It’s a world full of shadows and weirdos in this entertaining thriller meticulously directed by Otto Preminger. The story is less than air-tight, but the film’s dreamy effect is what it’s really about.
Carol Lynley’s 4-year-old daughter goes missing on her first day of nursery school in London. Nobody at the school saw her. Nobody else saw her. Even WE haven’t seen her. Lynley just moved to England from the US about fifteen minutes ago and the only people who can confidently testify to the girl’s existence are her and her journalist brother (Keir Dullea), who flies off the handle a little too easily. There aren’t even any pictures of the missing girl because Lynley’s photo albums are still making their way across the Atlantic.
How convenient.
It isn’t long before the film’s most sane person, police detective Laurence Olivier starts to doubt that there even is a missing girl and here’s where I shut up about the plot.
What makes it great is how Preminger and cinematographer Denys Coop assemble the nightmare in gorgeous black-and-white widescreen. Close-ups are scarce. Instead, the camera hangs back and often lets the room dominate the shot. Our main character is constantly in unfamiliar settings (even her home is unfamiliar because she’s just moving in) and we often watch her wander for a bit. Up staircases, down corridors, into mystery. Everything is quietly sinister, from the old English schoolhouse where nobody’s very helpful to Lynley’s new apartment which the landlord has pre-decorated with strange African masks on the walls.
Preminger also loves shots with backdrops of windows and open doors. This is a film full of rich frames. Lots of places in every corner for one’s eye to get lost in. Lots of places for a little girl to maybe get lost in, too.
Then there are the characters, pretty much all of whom are a few eggs short of a dozen.
Carol Lynley spends the whole film going through a parent’s worst fear, but there’s something oddly childlike about her, too. Keir Dullea is a weirdly frosty presence, as he usually is, and the film curiously decides to lead us on at the beginning to think that he and Lynley are a romantic couple rather than siblings. When we find out, it’s the first obvious crack in the glass. Something’s not right here. We can’t trust anybody.
All of the women who work for the school are a little off, with a special mention for 65-year-old Martita Hunt, seasoned luminary of the British stage, as the eccentric, retired co-founder of the school who lives in a sunless flat above it and works on a book about the wild fantasies of children. She gets mouthfuls of loony lines.
Even Laurence Olivier is kinda nuts. See the scene where he starts eating the food in the school kitchen while he begins his investigation.
And I’d be a fool if I didn’t mention Noel Coward in a rare film role as the lascivious landlord. He’s a bisexual old sex fiend with an interest in S&M and who has no reservations about aggressively hitting on a woman who’s in tears over her missing child. Coward is the biggest creep of 1965 here and it’s obvious that he loves every moment of it. He can hardly stop smiling. He’s skin-crawling and hilarious and a perfect fit in this film’s threatening world.