The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 18-24
Bunny Lake Is Missing (1965)
Directed by Otto Preminger
Centered around an American expat in London trying to convince the police of her missing child’s existence, Bunny Lake is ostensibly a thriller but plays more like horror, with the twin specters of mental illness and child abduction serving as monsters du jour. En route, Preminger delivers an X-ray of the pre-revolution Sixties’ prevailing morals and anticipates the bumper crop of exploitation and conspiracy pieces that would follow the turn of the decade. Merciless as he is in putting his lead through the wringer, the director is no less implacable in his disdain for the social order that renders her vulnerable. A high-water mark for sordidness, even in a career spent practicing dispassionate sensationalism. Eli Goldfarb (May 18, 12:30pm at Film Forum’s Noël Coward series; May 31, 1:30pm at MoMA’s Preminger matinees)