The comédie noire may be going out of fashion. When [Odd Obsession] was shown at Cannes in 1960 only the Japanese visitors thought it funny, and their laughter was written off as being eccentric, or at best ill-mannered. Only later did the grudging admission appear that perhaps it was a comedy after all, of a very stylish sort, and the jury gave it a prize. Unfortunately …, American audiences are proving as dense as the fashionable group at Cannes. They simply do not know that, or when, they are to laugh. This is puzzling, because it is not only an exceedingly well-made film, but also vastly entertaining, in a grisly sort of way. (p. 53)

[Odd Obsession] is concerned to show but not to "deal in" the prurience of the old man who is a bit of a voyeur—even with his own wife (he takes pictures of her asleep...