- A middle-aged college professor becomes infatuated with a 14-year-old girl.
- Humbert Humbert forces a confrontation with a man, whose name he has just recently learned, in this man's home. The events that led to this standoff began four years earlier. Middle aged Humbert, a European, arrives in the United States where he has secured at job at Beardsley College in Beardsley, Ohio as a Professor of French Literature. Before he begins his post in the fall, he decides to spend the summer in the resort town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire. He is given the name of Charlotte Haze as someone who is renting a room in her home for the summer. He finds that Charlotte, widowed now for seven years, is a woman who puts on airs. Among the demonstration of those airs is throwing around the name of Clare Quilty, a television and stage script writer, who came to speak at her women's club meeting and who she implies is now a friend. Those airs also mask being lonely, especially as she is a sexually aggressive and liberated woman. Humbert considers Charlotte a proverbial "joke" but decides to rent the room upon meeting Charlotte's provocative daughter, Dolores Haze - more frequently referred to as Lolita - who he first spots in a bikini tanning in the back yard. He is immediately infatuated with Lolita, with who he becomes obsessed in a sexual manner despite her age, she being just into her teens. He will also learn that Charlotte has the exact same feelings for him. While Charlotte does whatever she can to be alone with Humbert, Humbert does the same with Lolita. As the summer progresses, Humbert, based on the circumstances, decides to enter into a relationship with Charlotte just to be near Lolita. In that new arrangement, Humbert has to figure out how to achieve his goal of being with Lolita with Charlotte out of the way. As things begin to go Humbert's way, he is unaware that Charlotte is not the only thing standing in his way between him and Lolita, that other thing being Lolita's possible interest in other boys, and other members of the male sex, young or old, who may have their own designs on Lolita.—Huggo
- Having secured a lectureship at Beardsley College, Ohio, Humbert, a grizzled British professor of French literature, rents a room in the house of Charlotte Haze, a lonely widow. But instead of spending a peaceful summer in the resort town of Ramsdale, New Hampshire, the sophisticated academic becomes spellbound by Dolores: Charlotte's adorable, gum-chewing 14-year-old daughter. Now, there's no turning back. More and more, impure thoughts grow into forbidden, all-consuming desire--Humbert is but a slave to passion, a wolf in sheep's clothing on a lustful mission of sweet deception and veiled seduction. However, not even Humbert can keep the strange affair away from prying eyes. Is Humbert willing to listen to reason and end the dangerous budding romance before he loses control?—Nick Riganas
- With a screenplay penned by the author himself, Stanley Kubrick brings Vladimir Nabokov's controversial tale of forbidden love to the screen. Humbert Humbert (James Mason) is a European professor who relocates to an American suburb, renting a room from lonely widow Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters). Humbert marries Charlotte, but only to nurture his obsession with her comely teenage daughter, Lolita (Sue Lyon). After Charlotte's sudden death, Humbert has Lolita all to himself -- or does he?—maschzentertainment
- In Ramsdale, New Hampshire, middle-aged professor of French literature Humbert Humbert looks for a room to rent during summer before going to teach at Beardsley College, Ohio. The widow Charlotte Haze, who lost her husband seven years ago, shows a room in her house and her garden, when he sees her fourteen-year-old daughter Dolores "Lolita" Haze sunbathing and has a crush on her. Humbert agrees to rent the room to see Lolita. When Charlotte sends Lolita to a summer camp with the intention to send her to a boarding school later, Humbert becomes worried. But when the maid delivers a letter from Charlotte addressed to him confessing that she is in love for him, he decides to marry her to stay near to Lolita. But soon, Charlotte reads his journal and learns how pervert he is and how he describes Charlotte as brainless and obnoxious in the diary. Charlotte takes the urn with her former husband's ashes and runs outside the house, but is hit by a car and dies. Humbert travels to the camp to pick up Lolita, but he does not tell her that her mother died. He tells her that she is sick at a hospital and they travel to visit her. When they stop at a hotel to spend the night, there is only one available room and they sleep together. In the morning, Lolita shows him the "game" she learnt at the camp and they have intercourse. Meanwhile, the TV screenwriter Clare Quilty follows them using different identities to disturb Humbert. What is his true intention?—Claudio Carvalho, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- The film begins in a quarrell between two men at a remote mansion. Humbert Humbert (James Mason) a 40-something British professor of French literature, arrives at the masion which is ramsacked from an apparently wild party the night before and finds the insane and debauched Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers), whom is not only suffering from some kind of severe dementia, but is also clearly drunk, as he babbles on incoherently and does not seem to remember Humbert from a time ago. Quilty goes mad when Humbert points a gun at him. After a mutually exhausting struggle for it, Quilty, now insane with fear, merely responds politely as Humbert repeatedly shoots him. He finally dies with a comical lack of interest, expressing his slight concern in an affected English accent. Humbert is left exhausted and disoriented.
