Watch Bunny Lake Is Missing For Free

It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Saul Bass' opening credits and Paul Glass' jazzy score set the tone for this psychological thriller about the disappearance of a little girl and the police investigation that follows. The atmosphere is dark, unsettling and tense and is beautifully enhanced by Denys N Coop's magnificent cinematography. There's something undeniably perverse about the behaviours of many of the story's characters and this not only complicates the investigation but also increases the number of potential suspects.After arriving in London from the United States, single mother Ann Lake (Carol Lynley) takes her 4-year-old daughter, Bunny, to be enrolled at a local nursery. With no staff members available to receive the new pupil, Ann enters the kitchen and informs the grumpy German cook that she's leaving the child in the building's "First Day Room" and rushes off to meet the removal men who are waiting to move her possessions into the apartment that she's due to share with her journalist brother, Steven (Keir Dullea). Later that day, when she goes back to the "Little People's Garden School" she's horrified to discover that Bunny has disappeared and none of the staff seem very helpful or indeed, willing to take any responsibility. Ann turns to Steven for help and after he carries out a search of the building, they decide to call the police.Scotland Yard Detective Superintendent Newhouse (Laurence Olivier) is assigned to the case and discovers that no-one at the nursery remembers seeing the little girl and the cook has quit her job. Furthermore,when one of his detectives goes with Steven to his apartment to get a photograph of the missing girl, they find that all Bunny's belongings have mysteriously disappeared. This leads Newhouse to question whether Bunny actually exists and when he's informed that, as a child, Ann had an imaginary playmate, also called Bunny, he starts to have doubts about Ann's mental state.Ann feels frustrated about not being able to prove that Bunny exists until she remembers that she has a receipt for one of the girl's dolls which she'd taken to a nearby shop for repair. When she succeeds in collecting the doll, things suddenly become more sinister in a way that shocks her but eventually enables the mystery surrounding Bunny's disappearance to be solved.The eccentricities of the characters in this movie, provide a great deal of interest for its audience as well as providing the actors with some colourful roles that they're able to exploit to the full. Ada Ford (Marita Hunt) is the retired co-founder of the nursery who lives (seemingly as a recluse) in an attic room where she spends her time researching and writing about her rather unhealthy interest in children's nightmares. Ann's creepy landlord Horatio Wilson (Noel Coward) is an alcoholic, masochist and radio broadcaster who, despite being gay, still hits on her and tries to impress her with his "melodious voice". Superintendent Newhouse is thoughtful, reserved and methodical in his work and also recognises that Ann and Steven's relationship seems more like that of a married couple rather than that of a typical brother and sister. The acting performances are all of the highest calibre and enormously enjoyable to watch."Bunny Lake Is Missing" didn't receive the critical or commercial success it deserved at the time of its initial release but has achieved greater recognition since. It certainly does well at evoking the period in which it's set and in this connection, the three songs contributed by "The Zombies" are both important and great to hear again.

It's strange and disappointing to find a writer like John Mortimer guilty of sloppiness. The plot is an uneasy hybrid of So Long At The Fair - Jean Simmons travels to Paris with her bother who promptly disappears leaving no record he was ever there - and Gaslight - a man attempts to drive his wife mad in which four-year old Bunny Lake disappears from a Nursery school on her very first day yet no one - staff, pupils, parents, deny ever seeing her. Mortimer's sloppiness manifests itself in several ways; 1) The audience does not see the child, what we see is the mother, Ann (Carol Lynley) looking for a member of staff having deposited her daughter in the First Day Room. There is absolutely no logical reason why we should not see the child other than the fact that one of the plot points is that the child is the figment of a disturbed mothers' imagination and this lends it credence; 2) Lynley tells the cook where the child is and the cook agrees to tell the relevant staff (although it's highly unlikely that a caring mother WOULD leave a child unattended for no real reason let alone a viable one, especially when both mother and child have just arrived in the country; 3) unrealistically, within minutes of Ann leaving the nursery the cook quits her job on the flimsiest pretense so is not there to confirm Ann's story. 4) towards the end of the film Ann finds a receipt from a doll's hospital where the doll is undergoing restoration and dashes off to the hospital which is apparently located in the West End. Her cab is caught in traffic and the driver explains that this is 'theatre' traffic and tells Ann she will be better walking. She leaves the cab and proceeds on foot; hardly has she entered the shop - after business hours but the door is conveniently open - than her brother, who she left in Hampstead, pulls up outside the shop, in a now traffic-free road. Extreme sloppiness. Finally, no attempt is made to explain just why Ann's brother, who is holding down a responsible job, is suddenly revealed as psychotic. If you can take stuff like this in your stride you may well enjoy this.

