Film Studies: Lolita 15

James Mason was the ideal actor to play writer Humbert Humbert, who becomes infatuated with his landlady’s 14-year-old daughter Lolita (played by the 15-year-old Sue Lyon). As Humbert’s shape-shifting nemesis Clare Quilty, Peter Sellers injects a note of bizarre high comedy into a still-troubling story. Shelley Winters co-stars as Lolita’s blinkered mother.

Lolita saw Kubrick take a change of direction, geographical as well as artistic. With this production he relocated permanently to Britain (despite the film’s American setting), where he could stay at ocean’s length from studio interference. It was also his first brush with serious controversy, adapting a novel many considered unfilmable because of its theme of a paedophilic relationship. Working with original author Vladimir Nabokov on the screenplay, Kubrick toned down some of the book’s more inflammatory elements but still ran into censorship trouble.

Presented in association with Sheffield Hallam University.