Don't Bother To Knock

Don't Bother To Knock (Roy Ward Baker, 1952) The McKinley Hotel in New York is apparently not what it used to be. For example, there's no baby-sitting service, and that vexes the Joneses (Lurene Tuttle and Jim Backus), who are attending a soiree in the joint's ballroom. But, elevator operator Eddie Forbes (Elisha Cook Jr.) has a neat solution: his niece, Nell (Marilyn Monroe) has just come into town and needs a job. Eddie asks her to look after the Jones' kid, Bunny (Donna Corcoran) and she shows up to look after the kid while Mom and Dad are downstairs.

 

That's all neat and tidy...seemingly. What isn't neat and tidy is the on-going non-relationship between Skyways airline pilot Jed Towers (Richard Widmark) and a singer employed at the hotel, Lyn Lesly (Anne Bancroft, in her screen debut). Lyn had sent Jed a "Dear John" letter ending their six month relationship, sending him into a tail-spin. He's checked into the McKinley to confront her about it and doesn't like it when she tells him that he doesn't "have an understanding heart." Of course, he doesn't understand, so he goes back to his room to sulk ("The female race is always cheesing up my life!").

Across the way is the Jones' apartment, where Nell is baby-sitting, and makes herself at home. That means different things to different people, but to Nell it means trying on Mrs. Jones' negligee and earrings, lipstick, and shpritzing the woman's perfume. It's clear that Nell may not be the best sitter that could have been hired, and might actually need a sitter herself, given her disregard for the personal property of the folks who hired her. Dolling herself up, whatever her reasons, is enough to attract the interest of Jed, who's nursing the earlier break-up and a bottle of whiskey.

When Nell catches him peeping, she draws the blinds, which only amuses Jed. This being the 1950's and Jed being a "man's man" pilot and all, he calls her up on the house phone and tries to talk his way over for a night-cap, but Nell, after initially being interested, hangs up on him.

Meanwhile Eddie (because he knows "her history") stops by to check up on her and is shocked to find her in Mrs. Jones' "things" and tells her that she has to put everything back—he's had his job 14 years and he doesn't want her to do anything to risk it. Besides, if she wants the finer things in life she should stop mooning over her dead boyfriend and move on. She changes, but when Eddie leaves, she puts everything back on.

 

Then, she calls Jed and invites him over.

Even though the film is 70 years old, we'll stop there for spoilers because it's the surprises that make Don't Bother To Knock an interesting see. Nell is such a mystery with hair-pin turns that you wonder what could possibly happen next...and then you get jolted again. "I can't figure you out! You're silk on one side and sandpaper on the other!" Jed yammers in frustration. The truth is he won't figure her out, even Nell can't figure herself out. She's stuck in a loop and all people can do is follow her down her rabbit-holes.

Which is why it's amazing that it's Marilyn Monroe playing Nell. Monroe performances you always take with a grain of salt—at least a grain of sympathy or empathy—and not to make a pun of it but she's graded on the curve, allowances are made. And just as frustrated directors found out the hard way, Monroe knew that the camera loved her and knew how to use it. The camera was the one thing in Hollywood she could trust. With the bar of excellence seemingly lowered, you come away more than a little impressed.

What had she done before? Cameo's basically. In The Asphalt Jungle and All About Eve, she'd had scenes where she made an impression when she was on the screen, which was minimally. And the parts called for sexy but not voraciously so. Her dramatic role in Fritz Lang's Clash By Night was small, but Don't Bother to Knock, despite its pulp origins and low budget was a huge...if somewhat daunting... role—play "crazy" but sympathetic.

And she's pretty amazing at it. Even with sympathy filters up, there's a lot of work here that tosses the control that she maintained in most of her performances and you're struck by how genuinely alarming it is. Even on-set Bancroft was impressed: "It was a remarkable experience. Because it was one of those very few times in all my experiences in Hollywood when I felt that give and take that can only happen when you are working with good actors. There was just this scene of one woman seeing another woman who was helpless and in pain, and [Marilyn] was helpless and in pain. It was so real, I responded. I really reacted to her. She moved me so that tears came into my eyes."

