Bunny Lake Is Missing

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.

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.

This engaging psycho-thriller truly is an overlooked treasure and probably the most underrated of all of the great Otto Preminger's films. I always thought that Carol Lynley was a very beautiful woman and a very strong presence in motion pictures, but until I saw BUNNY LAKE IS MISSING, I never realized what a magnificent actress Miss Lynley truly is. As the frantic single mom searching for her little girl who seems to have disappeared without a trace, Miss Lynley gives the performance of a lifetime, and Keir Dullea is also impressive as Lynley's concerned brother. Laurence Olivier, Martita Hunt, Noel Coward, and Finlay Currie are also in there doing their usual wonderful work. A must-see, especially for the mystery lover.

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?

Inconsistent and sometimes quite dull as a Director Preminger helms this audacious 60's genre trend of Hammer and Hitchcock, that of the Psychological Thriller. He seems to be right on the pulse of the better of these things when it collapses in the Third Act with missteps of overwrought childhood game silliness.

These things are best left to the psyche not acted out on the playground for here it loses all sense of tension. But leading up to the conclusion there is plenty of stimulation both visually and from the unending parade of offbeat and creepy Characters.

Things are kept centered by some fine Acting all around and a pastiche of unsettling situations. It's a rewarding Movie if the ending is anti-climatic and uneven.