Lolita

3.43
    Lolita
    1962

    Synopsis

    Humbert Humbert is a middle-aged British novelist who is both appalled by and attracted to the vulgarity of American culture. When he comes to stay at the boarding house run by Charlotte Haze, he soon becomes obsessed with Lolita, the woman's teenaged daughter.

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    Cast

    • James MasonProf. Humbert Humbert
    • Shelley WintersCharlotte Haze
    • Sue LyonDolores "Lolita" Haze
    • Gary CockrellRichard T. "Dick" Siller
    • Jerry StovinJohn Farlow
    • Diana DeckerJean Farlow
    • Lois MaxwellNurse Mary Lore
    • Cec LinderPhysician
    • Bill GreeneGeorge Swine
    • Shirley DouglasMrs. Starch

    Recommendations

    • 100

      TV Guide Magazine

      A fascinating if problematic early film from Stanley Kubrick, perhaps the most obsessive of the great auteurs of the 1960s, made just on the cusp of a run of cinematic masterpieces.
    • 100

      Austin Chronicle

      Nabokov’s satire is sensationally cast, with Winters and Sellers delivering some of their best work ever.
    • 100

      Chicago Tribune

      Brilliant adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's 20th Century comic-erotic classic. [08 Jul 2005, p.C2]
    • 90

      The New Yorker

      Wild, marvelously enjoyable comedy, adapted from Nabokov's novel.
    • 80

      The New York Times

      This is not the novel Lolita, but it is a provocative sort of film.
    • 75

      Chicago Reader

      Where Nabokov was witty, Kubrick is sometimes merely snide, but fine performances (particularly from Peter Sellers, as the ominous Clare Quilty) cover most of the rough spots.
    • 75

      Entertainment Weekly

      Stanley Kubrick’s adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov’s wicked, witty hymn to forbidden love loses some bite in the journey from novel to the screen, but it’s got its plummy pleasures, including a wonderfully subtle James Mason as Humbert Humbert, obsessed with the delicious Sue Lyon as the 14-year-old Lolita (bumped up from 12 in the book), and a marvelously blowzy Shelley Winters, hilarious as Lolita’s sexually voracious mom.
    • 70

      Time Out

      Kubrick manages to handle the moral and psychological nuances with surprising lucidity, but the decision to indulge Peter Sellers' gift for mimickry in the role of Quilty tends to scupper the movie's tone. Fascinating, nevertheless.

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