Lolita July 24, 2008

Kubrick’s first film shot in England, Lolita is based on Vladimir Nabokov’s high-comic novel whose tale of lust and infatuation was then widely assumed to be unfilmable.

The pitch-perfect casting of James Mason as nymphet-chasing Humbert Humbert and Shelley Winters as his alarming landlady, joined by Sue Lyon in the title role, is fully matched by Peter Sellars as Mason’s obsessed adversary. The British locations and roadscapes provide a disorienting counterpoint to the story’s insistently American setting. Nabokov’s deeply satiric viewpoint consistently pierces through, even though much of his own screenplay was abandoned. (152 mins., 35mm)

Official Website: http://www.wexarts.org/fv/index.php?eventid=3055