Preminger is adept at using misdirection to maximize the impact of those kinds of turns, both minor and major. (He should have made a horror film).
Make a note to check out Bunny Lake is Missing next Shocktober. I was mixed but I think it has what you're looking for from Preminger. The entire premise is about taking the inevitable and making it suspenseful and surprising.
Bunny Lake Is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1965)
Bunny Lake Is Missing is a preposterous story, ostentatiously told. Preminger reminds me, once again, of a con man trying to pass off forgeries as his own work — not for money so much as for the acclaim and validation that he desperately seems to crave. I'm not sure when I became so prejudiced against him (or if my prejudice is at all justified), but I nonetheless resist his showmanship, which usually seems less in the service of the story than of his own self-aggrandizement. The long takes in
Bunny Lake, superficially similar to those found in a Welles' film, seem like forced attempts to garner the same sort of praise. Similarly, the attempts at a certain sort of maturity (like the mention of "abortion") seem like calculated attempts to be controversial, imitative of what someone like Richard Brooks does with greater purpose. And Preminger really, really wants to be Hitchcock, even borrowing the "no entry after the movie starts" publicity gambit from
Psycho and appearing in one of the trailers in similar fashion. (The
trailer featuring The Zombies is way more fascinating, however, and perhaps even more essential viewing than the film itself.)
Borrowing from the best isn't necessarily a bad thing, though. Hawks was great at it, for example, but he was a much better synthesizer of his borrowed ideas than Preminger, who is unable here to make
Bunny Lake Is Missing a fully cohesive cinematic experience. That being said, there's still enough artistry in the film from moment to moment to make it worthwhile viewing. Saul Bass's
opening credit sequence starts things off on an especially strong note. The first act that follows is a bit muddled, as both script and direction struggle to make the story's preposterous setup at all tenable. Until Laurence Olivier shows up (as the inspector on the case), the story is populated with characters who bare too little resemblance to actual human beings. I appreciated the grotesquery of it all, but the story could've used a stronger grounding in reality before branching off in that direction. The madness later on with the doll surgeon and the lab animals and the children's game are all much more successful. Atmosphere is a strong point of the film. It would make an interesting double feature with
The Loved One, made the same year, or perhaps any number of subsequent films it perhaps inspired:
Blowup,
Rosemary's Baby,
The Wicker Man.
Anyone watching
2001 for the first time should have to first watch
Bunny Lake Is Missing as a prerequisite.
Grade: B-
pixote