Almost immediately, she would use her energies for the artifice of star performances that would turn Elton John's "candle-in-the-wind" into kleig lights.

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964)

Seance on a Wet Afternoon (Bryan Forbes, 1964) Psychological thriller about a mad British couple, who decide to kidnap a child for nefarious purposes, and they might get away with it if both of the perpetrators weren't both mad as hatters!

 

Myra Savage (Kim Stanley) has a cottage industry as a medium in London, that is only moderately successful. This puts a financial strain on the couple as her husband Billy (Richard Attenborough) cannot hold down a job, due to his asthma. Billy's guilt for that and his general lack of spine accounts for his being totally under Myra's sway, probably initiated when the couple lost their child, Michael, in childbirth and he accommodated her every whim during her break-down afterwards. Whether this encouragement contributed to Myra's living in a fantasy where she speaks to the soul of Michael in her seances is up for debate. But, what's not debatable is who has the power in the family dynamic.

It's Myra...and Michael.

Then, Myra comes up with a plan to make more money and it's indicative of her madness...but there is some method to it. As her powers as a psychic are medium to none, she decides that she will scare up some business. She proposes to Billy that he kidnap the daughter of some well-off neighbors. They will keep the child in their home—and, of course, demand a ransom—and Myra will offer her services—as a psychic, mind you—to help the police find the missing girl. Her "reputation" as a spiritualist will then For Myra, it's a slam-dunk. For Billy, it's a potential charge of kidnapping if they get caught. Billy cannot say "no" to Myra. But, neither can Bill depend on Myra to keep herself together and not have something catastrophic happen.

If only he had someone around who could...I don't know..."see the future".

Forbes' direction is, to put it charitably, lethargic. The film does pick up a bit of pace as Billy is in London attempting to retrieve the ransom money knowing full well that the drop is being watched. Suddenly, Forbes camera becomes less claustrophobic and takes on the look of a security cam as Billy furtively tries to "blend in" with the pedestrian traffic. The sequence is helped by John Barry's underscore—which prior to this time has been dominated by ethereally echoing vibraphones—kicks in to the type of inexorably escalating music that he'd used for long sequences in the James Bond films. Barry was Forbes' secret weapon, shoring up his films like a masterful frosting hides a less-than-successful cake.

And then, there's Kim Stanley. Seance is notable, if only for Stanley's presence in it, as she preferred stage work to film and her film roles are few and far between...but memorable in the exquisite detail she brought to her work. Her Myra is a fascinatingly manipulative character, never a harpy, but quietly insistent and almost seeming to float in another dimension from reality. It's superb work, and almost makes sitting through this Seance a worthwhile experience.

Last Night in Soho

Killing Two Birds with One Stone

or

Who Are you Wearing?

 

Edgar Wright's new film, Last Night in Soho, is his first horror/thriller film where the purpose isn't to make fun of them, where the emphasis is on the disorientation and not the whimsy (but don't worry, there are a lot of cheeky touches to it).

 

In it, a mousy fashion-design student, Eloise (Thomasin McKenzie—from Jojo Rabbit) moves to the big city of London to attend classes and achieve her goals of becoming au courant. But, as her grandmother (Rita Tushingham !!) warns her "London can be a lot." 

 

That it can be. Even in one time-line. Eloise has a rough first day, what with meeting her room-mate and a coven of snarky "mean girls" who occupy her dorm. It's tough on Eloise, who misses her Mum (she'd committed suicide when Eloise was a girl, but kept seeing images of her in the mirror back home). Finally, she decides to rent a room in Soho from Mrs. Collins (Diana Rigg !!) who's been there forever and wouldn't think of selling the place—"Too many memories".  That should have been put in the advert.

