Noir November - Day 2 - The Sniper (1952)

"A word about the picture which follows: High among police problems is that of the sex criminal, responsible last year alone for offenses which victimized 31, 175 women. Adequate and understanding laws do not exist. Law enforcement is helpless. Here, in terms of one case, is the story of a man whose enemy is womankind."

And that's just the opening titles for The Sniper. We then cut to a dingy one bedroom apartment. Even before we see the antagonist, we see his rifle, as he opens a locked drawer revealing the shiny black gun.

Played by Arthur Franz, Eddie looks like a normal guy; but, of course he is not. As the titles state, this is a movie about a man who hates women. Within a few moments of the opening, we see him take aim through the rifle's telescopic sight at an attractive brunette across the street, as she kisses a man. He pulls the trigger. The gun dry clicks; empty. A not too subtle comment on his own sexual performance problems?

While walking the streets of the city later that night, Eddie encounters other women (all dark haired) who reinforce his psychosis. A tall brunette tells her friend how she is happy to be rid of her boyfriend, that their are "plenty of fish in the sea." A moment later, a mother strikes her crying son, causing Eddie to wince and reach for his own cheek. Mostly through visuals, we are given a quick tour of his psyche. The gun is his sexuality, empty and impotent. Women are the enemy, creatures who callously use men or beat their children, something Eddie was apparently subjected to by his mother.

While these scenes are not subtle, they are handled efficiently and without resorting to exposition. We have no scene of Eddie blubbering about his mother, cursing the fairer sex or, at this stage, saying anything at all. As he roams through a city park, all he sees are happy couples. The city - San Francisco - is awash in sexuality, a far cry from the image of the 1950s as a neo-Victorian, family-values era.

The first words from Eddie are when he calls an operator and ask for the "State prison at Huntsberg." Here is a man we already saw "hunting" even if only vicariously. Has he killed yet? Or, are his violent feelings still kept in a prison? He is calling to talk to a prison doctor, about a matter of life and death. It is clear that Eddie is on the verge of some kind of breakdown, that the doctor was helping keep the hunting urge, the violence, locked away. No one is available to help, a recurring theme.

Eddie rushes back to his apartment and in an intense scene, turns on his hot plate and jams his hand onto it. The shot is beautiful, with the camera in the position of the burner, the radiant heat causing a shadow of Eddie's hand to fall on the ceiling. Later, in the hospital, he is told by the doctor tending to his hand that a stove is something for "women" and that he needs a wife, even though they "have you coming and going." The doctor knows the burn is self-inflicted. He tells the doctor that he was in the "psycho ward" while in prison and that he was there for assaulting a woman. Eddie wants to be locked up; but the hospital staff releases him due to laziness and being distracted by a sudden rush of patients.

The next day, we join Eddie on his job, as a delivery man for a dry cleaning company. He makes a delivery to one of his customers, the attractive Jean Darr (Marie Windsor). Eddie obviously is attracted to her; something she doesn't realize. She innocently compliments him and even flirts a little. Eddie doesn't take it well when her boyfriend shows up, although only we see his violent outburst.

Marie Windsor

Later, Eddie stalks Jean in a beautiful nighttime scene. The city seems deserted except for hunter and prey. Jean is all in black, like a free roaming shadow. Eddie follows her to a neighborhood dive where she works as a piano player and sets up a sniping position on a roof. This is another great shot, with a nice depth of field. While he is in the foreground, behind him, we see the bar and the pedestrians. As he loads his gun, we get a sense of how he must feel when he has his gun, bigger and above the people he fears and hates.

As she leaves the bar, she halts for a moment in front of an illuminated poster of herself. We hear a shot and she collapses, dead. Eddie has taken his first life, a woman he had coveted, his first obsession, consummated with a bullet.

After the police show up, we are introduced to the protagonists, police Lieutenant Frank Kafka (Adolphe Menjou) and Sergeant Joe Ferris (Gerald Mohr). We are also treated to a nice bit of symbolism. As Jean's body is wheeled out of frame, the light over her poster goes out.

Eddie takes one of the dresses that she had dry-cleaned and places it in the drawer with his gun, the repository for his fears and desires. He later burns the dress with a mix of glee and anguish on his face. His life is one of constant rejection, even by children. When he innocently tosses one a ball during street baseball game he "ruins it" according to a dark haired teenaged girl.

He sends a note the police, telling them to find and stop him before he kills again. But he does kill again, shooting a woman who had flirted with him - then rejected him - in a bar earlier in the film. The scene is stunning in its intensity. The camera watches her in her room through a window as she prepares for bed. A single note is played the entire scene. We see what Eddie sees, even though we never see him (the camera follows her up the street, into her home and then remains fixed on the room) or where he is located. We know that a shot is coming; but the scene plays longer than our expectations would be. a masterful moment by Edward Dmytyk, a director who knows the language of images.

As the police investigation proceeds, a police psychologist - Dr. James Kent (Richard Kiley) - is introduced to provide psychological insight, including a profile that fits Eddie's psychosis. He also provides the film's only slow point. He gives a dull, long-winded speech extolling the virtues of early treatment - or indefinite incarceration - of sex offenders. While not necessarily wrong as public policy, it is out of place in this movie and cause a break in tension.

Arthur Franz looking for a victim in The Sniper

.After this slow section - it comes during a meeting of the mayor and a group of civic leaders that goes no where - things get moving again, as the police apprehend a young man on a roof top with a broken gun, who gives a truly disturbing rant about how he can get as many guns as he wants and how the city is full of people who hate everyone.

Eddie is behaving increasingly erratic. He successfully shoots another woman, but does a couple of things that lead the police his identity. The police stake out the dry cleaners, but Eddie is waiting on a rooftop elsewhere for his next target. He is spotted, shoots the man who saw him another visually impressive scene and flees. He makes it back to his boarding house, where the land-lady identifies him and calls the police. When Kafka and Ferris break into Eddie's room, they find him on the bed, cradling his rifle, crying. The end.

Tthis is a great movie. The story is engaging, the acting very natural and appropriate for the characters. It was shocking to see Marie Windsor killed so early. In a more conventional film, she would have been the woman Eddie obsessed over, while killing others, until finally coming after her at the end. There are no particular missteps in directing or camera work (Burnett Guffey, the director of photography, pulled similar duties on other memorable films, including Bonny and Clyde and The Violent Men). The images, whether stylized or naturalistic (such as the many scenes shot on the streets of San Francisco) are stunning and memorable.

This is a movie that any fan of the cinema should see. Both cast and crew are close to perfect, the story is straight forward, the plot compelling, and the visuals captivating. Check it out.