I really need to read a biography about Otto Preminger. (This one looks pretty good; remember the link to my wish list on your lower right hand side?) Thus far, I’ve only seen three of his movies - Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent and now this one. I own the first, will be buying the second, and will definitely be grabbing this one. A special edition of it would be friggin’ awesome, as this version has no special features, but the movie itself is good enough to make it worth it.

I mention my interest in Preminger because each of those three movies are a) stellar, and b) totally different genres. Courtroom drama-cum-detective investigation, inside-the-beltway political thriller and psychological horror, if I have to give each a label. And yet each also has a commonality: slowly but surely, the viewer discovers that people are not at all who they say they are. Given the formal constraints of the time (which he also did a great job of working around), every movie I’ve seen of his still unfolds in an extremely subversive way, giving the basic satisfaction of a good story, good narrative pacing, and a traditional cast of characters, but then upsetting the viewer’s expectations time and time again.

Bunny Lake’s basic premise has been mined repeatedly (and unsuccessfully) in later years, most recently in The Forgotten and Flightplan. Both were passable, but either boring or predictable. Which is odd, starting from the premise of a parent who – upon finding their child missing – eventually runs into skepticism from authorities, friends or loved ones that the child even existed in the first place. There is something singularly terrifying about that level of crazy, so there’s no surprise that Bunny Lake isn’t the only movie to explore it.

But as happens occasionally, sometimes the first try is really the best. Part of that here is the cast of characters – particularly noteworthy are the two leads’ truly bizarre and inappropriate sibling relationship, Laurence Olivier, as the skeptical, dogged Superintendent Newhouse, and Noel Coward, as the creepy, deviant, possibly pedophiliac neighbor/landlord of the Lake siblings. All of them are unsettling or suspicious in their own way, which is an obvious asset for a movie that plays so much on the viewer’s uncertainties. Adding to this effect is the thrilling camerawork, which frames and then moves through each shot in such a way so that it feels that a critical piece of action is either just about to happen or is happening just outside of the frame.

Perhaps the best praise I can give for a movie like this (which is appropriate here) is that it makes you want to go back and watch it a second (or third) time. Even after the surprising conclusion, one is left so unsettled that there is a feeling that some loose ends must still be dangling. All the realities, assurance and security with which the story starts have been reversed or turned at a slant by the end, so that there seems to be real value in going back and reconnecting the dots.

Evidently (according to IMDB) they are thinking about remaking this one. In color, with a modern soundtrack, and all the advances in camerawork common to the genre now - this could be a good thing. But this original really works so well - all of its elements play off of each other so beautifully - that I wouldn't want to be the guy who tried.