Bunny Lake ist verschwunden

Ironically enough, 'Bunny Lake is Missing' actually was missing for years - not listed in movie guides, not on VHS, only rarely making a ghostly appearance on the late late show.

Fortunately it's being remade with a major young star, Reese Witherspoon. Can't wait to see it, Witherspoon was really good in a movie with Keifer Sutherland where she plays a teen runaway.

So as a result of the remake the original is due out on DVD! So technology really does lead to better living.

BLIM is a very well-made, scary movie. Don't watch it alone, unless you are not easily made, well, uneasy. Not a slasher type movie, or a 'watch out it's going to get you ' scariness, but a psychological thriller.

Like other movies from the 1960's set in Europe, Bunny Lake is austere and stark, the characters have an emotionally remote manner, as if in a trance. Other examples are Alfie, Blow-up, Georgy Girl, and the horrifying Repulsion, the last of which if you are going to try to watch at all, you should not do alone, and you should be warned that it's no picnic watching even Catherine Deneuve come totally unglued while no one seems to suspect a thing.

The various settings in the movie, that should be quaint, innocuous or at worst drab but end up being terrifying in their shadowy oddness. A children's day care center, an apartment, a hospital, and a 'doll hospital'.

Maybe the discordant soundtrack of various whistle-y pan pipe -y sounds is a big reason for the desolate mood of the film.

You just fall in love with beatific Carol Lynley, she is adorable in this and very brave, after all if we are having to watch this nightmare her character is actually living it.

Supporting cast boasts kindly detective Sir Larry Olivier, leering neighbor Noel Coward and high-handed brother Keir Dullea.

If you enjoy this one, you may also enjoy 'The Shuttered Room' another scary flick from 1960s Britain with Miss Lynley being threatened by dastardly Oliver Reed as an evil country lout. Haven't seen it in decades but it scared us as children.

Carol Lynley does some fabulous work here as American woman newly arrived in England whose little daughter is apparently kidnapped from school on her first day. The catch is, nobody knows the child and Lynley is having trouble proving she even exists! Terrific mystery from director Otto Preminger, an uneven filmmaker who does strong work just up to the finale (which is somewhat anti-climactic). Laurence Olivier is the police inspector on the case and he's very smooth, cunning and yet sympathetic to Lynley. There are some mod overtures which seem misplaced, and Noël Coward has a gratuitous bit as Carol's drunken landlord (and BBC celebrity!), yet the film does have many sharp bits of minute detail, intriguing and funny supporting characters, terrific cinematography and locations. Does it all add up? No, but it's inscrutable fun nevertheless. *** from ****

Stuffed with wonderful character actors and recognisably shabby locations - like the little school in an old house where the cook is making junket (whatever happened to junket?). Her accent is familiar: she once played a beautiful spy in 39 Steps, warning of leaking "secrets vital to your air defence". After many viewings, it's easy to forget that it's a mystery and everyone is a suspect. Has Bunny been abducted by sinister Martita Hunt (the slightly dotty founder of the school)? Or creepy Noel Coward (the landlord)? The Zombies song "Just Out of Reach" keeps being reprised.

They were more famous, though, for a song called "She's Not There". How's that for intertextuality? The script is by John and Penelope Mortimer. John is famous for the Rumpole series, and Laurence Olivier's detective has echoes of Rumpole, muttering that bus conductors never notice anything - they are dreamers and philosophers. Noel Coward's character too is very Mortimerian: "There are many at the BBC who bear bruises left by the love of Horatio Wilson." Mortimer reveres Shakespeare and Conan Doyle and sometimes it shows.

The plot is stuffed, sometimes clunkily, with issues that were only just beginning to be spoken about: perversion (in the person of whip-wielding Horatio), teen pregnancy (Anne Lake seems about 20), unmarried motherhood and abortion. Anne chose to have her baby and raise it on her own. This is still a difficult course of action, but in 1965 it was groundbreaking, especially if you were - as she is - middle class.

