Lolita

A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a 14-year-old nymphet.

• Director:Stanley Kubrick
• Genre:Drama | Romance
• Runtime:152 minutes

Cast

James Mason : Prof. Humbert Humbert
Shelley Winters : Charlotte Haze
Sue Lyon : Lolita
Gary Cockrell : Richard T. Schiller
Jerry Stovin : John Farlow

Set in the 1950s, the film begins in medias res with a confrontation between two men, where one of them, Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), appears drunk and incoherent, plays Chopin’s Polonaises Op. 40, before being shot. The shooter is Humbert Humbert (James Mason), a 40-something British professor of French literature. The film then turns to events four years earlier. Humbert travels to Ramsdale, New Hampshire, where he will spend the summer before his professorship begins at Beardsley College, Ohio. He searches for a room to let, and Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters)—a widowed, sexually frustrated mother—invites him to stay at her house. He declines until seeing her daughter, Dolores (Sue Lyon), affectionately called “Lolita.” Lolita is a soda-pop drinking, gum-chewing, overtly flirtatious teenager, with whom Humbert falls in love.

To be close to Lolita, Humbert accepts Charlotte’s offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household. But soon Charlotte announces that she will be sending Lolita to an all-girl sleep-away camp for the summer. On the morning of Lolita’s departure, Charlotte leaves Humbert a note, asking Humbert to leave at once. The note says that if Humbert is still in the house when Charlotte returns from driving Lolita to camp, then he must marry her. Humbert willingly marries Charlotte days later. After the wedding and honeymoon, Charlotte discovers Humbert’s diary entries describing his passion for Lolita, and has an emotional outburst. She threatens to leave forever, taking Lolita far away from Humbert. While Humbert hurriedly fixes martinis in the kitchen to smooth over the situation, Charlotte runs outside, gets hit by a speeding car, and dies.

Several days later Humbert drives to Camp Climax to pick up Lolita. As they travel from hotel to motel across the United States, they enter a sexual relationship. In public, they act as father and daughter. Humbert finally tells Lolita that her mother is not sick in a hospital (as he had previously told her), but dead. Grief-stricken, she stays with Humbert.Read more

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