Eloise loves the place, seeing as she's obsessed with the 1960's. She's constantly spinning the old EP's—traveling, she takes an over-loaded suitcase and a record-player—and her fashion-sense runs to the eye-popping 60's. It's the place she'd most like to go-go. But be careful what you're wishin' and hopin' for. She goes to sleep with the neon buzz of the "Soho" sign right outside her window, and with the R.E.M blink of an eye, she finds herself back there, to find a world still fruging and twisting and swinging.

There's one little hitch, though. When she looks in the mirror—or any reflective surface—she sees somebody else's reflection, a woman who turns out to be named Alexandra (Anya Taylor-Joy)—"Call me Sandy"—an aspiring singer-dancer who wants to be the "next Cilla Black." Eloise and Sandy are tied to each other as they roam around the "Cafe de Paris" separated only by a silvered plate of glass, as Eloise watches her make her way through the club, fending off would-be suitors until finally latching on to Jack (Matt Smith), the loungiest of lounge-lizards, who promises to get her into "the business."

But, as Eloise witnesses whenever she goes to sleep, the path of success is littered with slimy, handsy men making promises and repeated pick-up lines that end up in disappointment and being used. As the old saying goes "nostalgia isn't what it used to be" and Eloise finds these visions only adding to her "outsider" stress and fears about life in the big city. Could Alexandra's cautionary tale be something that Eloise is inextricably tied to? And when that tale leads to murder is there anything she can do from being drawn into that fate?

Wright's ability to use effects and imagery are magical here—at times, in a moment's flash, Alexandra becomes Eloise and vice versa—so, one has to keep on one's toes, and the soundtrack is filled with a British Invasion of hits commenting slyly on the action going on-screen. The relationship between the two women is the strongest of the ones on-screen and Wright's tricks to achieve the doppel-ganging leave you utterly convinced, as things get darker and darker and darker.

One wishes the ingenuity required to pull it off extended to the screenplay. Oh, there are clever touches in the details throughout, and one sits on the edge of one's seat, anticipating the next twist. But, the longer the film goes, the more one realizes that time is slipping away, and Last Night in Soho feels longer than it's less than 2 hour running time would suggest—lately I've been seeing things with much longer lengths that seemed to zip by far more quickly. Perhaps there are one or two too many red herrings crowding the narrative—at one point, I was losing any sympathy for Eloise when a "what is she concentrating on them for" question crept in and lodged in my skull. Ultimately, it's merely a diversion, although it's rather short-lived (but then what do you expect in a thriller/horror film?).

But, it put enough doubt in my mind to make me question exactly what Wright was trying to say in this movie. Horror films, have—at their slimy core—some caution, some elemental lesson, that they're preaching in the most ghastly way. Is Last Night in Soho a plea to live in the moment? That seeking revenge against one's oppressors is a fool-hardy act? That victims can be just as dangerous as the ones who attack? Lord, I hope not. I just wish the intellect that kept the threads of who's who had been used to clearly say what's what. I was disappointed and somewhat appalled.

The Little Things (2020)

The Last Act Will Kill Ya

or

"When I see a sunrise or thunderstorm or dew on the ground, yes, I think there's a God. When I see all this, I think he's long past giving a shit."

"I just remember really liking crime dramas and psychological thrillers, but also feeling that especially some of the ones in the ’80s had become a little paint-by-numbers. I would like all the clues and the misdirects and the complications, and then you’d get to the third act where the bad guy is identified and the good guys give chase. And usually there’s some kind of action set piece, and then there’s a face-off and the good guy heroically defeats the bad guy.

And I thought, 'Why does the third act have to be less interesting than the first two?' So I wanted to see if I could have something that unravels in a way that is non-formulaic but also satisfying."

