Bunny Lake Is Missing

Otto Preminger's black and white thriller, shot in London. Ann Lake, an American, drops her four-year-old daughter at a new nursery, hurries off to meet the movers, and comes back in the evening to find the child gone. Worse: nobody at the school saw the child, there is no record, there are no belongings. Before long the film's question is not where the girl is but whether she exists. Saul Bass made the opening titles: a hand tearing away layers of thick black paper with the sound of ripping exaggerated. Bass designed the poster too. Preminger promoted it with a rule that nobody could be admitted late. The Zombies appear in a television broadcast in the film and play three songs; with Preminger in the studio the band also cut a radio advertisement telling listeners to come on time. Laurence Olivier plays the inspector, Carol Lynley the mother and Keir Dullea her brother, with Noel Coward in support. Who it is for: viewers who like old-fashioned psychological thrillers and 1960s London. Who it is not for: anyone who wants the solution to hold up. The last stretch drops the suspense for a different genre, and those who find the switch forced are not wrong.