Associate producer: Martin C. Shute. Producer: Otto Preminger. (Available on an excellent Sony DVD).

A Wheel (Otto Preminger) Production for Columbia. Released 28 February 1966 (U.K.),October 1965 (U.S.A.). Registered: August 1965. "X" certificate. 9,635 feet. 107 minutes.

New York opening simultaneously at the Victoria, Beekman, and 34th Street East: 3 October 1965. Australian release: 26 November 1965.

NOTES: In his autobiography, Preminger has virtually nothing to say about Bunny Lake. He doesn't even mention the fact that he was lucky not to get bad reviews in New York. Bosley Crowther's negative write-up in The N. Y. Times was not published because of the New York newspaper strike. It's an ill wind. . .

Aside from Leonard Mosley in The Daily Express - "Flat-footed" - British critics were reasonably kind. In fact, some of us, including me, praised the movie, but our combined verdict on its sterling entertainment qualities made little impression on the late 1965's TV-doting public.

Olivier was rarely a great box-office lure (except of course with the carriage trade and the corduroy set). The film boasted no offsetting publicity and/or super-stars. All told, Columbia was lucky to make a profit.

COMMENT: It's a shame that Preminger was later to dismiss this film and virtually expunge it from his memory. True, from a box-office point of view it was certainly unsuccessful. But we critics enjoyed the movie even if nobody else did.

Bearing all the hallmarks of an Otto Preminger production — long takes, admirably fluid camera movement and stand-out performances, both good (Dullea, Olivier, Hunt, Massey, Currie) and bad (Lynley, Coward) — this psychological thriller rates as first-class entertainment.

Admittedly, the script is full of holes, but the existence or non- existence of Bunny Lake is intriguing enough to guarantee edge-of- the-seat excitement.

Tension is effectively conveyed through sharp editing, shrewd dialogue exchanges and the elaborate deployment of extras against natural backgrounds.

Preminger uses the wide Panavision aperture most astutely and as a result the film cannot be seen to advantage on full screen TV.

The sensitive and well-informed Dilys Powell remarked in the Sunday Times: "Towering over the story (is) the police superintendent of Laurence Olivier, a performance almost self-effacing, but still massive, hinting force behind the official mask." Alexander Walker in The Evening Standard agreed that Olivier was the man to watch!

My sentiments too!

Bunny Lake is Missing is directed by Otto Preminger and adapted to screenplay by John & Penelope Mortimer from the novel of the same name written by Marryam Modell (AKA: Evelyn Piper). It stars Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley, Keir Dullea, Martita Hunt & Noel Coward. Music is by Paul Glass and cinematography by Denys N. Coop. 1960s Brit Pop combo The Zombies also feature in the film.

Ann Lake (Lynley) turns up at her daughter's school to collect her after her first day there, but nobody has any recollection of ever having seen the four year old...

It was a film that irked Otto Preminger, he was never happy with the finished product, this even after changing the ending from the one in the novel and relocating the story from New York to London. Yet time has been very kind to the film, after re-evaluations from auteurist critics the film has found a sturdy fan-base, giving it cult classic status and a reputation as a sleeper classic of its type. You feel that with its thematic links to Hitchcock's Psycho, Preminger wanted to make a film worthy of being in the same league as Hitch's classic. Certainly the marketing for the film lends one to think the makers wanted to be compared with it, that it of course isn't on a par with Psycho is a given, otherwise it would be more well known. But it's a damn fine picture, stitched together impeccably by Preminger, film holds attention and intrigue from Saul Bass' nifty opening credit sequence, right to the eerie denouement.

Here we go round the mulberry bush, The mulberry bush, The mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush on a cold and frosty morning.

With real London locations used and Coop's pin sharp black and white (shadowy) photography tight to the unsettling mood, story carries an air of psychological discord about it. The mystery element is strong, and this coupled with the edgy, near unhealthy, relationship between Ann and her brother Stephen (Dullea),makes for a "shifting in your seat" experience. Then there's the small matter of Noel Coward as Horatio Wilson, creepy landlord extraordinaire, he may not be in it for much, but the impression made creeps the flesh. Slotted into the tight narrative are scenes that the likes of Hitchcock, Welles and Kubrick would be proud of, where Preminger calls on his film noir know how to feverishly glide around a doll shop and track his actors as they cavort around a children's garden play area. All topped off by the supreme performance of Olivier as analytical Superintendent Newhouse, a man calm and versed in psychology, he is the perfect contrast to the hysteria and borderline mania that surrounds him.

Is it Hitchcockian? As some critics have called it? Well yes it is, but not overtly so, it has closer links in tone and narrative thrust to under seen British thrillers like Don't Talk to Strange Men (1962) and Taste of Fear (1961). Is it flawless? No! Dullea is way too animated, some character reactions to situations are eyebrow-raising and Paul Glass' score is at times maddeningly wrong for the mood sequence it accompanies. But they are problems easily forgivably when taking the film as a whole. 8.5/10

The American single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) seeks out someone in the nursery Little People's Garden School in Hampstead. She finds a German cook and explains that she has just moved from the United States to London and she left her daughter Bunny Lake at the First Day Room alone with a baby. Now she needs to receive the delivery men at the apartment she rented and she needs to leave Bunny for a moment and the cook says that she can check on her daughter. When Ann returns, she does not find neither the cook nor Bunny and no one in the nursery seems to have seen the girl. Ann calls her brother Steven Lake (Keir Dullea) and the police. Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) investigates the case with his men and there is no evidence of the little girl. Soon he begins to question whether Bunny Lake does exist or is Ann's imaginary daughter.

"Bunny Lake Is Missing" is an intriguing and mysterious thriller directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay keeps the mystery and the tension until the end, when the viewer discovers the truth about Bunny Lake. The black and white cinematography is beautiful and the film shows the English rock band The Zombies in a television broadcast. My vote is eight.

Title (Brazil): Not available on DVD or Blu-Ray.