Lolita (1962 film)

Lolita is a 1962 black comedy-psychological drama film directed by Stanley Kubrick, based on the 1955 novel of the same name by Vladimir Nabokov. The black-and-white film follows a middle-aged literature lecturer who writes as "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 Hays Code (1934–68), Kubrick and producer James B. Harris were compelled to tone down the paedophilic elements that were central to the novel’s narrative. Sue Lyon was 14-years-old at the time of filming began and played a 13-year-old girl at the time of Humbert Humbert's seduction. In Nabokov's novel she is 12 1/2.
Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged European professor of French literature, 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 sexually frustrated widow, invites him to stay at her house. After declining, he sees her young daughter, Dolores, affectionately nicknamed "Lolita".
Infatuated with Dolores, Humbert accepts Charlotte's offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household. However, Charlotte wants all of Humbert's time for herself and plans to send Dolores 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 that 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. Despite laughing while reading the letter, Humbert marries Charlotte.
In Lolita's absence, Humbert becomes more withdrawn, and Charlotte grows increasingly unfulfilled and upset. Charlotte discovers Humbert's diary entries detailing his passion for Dolores and describing Charlotte as "obnoxious" and "brainless." Distraught, she runs outside, but is hit by a car and dies.
Humbert arrives to pick up Dolores from camp; she does not yet know that Charlotte died. They stay the night in a hotel that is handling an overflow influx of police officers attending a convention. One of the guests 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 that he thinks Humbert is "normal." Humbert escapes the man's advances. The next morning, Humbert and Dolores play a "game" she learned at camp, and it is implied that they have a sexual encounter. The next day, Humbert confesses to Dolores that Charlotte is not sick in a hospital, as he had previously said, 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 Dolores in high school there. People begin to wonder about the relationship between the two. Humbert worries about her involvement with the school play and with male classmates. One night, he returns home to find a stranger who calls himself Dr. Zempf, sitting in his darkened living room. Zempf claims to be the psychologist from Dolores's school and wants to discuss her knowledge of "the facts of life." He convinces Humbert to allow Dolores 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 Dolores has been lying about how she was spending her Saturday afternoons when she claimed to be at piano practice. They get into an argument and Humbert decides to leave Beardsley College and take Dolores on the road again. Dolores objects at first but then changes her mind and seems enthusiastic. Once on the road, Humbert realizes that they are being followed by a car which never drops away. When Dolores becomes sick, he takes her to the hospital. However, when he returns to pick her up, she is gone. The nurse says that Dolores left with a man who claimed to be her uncle. Humbert is devastated.
Years later, he receives a letter from Mrs. Richard T. Schiller, Dolores's married name. Dolores writes that she is now married to a man named Dick and that she is pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert visits her and demands that she tell him who kidnapped her three years earlier. She says that it was Clare Quilty, the man who was following them. A famous playwright, he had a fling with Charlotte in Ramsdale. She states that Quilty is also the one who disguised himself as Dr. Zempf, the stranger who kept crossing their path. Dolores was infatuated by Quilty and 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 that she join his bohemian lifestyle, including acting in his "art" films, which she refused.
Humbert begs Dolores to leave Schiller and come away with him. She refuses, as she has a baby due in three months, but apologizes for cheating. Humbert gives Dolores $13,000, explaining that it is her money from the sale of Charlotte's house. He then leaves to confront Quilty in his mansion. There, a drunk Quilty is shot dead by Humbert. Humbert later dies of coronary thrombosis awaiting trial for Quilty's murder.
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 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.
When Marlon Brando fired Kubrick from One-Eyed Jacks 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". Kubrick was hired by Kirk Douglas to replace director Anthony Mann on the epic Spartacus; he and Harris did not put Lolita into production until 1960. 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.
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.
While 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. Kubrick had to film in England, as much of the money to finance the film was raised there, with the condition that it also be spent there. In addition, Kubrick had been living in England since 1961 and suffered from a deathly fear of flying. Hilfield Castle is featured in the film as Quilty's "Pavor Manor".
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.
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. 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.
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.
Mason got the part of Humbert Humbert when he withdrew from the play.
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. 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." Hayley Mills was offered the role but her parents refused permission. Joey Heatherton, Sandra Dee, and Tuesday Weld also were potential candidates for the role.
Although 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 French actress four years younger than Lyon.
Producer James Harris explained that 14-year-old Sue Lyon was cast because "we knew we must make [Lolita] a sex object [...] where everyone in the audience could understand why everyone would want to jump on her." 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."
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."
At the time the film was released, the ratings system was not in effect and the Hays Code, dating back to the 1930s, governed film 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." 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.
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." Lyon was 14 by the time filming started and 15 when it finished. 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.
Humbert uses the term "nymphet" to describe Lolita, which he explains and uses in the novel; it appears twice in the film and its meaning is left undefined. 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."
The screenplay is credited to Nabokov, although very little of what he provided (later published in a shortened version) was used in the film itself. 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". 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".
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. 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. There is also a version released as a single credited to Nelson Riddle on the "B-side" of his Route 66 Theme (Capitol 4741). "Lolita Ya Ya" was later recorded by other bands; it was also a 1962 hit single for The Ventures, reaching 61 on the Billboard Hot 100. 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."
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.
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." 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." 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." 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." 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." 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."
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." 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." Stanley Kauffmann of The New Republic called Lolita "tantalizingly unsatisfactory".
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." Metacritic gives the film a score of 79 out of 100, based on reviews by 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Filmmaker David Lynch has said that Lolita is his favorite Kubrick film. Sofia Coppola has also cited Lolita as one of her favorite films, as has Paul Thomas Anderson.
The film was a commercial success. Produced on a budget of around $2 million, Lolita grossed $9,250,000 domestically. During its initial run, the film earned an estimated $4.5 million in North American rentals.
Years after the film's release it has been re-released on VHS, Laserdisc, DVD, and Blu-ray.
A 2020 article by journalist Sarah Weinman alleges that Harris, the producer of the film, had sex with Lyon during the shooting of the film when she was 14 years old. Although Lyon had remained silent regarding the rumors for many years, when asked for a statement on the planned remake of the film in 1996, she had stated:
Lolita was filmed again in 1997, directed by Adrian Lyne, starring Jeremy Irons as Humbert, Melanie Griffith as Charlotte and Dominique Swain as Lolita. The film was widely publicized as being more faithful to Nabokov than the Kubrick film. Although many observed this was the case (such as Erica Jong writing in The New York Observer), the film was not as well received as Kubrick's version, and was a major box office bomb, first shown on the Showtime cable network, then released theatrically, grossing only $1 million at the US box office based on a $62 million budget.