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Bunny Lake Is Missing - Introduction and basic story
Based on a novel by Marryam Modell (using the pen-name Evelyn Piper), Bunny Lake Is Missing is a rarely seen 1965 thriller directed by the acclaimed Otto Preminger. He was acknowledged as the first "indie" director and worked with sometimes controversial topics. His "Man With The Golden Arm" of 1956 starring Frank Sinatra was the first movie to be given an "X" certificate in the UK due to it's subject matter of drug use by the main character. Bunny Lake is set in London where an American single mother (played by Carol Lynley) has arrived in town with her daughter. The basic premise of the film (without giving anything away) is that we never see her child (named Bunny Lake), even when she is supposedly dropped off at a nursery school, and when she goes missing we are left in some doubt as to whether she existed to start with. On a desperate search for the child, Lynley's character comes across some truly weird characters on her travels around a bleak London. Shot entirely in black and white (and apparently less than 100 shots), the movie has a surreal feel to it at times with Preminger's Hitchcock-like approach adding to the tension. A well-chosen cast including Laurence Olivier, Noel Coward and Keir Dullea strengthen what would otherwise still be a great movie. Olivier's Police inspector suspects that the mother might not letting him know everything and so the movie builds towards a clever climax.
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