The Sniper (1952)

Truly Dreadful Film

Lack of good storyline.

Each character in this movie — down to the smallest one — is an individual rather than a type, prone to spontaneous changes of mood and sometimes amusing outbursts of pettiness or ill humor.

Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

"The Sniper" is an unusual noir from director Edward Dmytryk in his first film after being on the blacklist. It's unusual in that it's the story of a man's violence against women - multiple women, and he's seen shooting them.Filmed in San Francisco, though the city isn't mentioned, the film stars Arthur Franz, a familiar face to TV audiences and a man who rarely had a lead in films -- in fact, this may be his only lead. Nevertheless, he does a compelling job as a disturbed man who wants to be stopped.The chase scene at the end is particularly good. Another familiar face, the wonderful Richard Kiley, plays a psychiatrist.Violence against women certainly became a big subject later on, but there wasn't much about it back in the'40s and '50s. There was, however, during and post-war, a good deal about the psychological trauma of returning soldiers. This is one of them, and it's excellent.

Before Edward Dmytryk made "Raintree County," he made a number of B-movie thrillers that stand out. "The Sniper" was one of the earliest examples of a serial killer movie. Edward Franz plays a troubled delivery man for a clothes cleaning service. He is driven to shoot women with a carbine. The irony is that the protagonist wants desperately to be captured by the police. Eddie keeps a carbine in his dresser drawer, and the police have launched a full-scale search. Despite being made in the early 1950s, this melodrama is pretty good with Franz turning in a compelling performance. Clocking in at 88 minutes, "The Sniper" is a crisp, sharp, suspense film that doesn't wear out its welcome. Moreover, "The Sniper" is a forerunner of Don Siegel's "Dirty Harry." Dmytryk and lenser Burnett Guffey make good use of actual on-location photography that gives this thriller a lot of atmosphere. The name of the cop assigned to bring Eddie in is Lieutenant Frank Kafka. Talk about an unusual name. In the finale, the cop storm Eddie's apartment house building, blast the door with a Thompson machine gun, and find the villain clutching his carbine with a tear rolling down his cheek.

IMDb 7.1/10 ROTTENTOMATOES 6.5/10 A young man who hates women cries for help, but no one listens to him. And so the killing begins.This film has some interesting details, like the attempt to explain the sniper's behaviour and it has a couple of pretty good scenes.Unfortunately, acting is very weak, storytelling mediocre and the psychiatrist' talks were feeling out of context (it was like being in a seminar in the middle of the movie).Probably this film was ahead of its time in 1952, but unfortunately it didn't age well.

In spite of the location shooting, this crime movie (certainly not a film noir) is nothing but typical, boring Stanley Kramer fare with some police procedures, a tendency of the times. It's nothing but a much too long lecture about the necessity of preventing crime by having more psychiatrists than cops and more insane asylum than prisons. It has badly aged and is quite uninteresting actually. THe characters are unbelievable, the cops as well as the preaching psychiatrist. I guess you might call it a liberal movie (though it was the Mc Carthy era) but if you're not a liberal, not a chance to be convinced by the message in the film. The idea is "criminals are human beings too and too often, society refuses to listen to them and our indifference to those suffering souls is the main cause of crime". Add to it that the crowd is cruel and insensitive (that old lady who says "I hope they'll kill him" among others) and the film was made from the point of view of the killer and its quite misogynistic : all women are horrible (he is thus to be forgiven if he kills them) especially Miller's boss. It was a strange idea to revive it on DVD as part of the Columbia Film Noir series (Movies were mostly non-noir except the very modern "Murder by contract" directed by Irving Lerner.