Bunny Lake Is Missing

When a director’s name is used as an adjective it’s safe to assume they’ve reached the peak of cinematic immortality. Kubrickian, Spielbergian, Hitchcockian: one-word descriptions that provide a general feel for the work or its influences. While Otto Preminger never achieved such elevated status, he cultivated his reputation as a taboo-challenging director whose films were worthy of critical acclaim and big box-office returns, much like Hitchcock who seems to be the major inspiration behind Bunny Lake is Missing (1965), a progressively engaging mystery which used the same “no one admitted while the clock is ticking” gimmick as Psycho…as well as an inventive title sequence by Saul Bass.

After dropping off her four-year-old daughter at a new school that morning, Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) returns for pick-up only to find her child, nicknamed Bunny, is missing. But not only is Bunny gone, the staff claims to have no knowledge of her whatsoever. The London police launch an investigation, headed up by Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier), and begin to suspect that Bunny may simply have been a figment of Ann’s imagination. Has Bunny truly been kidnapped…or did she never exist in the first place?

Preminger does a remarkable job of keeping the cat in the bag. Several suspects pop up – the school’s agoraphobic founder, a sadomasochistic landlord, even Ann’s slightly off-center brother (played by 2001’s Keir Dullea) – adding to the inexplicable conspiracy. But it’s the skeptical sanity of Ann herself that remains the most engaging element of the story. The film’s push-and-pull plot twists have the audience convicting and acquitting her right up until the truth is revealed.

As good as those secondary characters are (and they steal almost every scene), it’s Olivier’s charming detective that wins the day. In a role the actor admitted he took simply for the money, he is at once comfortably reassuring and coldly calculating. As a cipher for the audience’s own suspicions, he’s a brilliant piece of work. The final twist is a bit audacious, but no less so than the recent Gone Girl which left a similar trail of breadcrumbs.

Twilight Times’s 3000-copy limited edition Blu-ray is quite a piece of work as well. The transfer makes black-and-white look more beautiful than ever and includes a pair of trailers (one featuring British rock band The Zombies, who get a minor plug in the film) plus a fan-friendly commentary by TT regulars Nick Redman, Julie Kirgo and Lem Dobbs.