Lolita is a psychological comedy-drama film [5] directed by Stanley Kubrick based on the eponymous novel by Vladimir Nabokovwho is also credited with writing the screenplay. The film follows Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged literature lecturer who becomes sexually infatuated with Dolores Haze nicknamed "Lolita"a young adolescent girl.
Owing to restrictions imposed by the Motion Picture Production Codethe film toned down the most provocative aspects of the novel, sometimes leaving much to the audience's imagination. The actress who played Lolita, Sue Lyon, was 14 at the time of filming whereas Lolita of Nabokov's novel is 12 years old when Humbert Humbert first meets her.
Lolita polarized contemporary critics for its depictions of child sexual abuse. Years after its release, Kubrick expressed doubt that he would have attempted to make the film had he fully understood how severe the censorship limitations on it would be.
Regardless, the film has since received critical acclaim, and was later nominated for Best Adapted Screenplay at the 35th Academy Awards. Four years earlier, Humbert 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 cloying, sexually frustrated widow, invites him to stay at her house. He declines until seeing her year-old daughter, Dolores, affectionately nicknamed "Lolita", with whom he becomes infatuated.
To be close to Lolita, Humbert accepts Charlotte's offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household. However, Charlotte wants all of Humbert's time for herself and tells him that she will be sending Lolita 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 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.
Though he roars with laughter while reading the sadly heartfelt yet characteristically overblown letter, Humbert marries Charlotte. Things turn sour for the couple in the absence of the child: glum Humbert becomes more withdrawn, and Charlotte grows increasingly unfulfilled and upset.
Charlotte discovers Humbert's diary entries detailing his passion for Lolita and describing Charlotte as "obnoxious" and "brainless". In an outburst, she runs outside, but is hit by a car and dies. Humbert arrives to pick up Sue lyon make maka from camp; she does not yet know her mother is dead.
They stay the night in a hotel that is handling an overflow influx of police officers attending a convention. One of the guests, a pushy, abrasive stranger, 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, too often, that he thinks Humbert is "normal". Humbert escapes the man's advances. The next morning, Humbert and Lolita play a "game" she learned at camp, and it is implied that they have a sexual encounter.
The next day, Humbert confesses to Lolita that her mother is not sick in a hospital, as he had previously told her, but dead. Grief-stricken, she stays with Humbert.