Of course Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita (1955) had been adapted and filmed by Stanley Kubrick just three years earlier, in 1962, with James Mason as Humbert Humbert. This seems extraordinary from the perspective of today's contemporary sensitivity to ‘intergenerational’ encounters, but while provocative it is less unusual than is perhaps remembered. Zanuck) envisaged a ‘buddy movie’ between Chavez and Zac, what they got was a ‘love story’ between Emily and Chavez. 2Kemp states elsewhere that while others (he suggests the Fox Studio and its then head, Darryl F. Shooting the encounter close in at deck level, Mackendrick includes us in the intimacy of the inadvertent embrace – and conveys, through facial reactions alone, that Chavez is getting an erection, and that Emily knows it. In his biography of Alexander Mackendrick, Lethal Innocence, Philip Kemp has no hesitation in describing what this scene is meant to imply:

This moment is quickly followed by reaction shots from two other characters observing the tussle: Chavez's First Mate, Zac (played by James Coburn), and an older girl, Margaret Hernandez (Viviane Ventura). 1 As this troublingly mismatched couple scramble about on the ship's deck, there is a sudden pause, a silence in which the two characters, face to face and on top of one another, appear to share a moment of recognition and seem apparently alarmed, excited and confused.

In Alexander Mackendrick's 1965 film adaptation of Richard Hughes's novel, A High Wind in Jamaica (1929), there is a key sequence in which Anthony Quinn – playing the irascible pirate captain, Chavez – is tussling with a ten-year-old girl, Emily, played by the child actor Deborah Baxter.

A high wind in jamaica