John Lee Hancock Interview with "The Wrap"

Okay, let's get this out of the way first: Black Lives Matter. The problems come when people think that white lives matter more than black lives (or brown lives or Asian lives or Tongan lives); that problem comes from a streak of meanness that runs through American society (or any society), especially when individuals are grouped into blocks and treated as statistics or rules of thumb or metrics—prejudices, all. People are not numbers or monolithic lumps; that's lazy thinking making the job easier for statisticians and bigots.

Alright. That's who I am, and I only say that because there's enough of a Big Stink on the internet about whether "it's an appropriate time" for there to be a controversial police drama. Forget that the participants are very respected actors of different ethnicities (if one has to notice such things). If people were waiting for "an appropriate time," things would never be made. The controversy is "Click-bait" sensitivity—all done to generate "hits" or "likes", just another kind of statistic— and it's sensitivity of the worst kind.

John Lee Hancock's new thriller, The Little Things, is a police drama about police trying to solving a cold case that has recently warmed up to the boiling point. The only blue is the thin blue line and the only red is the blood of the victims, washing over it. It is about police making mistakes while trying to do the right thing. And it is about the toll the job takes if you're a person of morals, having to deal with the public at the worst moments of their lives, invariably. It's hard for the moral compass to keep to true North if your impression is that Society is going South.

Joe Deacon (Denzel Washington) is a Deputy ("I'm a Dep!") out in the scrubland of  Kern County, California, doing small-time calls that are basically nuisances. You'd never know he used to be a L.A. police detective with the highest resolve rate in the force. And he's more than a little reluctant to go back to his old hunting grounds to pick up some evidence that's being analyzed for them by the Big City Lab boys (and girls). It's a matter of Unfinished Business. Well, file it as a Cold Case. That business resulted in Deacon being suspended, getting divorced, and having a heart attack. Murder can kill you.

Going back is like a bad High School reunion. There's the cautious "you're back" responses, the pointed joshing...the side-eyes. People are glad to see you're alive...just not happy you're in close proximity. As for Deacon, he walks around like people are expecting him to have a case of cooties or something, but the old precinct still has the same feeling of a Boys Club that he no longer belongs to. Only there's a new kid in town. Jim Baxter (Rami Malek) is lead detective for a serial murder case and he's sharp-suited, sharp-witted, and has enough control that a press conference is just another ritual. He knows Deacon, knows his record (as much as anybody official knows) and is sufficiently in command that having Deacon as another set of eyes might be handy. They can at least compare notes.

The crime scene looks like a ritual homicide: the victim was a hooker, slaughtered, posed. The two detectives go to their separate corners and go about their own particular business. Deacon discovers that there's an apartment across the way where it looks like somebody was watching everything when it was going down. Meeting up, Deacon and Baxter compare notes—Deacon thinks it has something to do with the case that got him suspended, the one he never solved. The M.O.'s certainly are similar in how the bodies have been purposely posed. That might be the end of it.

That is, if you believe in short movies. Baxter learns from his superior that Deacon hasn't gone back to Kern, that he actually has taken some sick days and is probably still in the area. He has. He is. And he's taken a crummy apartment, bought some used clothes and is living around the area where the last murder occurred. What they don't know is that he's not sleeping—the ghosts of the victims are keeping him awake. He's taken evidence shots from the crime files just to make sure.

Another murder happens. Another girl goes missing. Somebody's busy and the pressure is on lead Baxter to get answers. He turns to Deacon, who's been digging around, scouring for clues, and after harassing a peeping tom (and his subsequent suicide), they focus on Albert Sparma (Jared Leto), a repairman working in the area. Sparma is straight out of creepsville (Leto gives him a wild-eyed glee, emaciated—but with a beer-gut—and the gait of an old man), staring at any police activity like he knows he's being watched and challenges it.

