MovieChat Forums > Bunny Lake Is Missing (1966) Discussion > Otto The Terrible

Otto The Terrible

posted 17 years ago by moviemaniac2002
4 replies | jump to latest

Otto Preminger took great pleasure in terrorizing the younger actors in his
films (he generally kept his distance and respect when dealing with
veteran stars) Tom Tryon, for example ("In Harm's Way", " "The Cardinal")
retreated from acting altogether and later had huge success as a best selling
author.
But in his exaggerated tyranny, he extracted servicable, sometimes
downright excellent performances from up-and-coming untrained actors (Carol
Lynely being the prime example in "Bunny"
And Preminger was also one of the few directors who purposely chose
to shoot some of his films in the odd combination of black-and-white and
widescreen.
"Bunny" stands as a strange, but enormously entertaining blip in the
Preminger cannon, sandwiched in between his sprawling, all-star three hour
epic dramas. In some ways, it reminds me of a milder, gentler variation of
Hitchcock's "Frenzy"...a psychological mystery populated with British
eccentrics of every variety.

[–] ThrownMuse 16 years ago

I was reading an interview with Keir Dullea in the new book Tales from the Cult Film Trenches, and when asked about this film, he came right out and said that Otto Preminger was an awful person. I was surprised at how blunt he was about the whole ordeal.

There's someone knocking in the wall. Was it like an echo?

[–] whitelion43 16 years ago

the original poster mentions Hitchcock. This film really feels like Hitchcock had made it

Oh GOOD!,my dog found the chainsaw

[–] DukeTogo1300 15 years ago

That combination was not that odd. In the gap between full and widescreen, color was not yet the gold standard. It was used a lot but it was more expensive than B&W at the time. Widescreen had pretty much become the standard while there were plenty of B&W productions still happening. There were tons of them in the 50s and especially in the 60s. If you meant Preminger was a pioneer of this practice, that is one thing, but he was not at all one of few. I am actually having trouble thinking of a Japanese film from the 60s that didn't use this combination, and I know there were many in France and USA.

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[–] liscarkat (18541) 3 years ago

I doubt Preminger used black-and-white because of the budget. By 1965, color actually was the standard, being used even for most junky B movies, and becoming more and more common for television shows. It's very likely he chose to do "Bunny Lake" in black-and-white, and it was perfectly appropriate for the tone and mood of the film.