Friday, Oct. 22, 1965

Questions of Identity

Bunny Lake Is Missing. "They don't believe Bunny really existed," sobs Carol Lynley. And that thread of plot seldom frays in Producer-Director Otto Preminger's big shaggy suspense thriller Though Carol claims that her four-year-old daughter Bunny was kidnaped from a London day school, no one at the school actually saw her. Virtually no one m England has seen her, it turns out. Even her toys have disappeared, and evidence suggests that the child may be a figment of her mother's tortured imagination. With or without a daughter Carol has come to England to live with her brother, Keir Dullea, but he too seems rather vague for a lad who is described as a high-ranking magazine journalist.

After an exhilarating start, the worst thing to befall Bunny Lake is the heavy hand of Director Preminger, a man who abhors half measures. He seeks to establish mood by plunging nearly every London setting into an all but impenetrable gloom. He recklessly tips off the viewer that a key character is deranged thus siphoning off surprise from a climactic mad scene for which no Oscars will be won. Meanwhile, Martita Hunt as a dotty old schoolmistress, and Noel Coward, as a dotty old literary type strive to stop the show with their patented idiosyncrasies. To keep an eye on everyone, there is the man from Scotland Yard--dryly played by Sir Laurence Mivier, who seems bemused to find his king-sized talent tucked into so mundane a role. Obviously, Inspector Olivier has a clue that no sensible person ought to worry too much about missing Bunny.

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