Movie Type: Police Detective Film, Psychological Thriller
Themes: Sibling Relationships, Missing Persons
Main Cast: Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Laurence Olivier, Noël Coward, Martita Hunt
Release Year: 1965
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 107 minutes
MPAA Rating: NR
Plot
Based on the mystery novel by Marryam Modell (using the pseudonym Evelyn Piper), Bunny Lake Is Missing is a bizarre study in motherhood, kindness, enigma, and insanity. Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), an American freshly relocated to England, wishes to drop off her daughter Bunny for the girl's first day at a new nursery school. Oddly, Ann cannot locate any teachers or administrators, only the school's disgruntled cook (Lucie Mannheim). She is forced to leave Bunny unsupervised in the building's "first day" room, under the reassurance that the cook will be responsible for the child. When Ann returns in the afternoon, the cook has quit and Bunny Lake is missing. The school's remaining employees vehemently deny ever seeing the child, and Ann desperately calls her older brother Stephen (Keir Dullea) for help. Ann was raised fatherless and never married; she and Bunny have lived under Stephen's care and protection for the majority of both their lives. Stephen is enraged by the irresponsibility of the staff, but as Scotland Yard begins its investigation, it comes to light that he had never officially enrolled a child at the school. When Police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) begins to unravel the Lakes' lives and search their belongings, he discovers that not only did Ann once have an imaginary childhood daughter named "Bunny," but that the young Bunny seemed to have no tangible possessions at the Lake apartment. Bunny Lake (whom we have yet to see onscreen) may not be missing: she may not even be real. Terrified that Newhouse will now abandon the search for the girl, the hysterical Ann sets out to prove her sanity and, in the process, surprisingly uncovers the true psychosis behind the disappearance of her little Bunny Lake. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Review
Otto Preminger dismissed Bunny Lake Is Missing as his "small" and "unsuccessful" project. Next to the director's behemoth, Exodus, and his jewel, Laura, the film certainly pales in scope and accolades. Yet in the years since Preminger's death, this insignificant mystery has become a cult favorite and a critics' doll. Cinema aficionados have rallied for its video release and scholars Jeanine Basinger and Andrew Sarris show it regularly in their film studies courses. Bunny Lake Is Missing really is an oddly compelling piece of work. The picture's veteran actors, Laurence Olivier and Noël Coward, embrace their own hamminess and play their eccentric characters with bravado. As a result, the comic idiosyncrasies of Olivier's detective and Coward's landlord never appear clichéd or boring. Keir Dullea, fresh from winning both a Golden Globe and a British Academy Award, is equally explosive and genuinely sinister as Stephen Lake. His true-life antagonistic relationship with Preminger comes through in his character -- Stephen is erratic, frustrated, and deliciously passive-aggressive. In contrast, Carol Lynley's performance as Ann is so delicately understated that the girl's alienation from her male counterparts is frighteningly palpable. In fact, Preminger's use of Lynley as the tortured young blonde is celebrated as one of the many blatantly Hitchcockian elements of the psychological thriller. However, while Hitchcock preferred to create drama by drawing attention to physical objects, Preminger does so by simply drawing out scenes. Each long take is a little too long, each silence is a little too lengthy, and each character seems to abuse his or her chance to talk. This combination manages to disconcert as well as mesmerize. ~ Aubry Anne D'Arminio, All Movie Guide
Anna Massey - Elvira; Clive Revill - Andrews; Finlay Currie - Doll-maker; Richard Wattis - Clerk in Shipping Office; Lucie Mannheim - Cook; Megs Jenkins - Sister; Victor Maddern - Taxi Driver; Delphi Lawrence - First Mother at School; Suzanne Neve - Second Mother at School; Adrienne Corri - Dorothy; Kika Markham - Nurse; Jill Melford - Teacher; Damaris Hayman - Daphne; Patrick Jordan - Policeman; Jane Evers - Policewoman; John Sharp - Fingerprint Man; Geoffrey Frederick - Police Photographer; Percy Herbert - Policeman at Station; Michael Wynne - Rogers; Tim Brinton - Newscaster; Fred Emney - Man in Soho; David Oxley - Doctor; John Forbes-Robertson - Attendant; The Zombies
Credit
Martin C. Schute - Associate Producer, Hope Bryce - Costume Designer, Evelyn Gibbs - Costume Designer, Bernard Williams - First Assistant Director, Otto Preminger - Director, Peter Thornton - Editor, Paul Glass - Composer (Music Score), Don Ashton - Production Designer, Denys Coop - Cinematographer, Don Ashton - Producer, Otto Preminger - Producer, Charles Staffell - Special Effects, Jonathan Bates - Sound/Sound Designer, John Mortimer - Screenwriter, Penelope Mortimer - Screenwriter, Evelyn Piper - Book Author
Dismissed by both critics and Preminger as insignificant upon its release in 1965, the film later earned a following as a cult classic, along with strong reviews by critics such as Andrew Sarris. The movie was at last released on DVD in 2005.
