Bunny Lake a disparu

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.

The vast range of responses to and assessments of this movie here are a tribute to what an odd film this is in many ways. And it's difficult to comment on some of its oddest features (chiefly the performances of Dullea and Lynley) without giving away aspects of the plot that it's best you don't know when seeing the movie. I guess it's safe to say that I found both of these performances underwhelming but adequate. To be fair, both of them come off better by the end of the film than they do in its first third. Your take on Lynley's character will definitely evolve as the film progresses, which must in some degree be to her credit.

But by far the most compelling reason to see the film is Olivier's rich and understated performance from the period post-Archie Rice but pre-Othello. It takes a while for his character to appear, but once he arrives, he is unquestionably the center of the film, at the true heart of what's good about it. (The last 20 minutes of the film, maligned elsewhere in these IMDB comments, would probably have benefited greatly from a little more of his presence.)

His every moment onscreen is fascinating and worthwhile, and the script gives him some fine moments of verbal eccentricity which he delivers with variety and brilliance -- we leave this film wanting to know even more about his character, because he just seems so interesting beneath the surface.

Also a plus is that occupying nearly every small part in this film is a truly fine British character actor, with the old dotty schoolmistress Miss Ford (Anna Massey, I believe) a standout. But everyone, from the various employees of the little girl's school to Olivier's sidekick to the fellow manning the shipping counter, are fabulously well-played. And then of course, there's Noel Coward....who gives a truly perverse performance in what amounts to only three scenes.

The combination of black & white photography and widescreen, while not all that uncommon, would soon be all but extinct by the time this film was made (at least until our more recent era, when it's made a conspicuous comeback), but it makes for a very effective look and feel to the movie, often dark and noirish, with somes an almost documentary-like grittiness, but always very well-composed and a large part of the film's success. On television, it's nearly impossible to see it in widescreen, and in fact the TV print isn't even pan-and-scan -- it's just stationary and incomplete, so over and over again we hear people talking whom we KNOW are on camera, but they're invisible to us. No attempt was made in the TV transfer to even bother to scan. It's definitely true that the film is less effective without the widescreen component, but it's still watchable, because you can clearly tell what you're NOT seeing, if that makes any sense at all!

One final note: I originally tracked this film down over a decade ago because of the interesting score by composer Paul Glass, totally unknown to me except for this film. Way back when, the soundtrack (on vinyl) for this film was kind of rare, and I had a copy and really loved the music. In the context of the film, the score alternates oddly between working quite well and being inappropriate or irritating. Sometimes (during the scene in the doll hospital for example) you can understand what the logic was behind the musical choice, but it's intrusive and simply not working. The score also adopts the unfortunate "in-joke" of having some variant of the main title melody (which is quite lovely and fitting for the film, featuring recorder, strings, woodwinds and what seems to be a soprano sax to good effect to create the "child's world" motive to open the first 15 minutes of the film) ALWAYS be present as source music. For example, when we see Noel Coward in his apartment, a radio or phonograph is playing some kind of muzak version of the theme. There's another scene in a bar where the main title theme is playing jazzily. This sort of thing rarely works, and it's particularly egregious in this film. (John Williams once lampooned the practice in his score for THE LONG GOODBYE). But a few blunders aside, Glass manages to do a great job balancing the really expressive simplicity of his rather pastoral tune with some really fine dissonant, percussive, atonal cues. The score sounds like nobody else in particular, yet is very distinctive, which I mean as a compliment to the mysterious Mr. Glass.

All in all, an interesting enough effort, with a really well-written screenplay. One can imagine it looked great on paper when it was offered to Olivier, though perhaps the film turned out a little less successfully than might have been hoped for. But it's definitely worth seeing.

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?

This was an interesting story line to determine for one self if there is actually a little girl nicknamed Bunny Lake, and if this supposedly 4 year old girl who was dropped off at a pre-school daycare center, then went missing, is real or imagined by her mom. Strong performances by the three lead actors, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, and Laurence Olivier.

No spoilers here, but to suffice to say the characters are intriguing and you just feel that you have to watch the entire film to determine what really happened. Carol Lynley plays mother Ann Lake, who is obviously distraught when she goes to pick up her little 4 year old Bunny only to find out she is missing. Ann's brother Steven (played by Keir Dullea) appears to be Ann's rock and support system.

When the police are called in to investigate, Superintendent Newhouse (Sir Laurence Olivier) tries to befriend the grieving mother all the while trying to gather information to assess for himself if this little girl nicknamed Bunny Lake is actually real or imagined by her mother.

It is a bit like a cat and mouse game, and children's games certainly play in to the theme of this mystery. But hold onto your swing as the film takes us "higher and higher" until the bitter end to a decent ending.

Well done! I rate the film a 7 out of 10.

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.