2025 has seen a massive reduction in government agencies, as well as funding for programs which provide services for mental health. Veterans, in particular, are getting short-changed. In 1952’s The Sniper, psychiatrist Richard Kiley advocates for mandatory psychological testing for those accused of sex crimes, and as soon as they are apprehended. By treating them, or even keeping the off the streets, women might be better protected.
I found this concern for women rather forward thinking. This tone is established even before the opening credits, where a text slate informs the audience there were more than 31,000 women victimized the previous year. It ends with: “Here is the story of a man whose enemy is womankind.”
Specifically, war veteran Arthur Franz has been on a shooting spree where he has been sniping random women of San Francisco from a distance. It is interesting he even tries to seek help, but services were overwhelmed even then. A shocking cry for help is when he deliberately puts his hand on a hotplate in his apartment. Even though the doctors can tell the wound is self-inflicted, they do not commit him. I’d say it doesn’t help that one of the doctors says to Franz, “A man has no right messing around with a stove. Strictly women’s business.”
I don’t believe we ever know exactly how Franz came to be a killer. It probably doesn’t help that his female boss at the dry cleaners where he is a driver never has an encouraging word, instead saying things like, “You’re nothing more than a delivery boy and don’t you ever forget it.” Franz is even humiliated by a young girl who calls him out for catching a fly ball at a kid’s street baseball game.
Franz seems to also have a tendency to spin tall tales, though he isn’t very good at it. There’s an odd scene where he tries to impress barfly Marlo Dwyer by saying he is an engineer who constructs bridges. He claims he just came back from Hawaii, but Dwyer detects bullshit and calls him out on it. Admittedly, his yarn couldn’t be any less believable if he had claimed the bridge he worked on was from there to San Francisco.
The murders committed by Franz are shocking in their randomness. I think I jumped every time one happens. To my surprise, most of the deaths happen on camera. It reminded me a bit of Summer of Sam, except the murders here are even more startling. Similar to other snipers, fictional and real-life, he send a note to the police to stop him before he kills again.
That note ends up in the hands of detectives Adolphe Menjou and Gerald Mohr. Kile
y provides them a psychological profile to assist in their investigation, which I think might the earliest example of such I have seen in a picture. I wish we could also hear this thoughts on the draw the crime scenes have for the crowds of ghoulish onlookers.
It may sound odd, but this is an enjoyable thriller and I was completely absorbed in it.
There are several interesting scenes, such as one with a woman in a dunking booth where Franz not only drops her into the water repeatedly, but starts lobbing balls directly at her as hard as he can. A bit near the end has a smokestack cleaner on a rope trying to direct attention to Franz’s sniper’s nest on a rooftop. Let’s say things do not go well for that guy.
The Sniper is highly recommended noir. I think it is interesting it places so much emphasis on the psychological aspects of the case, with Kiley emphasizing there are improvements to be made with how such matters are investigated and how treatment could prevent potential killers in the future. Kiley tells the detectives they “could start a ball rolling all across this country.” This established a strange association in my mind with an earlier scene where Dwyer kicks a can we hear it roll a ridiculous distance, as if it will never stop. I like to imagine Kiley’s ball and Dwyer’s can are side-by-side, rolling across America in a weird kind of road trip buddy picture.
Dir: Edward Dmytryk
Starring Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor
Watched as part of the Powerhouse/Indicator UK (region B) blu-ray box set Columbia Noir #3