The tagline for the 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov 's eponymous novel was "How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?' Aptly tagged, and one would add that an adaptation of such glorious controversy would require nothing short of a Stanley Kubrick to be classified as an adaptation in the first place. In Nabokov's story of forbidden passions, Humbert Humbert (James Mason)is a divorced British professor of French literature, traveling to small-town America to take up a teaching position. He calculatingly lets himself be swept into a relationship with his widowed landlady in order to pursue Lolita (Sue Lyon), her 14 year old daughter who at first sight has fired Humbert's desires. However, all doesn't quite go as planned, as the opening scene of the film indicates (the main narrative is told in flashback), for Humbert is seen, gun in hand, seeking to slay a Clare Quilty who is also, in one way or the other, tangled with Lolita.

The novel having already garnered a respectable quantity of raised eyebrows (regardless of the actual readership for this minuscule tome), the task for a film adaptation became all the more difficult on Kubrick's part. Which is not to say it did not make gallant societal changes to the original's narrative account of a cultured pervert (for want of another word), the most obvious one being that Lolita's age is raised to a somewhat more acceptable 14 from a frankly unmentionable 12.

In fact, by Kubrick's standards, the film emerges as a subdued, relenting take. The fact that it faced maniacal opposition during production could hardly be an excuse for a filmmaker of unquestionable calibre such as his. The question of whether the film should be viewed in isolation of the spectacularly written book looms large, especially considering the fact that the script is done up by Nabokov himself, although Kubrick's adherence to such a thing (more the lack thereof) is quite well established.

Kubrick is known to relish outrage; a spirit embodying the very endearing human urge to stretch all limits and vaporize them if possible, a contention that would have possibly been part of the reason for him to pick a touchy subject such as pedophilia, amidst a society reeling with Eisenhower-led American dream boredom. Which brings us the unsolvable mystery that is Kubrick, and his obsession with literary masterpieces...and not merely novels, but novels which indubitably have language as the supreme mover and where the narrative is the real protagonist. With a novel such as Lolita, Kubrick with all his technical brilliance can do precious little to salvage the loss of texture of Nabokov's prose. First-person-narratives would be a suicide solution for most directors to have to convert to a halfway decent movie. Kubrick, is of course not of that league; A Clockwork Orange stands testimony to that. However, one cannot discount the fact that Lolita, as a film does nothing to assert the same persuasions of a romantic to the audience, perverse though those fantasies may be. The brilliance of the novel lies in the dreamy awkwardness of the little 'nymphet' and the absurd obsession of a professor of French Literature over her. The entire wool of it lies solely in the way he describes his love for the child of 12, as an unparalleled paragon of everything love means to him. He constantly harps on how and why he adores her at the same time implying that of course, you, 'dear reader' wouldn't. It evokes a strange sympathy, which the film does not even seem to attempt to recreate.

Kubrick does retain the novel's diary motif once in a while, using it as a fleeting narrative thread. He oddly doesn't find it a sloppy attempt to keep with his trademark. The film also refuses to traverse to the post-war 1940's as the novel is set in. Amid all the sketchy characterization, Sue Lyon is only passable as Lolita, lacking the same charismatic caprice, as one would have imagined in a Dolores Haze. James Mason is very close to being believable as Humbert Humbert, physically at least. You just don't have the least bit of sympathy for his grim fate, which incidentally doesn't seem half as grim on celluloid. Peter Sellers is as fantastic as a Quilty could possibly be, and perhaps more. The music, in keeping with Kubrick's usual repertoire, makes appreciably effective ironies.

The purpose of the novel isn't quite fulfilled considering the blaring omissions made by the film, although sincerity to the original cannot possibly be a sole criterion for a good movie. I'm afraid the titillating start credits did much to raise my expectations to unscalable heights, notwithstanding that it is a Kubrick. Sadly it turned out to be nothing exceptional, but worth a watch, if only for the brilliant Peter Sellers.