One of the films I watched and madly loved during this period of Otto obsession was Bonjour Tristesse, which starred the second jewel of the French New Wave, Jean Seberg (the first being Jean Moreau!), and a dashing, pre-Pink Panther David Niven. This film captures everything I love about life and cinema: sunshine, blue water, booze, music, fast cars, youth, beauty, and lots of wasted time. The story concerns a young woman (Seberg) who has a very close (almost incestuous) relationship with her father (Niven), a rich, sun-bronzed playboy. But really, the story means nothing; all that matters in Bonjour Tristesse is motion and light -- cinema.
The film is shot from Seberg's point of view; from her present black-and-white world she recalls the color-bright, halcyon days before she lost everything she loved. What Preminger does is make the colors of Seberg's recollections so bold, so breathtaking, that they seem unreal -- thus implying that our memories of happier days are always enhanced. We make them brighter, more sunny than they actually were. The present is never there for us, never interesting (it is all black and white); only our remembrance of things past is important because -- as Andrei Tarkovski pointed out in his book Sculpting Time -- it is stable and malleable.
Bunny Lake Is Missing (a rarely screened, and grossly underappreciated Preminger film) is about a sudden, inexplicable disappearance. An American couple (brother and sister -- again there's this incestuous thing going on) move to London, and almost immediately, the sister loses her illegitimate daughter after dropping her off at a preschool called Little People School. It is now up to an articulate and perspicacious detective, played by Laurence Olivier (who delivers a stunning performance), to sort out this little puzzle. Best of all, the movie is filled with odd London characters: a woman who records and studies the "little nightmares" of children, a landlord who claims to have the skull of the Marquis de Sade in his living room, a doll repairman who has a dark and creepy basement. Now that's what I call entertainment.
