the asylum, after leaving the hospital he decides likewise to find the person with whom Lolita had left although he does not find them.

Years later, Lolita writes a letter to her stepfather Humbert asking for money. He, going in search of her and finding her, discovers that she is married and pregnant by a young man who is half deaf with whom she plans to move to Alaska with Humbert's money. Lolita tells him who she had fled with that time in the hospital, the one she met before him, the one she also had sex with instead of going to her piano lessons, he was the one who posed as the principal of her school to to act in the play directed by himself to have sexual relations and after Humbert took her away, it was he who followed them to pose as a policeman at night and cause panic in Humbert who now tries to take her with him by confessing that life it is short and he wants to live with her and die with her, but she does not want to leave her husband alone and Humbert in tears gives her the money and leaves immediately now determined to take revenge on the man who took "her" from her; Lolita, goes in search of him and murders him in his messy mansion, where before, the man at first tries to distract him by playing ping pong with him and then playing a piano piece that he composed, before trying to flee and being riddled with shots through of a painting of Lolita in which she tried to hide from her executioner's bullets. Humbert died of coronary thrombosis while awaiting trial for the murder of Clare Quilty.

Cast

Production

Vladimir Nabokov, author of the novel, wrote the script for the film. Initially, Nabokov gave director Stanley Kubrick a script that was equivalent to about 9 hours of film. Kubrick claimed that, despite its length, it was one of the best scripts he had ever read.

As stated by Kubrick himself, this was one of the most production-friendly films he made. This is because it was filmed in only 88 days.

The film was nominated for an Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay.

In 1997 another version of the film was shot, directed by Adrián Lyne and starring, among others, Jeremy Irons and Melanie Griffith.