Sweet and low: Adrian Lyne

The director of 'Unfaithful' (on release now), chooses his best and worst scenes of all time

Best scene: Brief Encounter (David Lean, 1946)

There's an extraordinary camera movement right after the final farewell at a station waiting-room between illicit lovers Dr Alex Harvey (played by Trevor Howard) and married Laura Jesson (played by Celia Johnson). He leaves to go to South Africa, and the camera stays with Laura. In the distance, you hear an express train coming and, as the train's whistle gets louder, the camera is sliding to the left and sort of keels over. The camera movement gives a sense of imbalance: she's losing her mind and literally losing her balance, too. The movement suggests she might even jump in front of the train. Back then this shot was complicated, and David Lean would've put the gear head on the wrong way and tilted the camera sideways. Upon meeting Lean in Cannes one year, I badgered him to tell me all about the shot, and, eventually, he remembered it. However, he wasn't the most charitable of people, and merely said something like, "Oh, yes, I remember. And then it was ripped off!"

Worst scene: Lolita (Stanley Kubrick, 1962)

There's one scene that I thought was shot from the wrong point of view. There's a key scene when Professor Humbert Humbert (played by James Mason) is sitting on a porch and he hears Clare Quilty (Peter Sellers) talking about Humbert's fear that he could be caught out for being with the under-age Lolita. The camera is on Quilty in the foreground; Humbert's in the background. But because the scene is about Humbert's feelings, the camera should, I feel, have been centred on him. I think Kubrick fell in love with Sellers as an actor and so made the scene, and the movie, too, more about Quilty than Humbert – this, despite the novel it's based on leaving it unclear whether Quilty actually exists. I made a remake of Lolita and chose to do it from the point of view of Humbert, with Quilty in the shadows. I know it's a sacrilege to criticise a Kubrick movie – I'll get murdered for this, I'll get shot down!