Lolita

Stanley Kubrick moved the novel’s ending to the front, saying he gave up a fine finish but held attention that way, since he thought interest in the book sagged after its midpoint. Vladimir Nabokov has the screenplay credit, yet little of what he delivered was used; his first draft ran past 400 pages, which producer James Harris said you could not even lift. Quilty’s part was greatly enlarged from the novel, and Peter Sellers plays him in turn as a playwright, a policeman on a hotel porch, the school psychologist Doctor Zempf, a backstage photographer and a phone pollster. Kubrick later said Production Code and Legion of Decency pressure kept him from dramatising the erotic side enough. The BBFC passed it uncut but rated it X in 1962. Nabokov was nominated for screenplay based on material from another medium and lost. There were four Golden Globe nominations and one win: Sue Lyon shared the promising newcomer award with Patty Duke and Rita Tushingham. James Mason was up for best British actor at the BAFTAs. A good fit if you watch it as a Quilty puzzle, each return of Sellers in a new disguise the main event. Not for you if you would rather not enter a film about an adult’s sexual abuse of a child, told in that adult’s voice.