The film then turns to events four years earlier and goes forward as Humbert travels to Ramsdale, New Hampshire, a small town where he will spend the summer before his professorship begins at Beardsley College, Ohio. He searches across the town for room to let, being tempted by widowed, sexually famished mother, Charlotte Haze (Shelley Winters) to stay at her house. He declines until seeing her beautiful 14-year-old daughter, Dolores Haze (Sue Lyon), affectionately called Lolita (hence the title). Lolita is a soda-pop drinking, gum-chewing, overtly flirtatious teenager, with whom Humbert falls hopelessly in love.
In order to become close to Lolita, Humbert accepts Charlotte's offer and becomes a lodger in the Haze household. Soon, however, Charlotte announces that she will be sending Lolita to an all-girl sleep-away camp for the summer. On the morning of departure, Humbert receives a love confession note from Charlotte, 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 join Charlotte in marriage. Humbert willingly marries Charlotte days later. After the wedding and honeymoon, Charlotte discovers Humberts 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.
Humbert drives to Camp Climax to pick up Lolita, who doesn't yet know her mother is dead. That night at a hotel, a pushy, abrasive stranger (Quilty) insinuates himself upon Humbert and keeps steering the conversation to his "beautiful little daughter," who is asleep upstairs. Humbert escapes the man's advances, and Humbert and Lolita enter into a sexual relationship. The two commence an odyssey across the United States, traveling from hotel to motel. In public, they act as father and daughter. After several days, Humbert 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.
In the fall, Humbert reports to his position at Beardsley College in Ohio, and enrolls Lolita in high school there. Before long, people begin to wonder about the relationship between father and his over-protected daughter. Humbert worries about her involvement with the school play and with male classmates.
One night Humbert returns home to find Dr. Zempf, a pushy, abrasive stranger, sitting in his darkened living room. Zemph, speaking with a thick German accent, claims to be a psychologist from Lolita's school and wants to discuss her knowledge of "the facts of life." Humbert is frightened and decides to take Lolita on the road again.
During the long drive across country, Humbert soon realizes they are being followed by a mysterious car that never drops away but never quite catches up. When they get a flat tire, Humbert sees the black car stoping beside the road not far from them. Lolita does not seem to be concerned about Humbert's suspicions that the man in the black car is following them, but when he offers to get out to talk to the driver, Lolita suddenly becomes nervous and tells Humbert not to engage the unseen driver in any conversation. Before he can make a decision at what to do, the black car turns around and drives away.
When Lolita becomes sick, Humbert takes her to a hospital in a small Arizona town. However that night, Humbert receives a phone call in his motel room from an unknown man about Lolita. Worried, Humbert returns to the hospital to pick her up, and she is gone. The nurse at the front desk tells him she left earlier with another man claiming to be her uncle and Humbert, devastated, is left without a single clue as to her disappearance or whereabouts.
Some years later, Humbert receives a letter from 'Mrs. Richard T. Schiller', Lolita's married name. She writes that she is now married to a nearly-deaf Korean War veteran named Dick, and that she is pregnant and in desperate need of money. Humbert travels to their home, where Lolita waits. Humbert finds that she is now 17-going-on-18, a roundly pregnant woman wearing eyeglasses leading a pleasant, humdrum life. Humbert demands that she tell him who kidnapped her three years earlier. She tells him it was Clare Quilty, the man that was following them, who is a famous playwright and with whom her mother had a fling in Ramsdale days. She states Quilty is also the one who disguised himself as Dr. Zempf, as well as the pushy stranger who kept crossing their path. Lolita claims that she herself carried on an affair with him and left with him when he promised her glamor. However, he then demanded she join his depraved lifestyle, including acting in his "art" films.
Humbert begs Lolita to leave her husband and come away with him, but she declines. Humbert gives Lolita $13,000, explaining that it's her share of the money from the sale of her mother's house. Leaving Lolita forever, Humbert surprises Quilty at his mansion where he kills him for abusing Lolita, thus bringing the film full circle. A disclaimer in the final shot reveals that Humbert died in prison of a heart attack while awaiting trial for Quilty's murder.
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