Deacon and Sparma conduct a little cat-and-mouse gamesmanship—both seeing themselves as the cat—when the dep' does some tailing of him on the freeway, only to find that Sparma is watching him with equal attention. The FBI is being called in to take over the investigation, and Deacon and Baxter decide to pull him in for questioning, at the same time that a woman who had previously been stalked on the highway comes in to report the incident, and, by now, the two detectives have a system down to question and observe in order to intimidate suspects.

But, Sparma is a cool customer. He knows the drill—and knows the potential for drilling—and he taunts and questions and goes against expectations. He just seems wrong. Rather than acting—or not acting—like a guilty party, he's blithe about the questioning, wanting to know more about procedure, and enjoying looking at the victims' forensics pictures. He's so nakedly transparent without admitting anything that the cops have nothing to go on. Just their instincts that Sparma is a "bad joe." But, that's not enough reason to arrest him and not enough to charge him. They can't crack him. So, they release him and start doubling down looking for evidence.

Along comes Act 3, which is where Hancock attempts to subvert the genre's "catch-'em-in-the-act"/chase/shoot-'em-up tropes. It is not entirely successful, unless you buy into that the triad of good-guys/bad-guys all think they're smarter than everybody else and so do things that an audience will think is just bad judgment. Everybody's a little too cocky, everybody thinks they're up on the game, subsumed in illusory superiority.

And that's when "the little things" get you.

It's an interesting concept, slightly dumbed down for a police thriller. But, the basic concept of being haunted by the past and your failures is a good spin on the old cop/young cop cliché. The old dog teaches the new dog survival skills; the DNA is deeply embedded there, but without the irony of the lessons being subverted by reality. After searching for demons so long, the cops can't stop seeing the demons and, finally, become them. The lesson is no demons. And no angels, either.

There's some subtle stuff going on, that may not permeate casual popcorn-crunching. And Hancock tosses out visual red herrings, like religious iconography, that merely seem to be part of the landscape rather than being relevant. The time-setting of the 90's would appear to be one of those red-herrings, if the absence of cell-phones weren't so integral to making the plot work. And he does nice little subverting tricks: when the cops are investigating a crime-scene, all the lights are out due to a power-outtage and a big shock comes when the lights suddenly turn ON; he does a deft transition from day to night with the movement of a car's side-mirror. These are just little things that turn a cliché on its ear.

But, the movie is full of "little things," begging to be paid attention to, lest they escalate to everlasting regret. 

* Hancock wrote it in 1993 and Spielberg was at one point attached to direct but passed finding the material "too dark"...and that it was mighty close to the 1991 release of Silence of the Lambs. Eastwood, who'd directed Hancock's script of A Perfect World, was also attached, at one point.

Crossfire (1947)

Crossfire (Edward Dmytryk, 1947) Shadows of a fight splay out diagonally across one apartment wall. Then a body flies across the room, knocking out the one remaining light. Everything goes black until hands twist alight the bulb in the lamp on the floor, exposing only the lower part of the room. One man is dead on the floor, another is conked out in an over-stuffed chair. The third is busy: he checks the body for signs of life, runs for the chair and rousts the man out of it. Then, more light as a door opens and two back-lit figures rush into the corridor, and are gone. 

It's film-noir done by two of the best Hollywood had to offer in the genre, writer John Paxton and director Edward Dmytryk, making a scene of violence with no dialogue and an efficient way of shooting that tells you what's going on but not by who, keeping the mystery alive in that movie short-hand that seems to have gone out of fashion in an expositioned-to-death world. Paxton and Dmytryk had done the Dick Powell version of "Farewell, My Lovely" (retitled Murder, My Sweet in case anybody thought that it was another Dick Powell musical) and in this Dore Schary production for RKO, they were using the form in the call for social justice in the case of antisemitism. This B-movie was taking on the subject the same year as the A-list Gentleman's Agreement.

