(Note that this article first focuses on the first film to be screened next Saturday, the noir-tinged black comedy TEN DARK WOMEN, another probing work from director Kon Ichikawa and his wife/screenwriting partner, Natto Wada.)
https://www.roxie.com/ai1ec_event/midcentury-madness-22-june18-19/
The noir-o-meter places the second film scheduled for 6/18, ZERO FOCUS, solidly in the noir region (122/200, or 6.1--remember that the dividing line in the method is 100/200, or 5.0). Definitely a melo-noir, it's a moody, arty, slow-burn with an astonishing payoff thriller, with remarkable performances from the three featured actress, all quite distinct from one another.
The film was featured in a Japanese noir series at the Criterion Collection last year, and I wrote about it on the board here:
https://members.boardhost.com/mrvalentine/msg/1611621419.html
I've also written about it on my most recent Substack post, the first of two that will focus on the June 18-19 MADNESS "double double bills." You can read that here:
https://donmalcolm.substack.com/publish/post/58410259
The second feature on 6/19, Jean-Pierre Mocky's THE BIG SCARE (LA GRANDE FROUSSE) is an anarchic, unclassifiable mash-up of crime comedy and horror/fantasy film which some critics have seen as a frenetic precursor to David Lynch's TWIN PEAKS. That may be selling it short, given that it's a lot funnier, and filled with some gleeful genre-busting and impertinent diatribe that became more common in film a bit later in the sixties and beyond. It's the type of film that seems to have been made with the "midcentury madness" concept already in mind--which is a big, scary thought all in itself...!
Responses