American single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) has lately come to England from the US with her four-year-old daughter Felicia whom she calls by the nickname Bunny, planning to settle in London with her journalist brother Steven (Keir Dullea). After Bunny's first morning at her new school (The Little People's Garden) Ann comes to fetch her but Bunny is not there and nobody can remember even having seen her.
Police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) faces an array of suspects in Bunny's disappearance. Among these is Ann's landlord, aging writer and broadcaster Horatio Wilson (Noel Coward), who lets himself into the Lakes' new apartment as he pleases and is a whip-loving sado-masochist. Retired teacher Ada Ford (Martita Hunt) lives on the school's top floor and collects recordings of the nightmares of children. Ada in turn tells Newhouse she thinks there is something "very unusual" about Ann's brother Steven. Meanwhile, Steven acts aggressively towards Newhouse, threatening to create a public scandal through his resources as a reporter unless the police quickly find Bunny.
The family further tell the police that all of the girl's belongings have vanished that same day in a mysterious burglary, along with her passport. The school authorities in turn report that they had never received a tuition check for Bunny. When Steven lets slip that Ann as a young girl had an imaginary friend whom she also called Bunny, Newhouse begins to wonder whether Bunny Lake ever really existed.
At her wits' end from not being believed, Ann suddenly recalls that, before Bunny's disappearance, the girl's doll had been taken in for repair. She sets off across nighttime London to try to get the doll back, thinking that with it in hand the police will have to believe her.
Ann reaches the "doll hospital" and finds the doll, only to be joined by Steven, who destroys the doll and strikes Ann. Steven checks Ann into a hospital but she manages to escape and tracks him down. Ann finds Steven taking Bunny from the boot of his car where he has evidently kept her all day. He is clearly about to murder the child. Calling him Stevie, Ann tries to distract her brother with reassurances and ever more frantic games from their childhood. Their dialogue hints at the film's earlier suggestions of incestuous feelings between them.[1][2] Steven deeply resents Bunny's father, and Bunny's existence reminds him of having "lost" his sister in this way. At last, Newhouse and other policemen arrive. Steven is taken into custody and watches as Ann carries Bunny safely away.
Adapting the original novel, Preminger re-set the story from New York to London, where he liked working. His dark, sinister vision of London made use of many real locations, including the "doll hospital" and a house that belonged to novelist Daphne du Maurier. Preminger had found the novel's denouement lacking in credibility so he changed the identity of the would-be murderer, which needed many re-writes from his British husband-and-wife scriptwriters John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer before the famously demanding director was satisfied.[3]
^ Foster Hirsch, "Otto Preminger: The Man Who Would Be King" (2007).
Maria DiBattista (Princeton University): "Afterword". In: Evelyn Piper: Bunny Lake Is Missing (Femmes Fatales: Women Write Pulp) (The Feminist Press at The City University of New York: New York, 2004) 198-219 (ISBN 1-55861-474-5) (includes a discussion of the differences between Piper's novel and Preminger's film version).