Except the book it was based on wasn't about anti-semitism. That novel, "The Brick Foxhole," written by future movie writer-director Richard Brooks, didn't have a Jewish murder victim. In it, the man was homosexual, but it would take a few more decades before Society and Hollywood would have the grit to tackle that, without putting its own derogatory coloring on it. But, Dmytryck was determined to make a statement out of it, especially in light—or dark—of the Holocaust of the recent war. And he couched it in a film noir with two separate investigators, three actors named Robert, and a whole lotta flashbacks.

That opening scene is a chiaroscuro portrayal of the murder of one Joseph Samuels (Sam Levene) and it's up to police Captain Finlay (Robert Young) to track down the culprit who beat Samuels savagely to death. The first to talk is Samuels' girlfriend who found the body. From her and a wallet found at the crime scene, Finlay finds out with whom she and Samuels had drinks with earlier. Then, a knock at the door reveals "Monty" Montgomery (Robert Ryan), who knows what the girl-friend is talking about and tells his side of the story, giving Finley leads...and three suspects. But, no motive.

What's different is that the three suspects are all pre-deployment soldiers in the U.S., not unlike Monty himself. And the most suspicion falls on Mitchell (George Cooper), who was there that night, and has had a rough time of it in the Army. His sergeant, Keeley (Robert Mitchum) explains: "He's homesick. He's wifesick. Maybe she said something in one of her letters that made him suspicious of her love life. I don't know. Anyway, he's got snakes. He's been nuts. But not nuts enough to kill somebody." Keeley's friends with Mitchell and has tried to get his wife to visit him to straighten him out. Instead, Mitchell's been going sweet on a bar hostess (Gloria Grahame), who may or may not be married, but is only interested in him for the booze he buys while she's keeping him company.

Sgt. Keeley starts his own investigation, trying to protect his pal, Mitchell, from Finley and the cops and to find out what happened that night in Samuels' apartment before Finley can find and arrest him. He finds Mitchell in a movie theater and is able to find out that Mitchell and two other soldiers had drinks with Samuels before going to the scene of the crime. And then murder happened. But why? Finley's interview with another soldier, Floyd (Steve Brodie) doesn't reveal any motive.

It's when Finley and Keeley's parallel investigations stop working at cross-purposes and they begin to collaborate that it becomes clear that it was a hate crime, and their interview with Grahame bar-hostess and another pertinent murder points them to the real culprit and his impulses which seem to run counter to what the war that was just won was all about, and that the underlying issues of that war have their own parallels imbedded inside the United States, as well. Finley sums it up in one of the tidy little speeches in the film: "Hating is always the same, always senseless. One day it kills Irish Catholics, the next day Jews, the next day Protestants, the next day Quakers. It's hard to stop. It can end up killing men who wear striped neckties. Or people from Tennessee."

The film was a wake-up call hidden inside a police thriller, with the dark hues of the grimier, more cynical post-war sensibilities that were the underpinnings of the film-noir genre. But, rather than cut-throat gangsters and the criminally-motivated, Crossfire hit closer to home. It garnered Academy Award nominations for Grahame and Ryan, as well as for director and screenplay. It also is one of the few films in the B-movie domain of the noir films to be nominated for Best Picture.

Bunny Lake is Missing

Bunny Lake is Missing (Otto Preminger, 1966) It starts normally enough. Most nightmares do.

American Ann Lake (Carol Lynley), newly moved to London following with her brother Steven (Keir Dullea) who has moved for a prominent new job there, goes to pick up her daughter Bunny at the private school she's just enrolled her in. 

But, she can't find her. Nobody at the school remembers her, and can't recall seeing her. The teachers (including Anna Massey) are trying to deal with a crush of new kids starting off to school, so it's a little hard to pin-point the one individual child from the pack. But Ann is insistent, almost to the point of hysteria, and Steven is no help, poking around and questioning the odd woman (Martita Hunt) who lives above the school, berating the teachers and being oddly, vaguely threatening. Fearing a "bit of a row", the police are called in to investigate.

