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SCREENING ROOM
Kubrick's 'Lolita': An Acting Showcase
The director's 1962 film highlights the talents of James Mason, Shelley Winters and Peter Sellers.

By KEVIN THOMAS, Times Staff Writer

     The American Cinematheque's "Grand Master: The Films of Stanley Kubrick" continues at the Egyptian tonight at 7:30 with the presentation of "Lolita" (1962). When Kubrick brought the controversial Vladimir Nabokov novel to the screen, he cast 15-year-old newcomer Sue Lyon in the title role without specifying her age, which in the book was only 12. Most critics said that Lyon looked closer to 17, thus undercutting the impact of the exquisite torture Nabokov's middle-aged Humbert Humbert endured in his fixation on what the novelist described famously as a "nymphet."
     Kubrick did not make things easier for himself by shooting much of the film in England, even though it is in part a road movie. He thus denied himself access to roadside Americana--always a ripe target for satire--which could have counterpointed Nabokov's consideration of the deadly, darkly humorous absurdities of unrequited passion, heightened by puritanical American mores.
     Even so, "Lolita" is worth a look on the big screen, just as it was when first released, thanks to its sophisticated sensibility and James Mason's heroic portrayal of Humbert and the impressive work of Shelley Winters and Peter Sellers. Lyon is pretty good as the "older" revised Lolita, but at 153 minutes, the film is too long.
     Mason's Humbert is a professor of French literature who's a visiting lecturer at a New England college. He checks out a room for rent in the large, tasteless home of Charlotte Haze (Winters), a vulgar, man-hungry widow with literary pretensions.
     In the film's signature shot, Humbert sees Lolita lounging in a two-piece bathing suit in the backyard, and Charlotte asks innocently, "What was the deciding factor?" when he abruptly agrees to take the room--and thus commences his tormented odyssey.
     "Lolita" reminds us what a remarkable actor Mason was in his range and insight into the characters he played, and Winters is hilarious yet oddly touching as the impossibly shrill, foolish and possessive Charlotte, as dense as Humbert is perceptive. Early on, Sellers' Quilty, an eccentric writer, also a guest of the college, becomes Humbert's determined nemesis for reasons of his own. Quilty's various disguises allow Sellers to show off his wondrous way with accents. (323)