Bunny Lake Is Missing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
 |
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (February 2008) |
| Bunny Lake Is Missing | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Directed by | Otto Preminger |
| Produced by | Otto Preminger |
| Written by | Marryam Modell (novel) (as Evelyn Piper) John Mortimer Penelope Mortimer |
| Starring | Laurence Olivier Carol Lynley Keir Dullea Martita Hunt The Zombies and Noel Coward |
| Music by | Paul Glass |
| Cinematography | Denys N. Coop |
| Editing by | Peter Thornton |
| Distributed by | Columbia Pictures |
| Release date(s) | 1965 |
| Running time | 107 min. |
| Country |  United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| IMDb profile | |
Bunny Lake Is Missing is a film in the psychological thriller genre directed and produced by Otto Preminger. Filmed in the UK in black and white widescreen format, it was released in 1965. The film score is by Paul Glass and uses the opening theme as a constant refrain. The Zombies also appear, in a television broadcast, playing their own songs.
Dismissed by critics (and Preminger) as insignificant upon release, the film has since earned a reputation as a cult classic. Critics such as Andrew Sarris have long championed it, and its fans have long demanded it be released on video and DVD, which was eventually done in 2005.
Contents |
[edit] Plot
American single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) has just arrived in England from the US, planning to settle in London along with her journalist brother Steven (Keir Dullea) and her four-year-old daughter Bunny. But when Ann arrives at Bunny's new school to collect the child at the end of her first day, Bunny is not there and the school has no record of her.
Police Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) faces an array of possible suspects in Bunny's disappearance. Ann's Bohemian landlord, the ageing writer and broadcaster Horatio Wilson (Noel Coward), who lets himself into Ann's home whenever he pleases, proves to be a whip-loving masochist. Old Ada Ford (Martita Hunt), who lives upstairs from the school, collects recordings of children's nightmares. And is the closeness of Ann's relationship with her brother entirely healthy?
As the investigation proceeds, though, another possibility suggests itself. No one outside the family recalls ever having seen Bunny, while Ann and Steven claim that all of the girl's belongings disappeared in a mysterious burglary. When Stephen lets slip that Ann, as a young girl, had an imaginary friend also called Bunny, Supt. Newhouse begins to question whether Bunny Lake ever really existed.
Desperate at not being believed, Ann suddenly recalls that, before Bunny's disappearance, the girl's doll had been taken in for repair. She immediately sets off across nighttime London to try to recover the doll, convinced that with this evidence in hand the police will have to believe her. But when she gets to the "doll hospital", Ann discovers more than she has bargained for.
In the film's surprise denouement, Ann encounters Steven at the doll hospital. Her brother destroys the doll and it soon becomes apparent that he has something to hide. Ultimately, Ann finds Bunny in the now visibly disturbed Steven's (or "Stevie", the only name he answers to in that state of mind) car and faces a night distracting him from murdering both her and her daughter before the police finally arrive to take him away.
[edit] Cast
| Actor | Role |
|---|---|
| Laurence Olivier | Supt. Newhouse |
| Carol Lynley | Ann Lake |
| Keir Dullea | Steven Lake |
| Martita Hunt | Ada Ford |
| Anna Massey | Elvira Smollett |
| Clive Revill | Sergeant Andrews |
| Lucie Mannheim | The Cook |
| Finlay Currie | The Doll Maker |
| Noel Coward | Horatio Wilson |
| Suky Appleby | Bunny Lake |
[edit] Production Details
In adapting the original novel, Preminger re-set the story from New York to London, where he enjoyed working. He created a dark, sinister vision of London which provides much of the film's appeal, making creative use of real locations, including the "doll hospital" and a house that belonged to the novelist Daphne du Maurier. Preminger found the novel's denouement lacking in interest and credibility, and drastically changed the plot -- a process that required a large number of re-writes from his British husband-and-wife scriptwriters John Mortimer and Penelope Mortimer before the director was satisified.[1]
[edit] References
- ^ 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).
|
|||||