In walks Superintendant Newhouse (Sir Laurence Olivier) and his adjutant Williams (Clive Revill). Newhouse is a bit fusty, a might impatient, trying to understand a situation he doesn't quite fathom. He has an hysterical mother, a "helicoptering" brother, and a "missing person" that no one seems to have seen. It's all quite queer. He presses for details that seem to be there but no corroborating witnesses. He starts a line of inquiry that begins with a search of Steven and Ann's apartment.

When they get there, all traces of "Bunny Lake" are gone. No clothes, no toys, no dolls. Nothing. There isn't a sign that a child has ever lived there. Ever. Newhouse begins to suspect (as do we) that "Bunny Lake" is not only missing, but never existed in the first place. She may just be a figment of Ann's imagination, and the investigation changes from a "missing person" case to an investigation of Ann's psychological state. Steven volunteers that Ann had an imaginary friend as a child that was named "Bunny," and that steers Newhouse to try a different line of inquiry.

He takes Ann to a local pub where he begins an odd line of investigation. He asks Ann about "Bunny" and their history, hoping to liquor her up to find the truth. He learns that, while in the States, Ann had a boyfriend who got her pregnant and skipped out and Ann kept the baby, whom she called "Bunny." Steven was livid at the boyfriend's behavior and had even threatened him, but decided, instead, to get Ann out of that environment, taking a job in London and moving there with Ann and the child.

If the move had improved Steven's temper, it isn't noticeable when he storms into the pub and accuses Newhouse of trying to "railroad" his sister, and, instead of trying to find "Bunny," of trying to prove his sister is crazy. He warns the police to stay away from her...and him and do their jobs finding the missing child. Newhouse demurs, but he widens the search to find out what he can about the Lakes...all of them. 

Meanwhile, for the audience, the list of possibilities grows with every scene. That crazy old lady in the school's attic apartment doesn't seem the most stable of people, the cook who took charge of "Bunny" in the morning goes missing as well. Then, there's the actor-neighbor of the Lakes (Noel Coward), who can only be described as "pan-sexual," making a pass at Ann when they're alone. Maybe there is a "Bunny Lake," given all the potential suspects that would be handy to commit the crime. Maybe there isn't. And maybe Ann is being "gas-lit," led down a particular path to drive her crazy.

Adapted by John Mortimer (he created "Rumpole of the Bailey") and his wife Penelope (The Pumpkin Eater)—with a reported assist from Ira Levin—from a novel by Marryamm Modell, Bunny Lake is Missing is directed by Otto Preminger, a director who vacillated between prestige projects and controversial ones, to the point where one wondered whether he favored making good movies or headlines. But, he rarely played it safe, except in matters of budget. Here, he combines the genres of noir (with which he was all too familiar, having directed one of the classic ones, Laura) and the psychological drama, which Hitchcock had exploited successfully before and who had reached the box-office apex with Psycho.

Since 1960, Preminger had produced and directed big budget blockbusters with novel credibility—Anatomy of a Murder, Advise and Consent, The Cardinal, Exodus, and In Harm's Way. With Bunny Lake... there was budgetary down-sizing, so that less money was at stake, but Preminger's reputation was such that he could still get actors like Olivier and Coward, even if the film was small in scope and less than seemly in content. He changed the book's location from New York to London (probably for budget reasons, but also to benefit from an unfamiliar British cast and enhancing the disorientation of the "Ann" character). And somewhere along the way, they also changed the ending of the book to lend an extra element of surprise. 

Preminger favored long "takes," getting the most mileage out of his actors and his shooting day, editing being dictated by how things went on stage—nothing fancy. Preminger, who favored black and white for cinematography whenever he could, filled the screen with rich areas of darkness, learned from his early noir's.
Bunny Lake is engaging, fairly engrossing for most of its length with odd curiosities along the way. That it doesn't quite fulfill the promise of maintaining it might be a bit in the playing of it, rather than in the preparation.