my favorite movie of 1962:

Lolita

(James Mason, Sue Lyon, Peter Sellers, Shelley Winters. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.)

This movie’s trailer asked: “How did they ever make a movie of Lolita?” In other words, how was it possible to adapt Nabokov’s 1955 novel about a man who sexually abuses his 12-year-old stepdaughter, considering how heavily censored movies were back in 1962?

First, they made her older, a high-school student. Then, Kubrick made a dark comedy-drama that avoids being overtly sexual or erotic, instead focusing on often-disconcerting interactions among four fascinating characters:

• James Mason is a middle-aged professor who becomes creepily obsessed with a teenage girl.

• Sue Lyon is the girl who’s preyed upon but asserts her will.

• Shelley Winters is the desperate, melodramatic, beleaguered mother and wife.

• Peter Sellers steals the show as the elusive man who keeps popping up in unexpected places, adopting a variety of comically incongruous personas.

I said to myself when I saw you, I said, “That’s a guy with the most normal-looking face I ever saw in my life!” … It’s great to see a normal face, because I’m a normal guy. It’d be great for two normal guys like us to get together and talk about world events — you know, in a normal sort of way.

Stream it on Tubi (free with ads) or these sites.

Click here for the full list of my favorite movie(s) of each year from 1920 to 2020.