I saw "Bunny Lake Is Missing" for the second time last night at San Francisco's Castro Theatre. The first time was also at the Castro twelve years ago during an Otto Preminger festival. Preminger made a number of better films – "Laura" and "Anatomy of a Murder" come to mind – but I have a special fondness for "Bunny Lake" even though at times it drags and is overly talky.

Among the merits of casting Carol Lynley and Keir Dullea, it can be successfully argued that they look like siblings – often not the case in films – which works very well for this film, as does their ethereal out-of-body quality.

Criticism has been made that the role of Ann Lake was written one dimensionally and therefore offered Lynley little to do but weep and whine; but this may have been Preminger's intention to support that part of the plot that suggests Ann may not have a daughter and that Ann herself may be more than a bit unbalanced.

Dullea is an unusual looking actor who can photograph good looking or simply strange. Preminger used this well early in the film, although he seemed to lose subtlety as the narrative headed towards its denouement.

The film's superior black-and-white widescreen photography is one of its strengths. London locations and interiors are effective and impressive. I especially liked the doll hospital cellar sequence with Lynley holding an oil lamp as she moves about, the high angle shot of the backyard the begins the final sequence, and several sequences when characters pass quickly from one room to another.

The sexual subtext is not as hidden as it would have been in the 50s, but subtler, say, than after 1970; its ambiguity adds to the film's texture without getting in the way.

In fact, 1965 seems a perfect time for this film to have appeared since the cinematic fulcrum was still well placed to balance a filmmaker from older Hollywood who also enjoyed pushing the envelope. A little bit later, color photography would have been mandatory, and the characterizations would have moved into a much more bizarre, psychedelic arena.

Perhaps because of how its strengths and weaknesses combine, the film has a seductive, haunting integrity for me. As the film began with the Saul Bass titles and Paul Glass's score, I felt a pleasurable sensation of awe which I used to feel more often when seeing a movie, and which reoccurred a number of times in "Bunny Lake".

Try to see this film on a large theater screen to experience the full power of the black-and-white widescreen cinematography. Otherwise, view the letterbox DVD on a screen large enough to allow you to see details. There is much to enjoy in "Bunny Lake Is Missing", so don't miss out.

Sir Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea and Noel Coward star in "Bunny Lake is Missing," a 1965 black and white British film directed by Otto Preminger.

A young woman, Ann Lake (Lynley) and her brother Steven (Dullea) report the woman's little girl, nicknamed Bunny, missing when she can't be found at her school on her first day of class. The detective in charge, Supt. Newhouse (Olivier) soon finds out that Bunny's things are disappearing from the new apartment where she, her mother and uncle live, and Newhouse begins to wonder if Bunny ever existed at all.

This is a dark, atmospheric film that takes the viewer into an adult world where a child's fantasy life is explored and often accepted - the cofounder of the school on its top floor listening to children's dreams on tape as she writes a book about children's fantasies; the man who runs the doll hospital; and Ann herself, who had an imaginary friend as a child called Bunny, named after a character in a book.

Is Bunny Lake missing? Was there ever a Bunny Lake? Is Steven trying to cover for his sister? "Bunny Lake is Missing" is very offbeat and will make you uneasy as you, along with Newhouse, try to figure out what's going on.

The acting is very good - Olivier obviously did this role for money - there is nothing particularly interesting about it, though he does a good job. The pretty Lynley gives an ambiguous performance - she's either a grieving mother, a nut, or both, and Dullea is equally ambiguous - does he know more than he says he does? Is he placating his sister?

Noel Coward has a showy if small role as the Lake's landlord, a rather strange bird into S&M who proudly shows one of the detectives the skull of the Marquis de Sade.

Though not entirely satisfying, this is a great movie to see on a Sunday afternoon. It takes you right into the darkness of London and leaves you there as it travels through a child's strange world and comes out in illusion? Reality? Or madness?