You don’t need us to tell you Stanley Kubrick was great at making films.
But there’s something special about his work with Peter Sellers…
There are so many great moments in film that came from the imagination of Stanley Kubrick.
They wereLolita(1962) andDr Strangelove(1964).
This promotion of Quilty to a major role had everything to do with the casting of Peter Sellers.
Kubrick requested Sellers for the role, finding his ability to improvise fascinating.
And so Quilty became a loose cannon, turning up unpredictably and saying whatever came into his head.
Im never quite sure if Quilty really fits in this film.
He is decadent and absurd, and I dont believe he could possibly be interested in Lolita.
He seems too self-involved.
I thinkLolitahas some brilliant elements, and they are the elements I associate with all my favourite Kubrick movies.
We are never asked, in any moment, to empathise with Humbert Humbert.
And yet we dont detest him either.
We observe him and his choices, and the way his reality crumbles.
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In the end, I thinkLolitaisnt an entirely successful film.
After all, what else can you do about global nuclear war but laugh?
I wonder if Kubrick had sucked up all of Sellers creative energy by that point.
The three roles Sellers did play are all very different.
Kubrick said of him, He was the only actor I ever knew who could really improvise.
Dr Strangeloveis, I think, the easiest Kubrick film to engage with.
Its as if the camera is a microscope, and this is all happening so very far away.
Can we manage to look at ourselves dispassionately, as a species?
But, if were not up to the task, at least Sellers makes us really laugh.
I always suspected that juxtaposition would have appealed to both Kubrick and Sellers enormously.
