Last night I was totally riveted to the gloriously twisted parade of characters in Otto Preminger's 1964
film, Bunny Lake is Missing, including a batty Jungian headmistress, a benevolent doll surgeon, and a kinky landlord played brilliantly by playwright Noël Coward.
Preminger's storytelling style is to stack the deck one way then the next, making you form allegiances to certain characters only to question them a few minutes later. Paul Glass' disjointed score nicely compliments this approach, but the best music in the film is by the highly underrated Zombies. In a quintessentially English pub the bartender flips the TV channel to an American Bandstand-style show, and just like that—the entire mood of the movie changes. The Zombies interlude acts as the dividing line between the sane, ordered first half of the film and the bizarre, chaotic second one, so the moment is strangely memorable. It's also a glimpse of encroaching youth culture—all jangly music and sexual permissiveness—intruding on the genteel, old-world pub scene.
Bunny Lake Is Missing was released in 1964, at the onset of the sexual revolution. The U.S. had begun regular bombing of North Vietnam at that point and rock was changing from bobby socks to Bob Dylan, so there was a lot of free floating anxiety among older generations about what it all meant. In Bunny Lake is Missing, the young Ann Lake character is a representation of that cultural anxiety, but a pretty sophisticated one. She's an unwed mother who is not merely unapologetic it, she's downright self-respecting. As an American, shes he's also portrayed as a briskly efficient and direct person compared to the eccentrics she keeps encountering. At the start of the film, Ann Lake seems a sign of the era to come—practical, permissive, and unhindered by baggage of yore. It sets the Brits on edge, and she's not particularly enjoying their company either as they are gradually revealed to be an antiquated lot of near shut-ins with vaguely monstrous hobbies.
At first it seems as if the old world will effectively repel the new one. The police superintendent (played irresistably by Laurence Olivier) is skeptical of the husbandless Ann Lake and her story about a missing child. He implies that perhaps the child never really existed, and that Ann is a hysteric. Professional integrity propels his investigation forward, however, and he uncovers the truth. By doing this, the story subtly endorses Ann's character, at which point the new and the old worlds merge a little and equilibrium is restored.
The final scene of Bunny Lake Is Missing is overwrought to the point of camp, but it doesn't matter. The supporting performances are so magnificent in this film and the directing and cinematography so spot-on that it's an absolute must-see. And listen to a little of the Zombies too while you're at it. Their self-titled debut album is fantastic, but don't miss Odessey and Oracle, "one of the flukiest (and best) albums of the 1960's." (Allmusic.com)
I'd completely forgotten about The Zombies and have dug them out of my old vinyl collection today as the result of your post, so thank yoU!
Posted by: Preminger Fan | February 08, 2008 at 01:07 PM