I didn't hesitate for one second when I was offered the unique opportunity to watch this movie on a big cinema screen, when a modest genre festival in my country programmed it in their theme of "obscure British cult gems". And does "Bunny Lake is Missing" ever fit into this category, or what! The film is acclaimed Austrian/American director Otto Preminger's rare foray to the London metropolis for a captivating and tense, albeit flawed, drama-thriller full of eccentric characters and philosophical as well as disturbing undertones. The stunningly beautiful but vulnerable Ann Lake just arrived from the US to her new home in the center of London, where her devoted and caring brother Steven arranged everything for her. Ann drops of her four-year-old daughter Bunny at school, but when she can't find any of the teachers, she agrees with the school's cook to keep an eye on the little girl. When Ann returns to pick up Bunny a few hours later, she isn't there. Moreover, nobody in the entire school has seen or heard about the girl. While Ann panics and Steven accuses the school board of sheer incompetence, the experienced Scotland Yard inspector Newhouse discovers that there's no evidence whatsoever to prove Bunny's existence. Is he dealing with a delusional mother and her over-protective brother or is the kidnapping of little Bunny Lake a perfect crime? "Bunny Lake is Missing" doesn't feature any action or violence throughout three quarters of its running time, and yet Preminger creates a truly ominous atmosphere and unbearable tension through mind-penetrating dialogs, mysterious characters and depressing images of an asocial London community. The subject of a child gone missing is automatically worrying, but add to this mentally unstable relatives and potential danger lurking behind every street corner and you've got yourself a gripping thriller. It's remarkable and praiseworthy for how long the script actually manages to keep everyone (the audience, in particular) guessing whether Bunny is real or imaginary! I must admit the climax is overlong, disappointing and severely damages the credibility of literally everything that happened earlier in the film, but luckily "Bunny Lake is Missing" already became an indestructible classic in my book by then. Under Preminger's surefooted direction and craftsmanship, the lead actors Laurence Olivier, Carol Lynley and Keir Dullea put down stupendous performances. The most noteworthy performances, however, are coming from some of the supportive cast members like Martita Hunt (as a former school principal with an obsessive interest in children's dreams), Noel Coward (as the despicable and self-centered homosexual landlord) and – last but not least – the contemporary British cult band "The Zombies" who magically appear on every radio and TV-screen in the whole of London. And, finally, as a massive admirer of his work, I simply must also mention that Saul Bass' marvelous titles sequences also contributed a great deal to the powerful impression this film made on me.

Maybe I am the first non UK or US person who post a review here about this film. I think the film was for Premminger, a opportunity to show his anxiety about the fragility of the western democracy. The film was made few years after the very terrible years of McCarthy time, where the repression and persecution by political reason typical for a totalitarian state. In "Bunny Lake Is Missing" he try to show how easy the state institution can lose there function and can become a tool for abusive and repressive Ararat. It 's help us to know Otto Premminger background if we want to understand his movies. He is much more sofisticate than the usual Hollywood film maker, maybe that's the reason why he use to make theater in NY.When we watch his movies we can think from the ideological point of view he was a humanist, a kind of left-liberal. He has not really a country, he belong not really to a nation, but he is a great human. Therefore the film "Bunny Lake Is Missing" is more a subversive film than a Hitchcock copy.