Bunny Lake Desapareceu

Taciturn director Preminger created here an atmospheric, beautifully shot film of mystery and oddity. Though it isn't 100% satisfying, it remains quite entertaining and visually arresting. Lynley, a newcomer to London, England, takes her four year-old daughter to nursery school and, in a hurry to meet movers at her new flat, briefly leaves the child in the custody of a rather unfriendly cook. Later, the cook has quit and the child is gone. Worse, no one seems to have ever known about the child or has ever even seen her except Lynley and Dullea. No tangible trace of the child seems to exist! Olivier is brought in to head up the investigation and scours all the various clues and suspects, all while trying to determine if there even IS a child to be searching for. The film kicks off with famously innovative Saul Bass titles and sets its contrived, but fascinating story in motion with skill. Lynley manages to come off rather well in a difficult role. Dullea is also strong in a part that never gets completely fleshed out. Olivier is reliably commanding and slick and offers a lesson in understated excellence. These performers are surrounded by a lustrous galaxy of terrific British character actors. Most notable is the delicious Hunt as the vaguely sinister, yet delightful headmistress of the school. Massey is also excellent as a frustrated teacher. Coward pops up as a creepy landlord with designs on Lynley. It is not easy to watch the somewhat disintegrated legend put the moves on her. Many other great people show up and, even if they don't get a moment of glory, their participation adds greatly to the class and feel of the film. A sense of dread and uncertainty hangs over the movie as the viewer is never exactly sure what is going on. As stylish and intriguing as the film is, certain sections drag on a bit too long, none more so than the climax, in which Lynley must fend off the villain of the piece and seems to go out of her way NOT to escape or harm the person, at times. Even with this and other gripes (like a needless, annoying and intrusive "appearance" from The Zombies), the film is well worth watching and deserves a better availability and reputation than it currently accords.

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.

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 ****