According to the entry on Lolita in Stanley Kubrick’s Wikipedia page, the difficulty of making Vladimir Nabokov’s book into a movie were so notorious by the time of its release that its posters bore the mocking tagline of, How did they ever make a movie of Lolita? The answer is, sadly, they compromised. Lolita the book is a bizarre, perverted tale of a man and his love for a 12-year old girl. To appease censors, Kubrick raised the titular character’s age to 14 and removed almost all the erroticism from the text. The events in the film are wonderfully depicted in true Kubrick form (and, in true Kubrick form, they go on for about 45 minutes too long), but the point of Lolita was never its plot, but the manner in which Nabokov told the tale. Without the disgustingly-appealing look into Humbert Humbert’s mind, the movie just doesn’t feel right, even with great performances from James Mason and Peter Sellers. It’s odd, too, how much a different the two years between 12 and 14 make for Sue Lyon, the actress playing Lolita. At 12, a relationship between a grown man falls soundly in the unacceptable realm of pedophilia. At 14, there’s enough of a hint of adult consent that, while still inarguably creepy, the relationship doesn’t offend the same deep, base sensabilities necessary to at once loathe and understand Humbert’s character.
According to Wikipedia, Kubrick himself commented that, had he realized how severe the censorship limitations were going to be, he probably never would have made the film. It’s a fascinating look into what a brilliant director did with the tools he had available, considering the source he was trying to adapt, but that doesn’t all add up to make the movie anything as fine as the novel.