OVP: The Sniper (1952)

Film: The Sniper (1952)
Stars: Adolphe Menjou, Arthur Franz, Gerald Mohr, Marie Windsor
Director: Edward Dmytryk
Oscar History: 1 nomination (Best Story)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

After our month devoted to classic horror films, we are back into the realm of theme weeks at the blog, and like many of our theme weeks, this one is focused on the Oscars, and we're going to be exploring movies stretched across six decades this week as we take a look at the work of films nominated for their stories & screenplays.  We're going to start our look at Oscar-blessed writing with The Sniper, a film from 1952 that feels like it should be more famous than it is today.  It is, after all one of the earliest examples of a Hollywood trope that in the decades that would follow, would become ubiquitous: the serial killer.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie takes place sort of in a back-and-forth between Adolphe Menjou's detective character Frank Kafka, and Arthur Franz's Eddie Miller, a young delivery man who seemingly hates women.  Eddie's hate appears to stem from jealousy, as he is outraged when women he is intrigued by (and, we assume, sexually interested in) instead are involved with other men, even if they don't know that he exists.  As the film goes on, Eddie is aware that he's mentally struggling (at one point, he burns his hand on a stove as some sort of punishment), but cannot seem to stop or turn himself in in a traditional way, and instead writes an anonymous letter to Menjou's police detective to let him know clues about his identity.  In the end, Eddie is captured by the police in one of his shooting sprees, and is brought to justice.

The ending of the film is somewhat famous amongst cinephiles, as it's the rare movie to try to both portray the killer in a slightly sympathetic light (we are meant to understand that Eddie is suffering from some sort of mental illness), and it's not particularly violent.  In almost any other movie like this, Eddie would die in a shootout with Menjou's Kafka & his detectives, but here he's brought in, a single tear on his face.  We are meant to view the character as human, despite his depraved & violent acts.  This is probably what won the film its Oscar nomination-it was a unique template, one that would become prototypical in the years that would follow, and uniqueness should count for something.

That said, like many trailblazing films, it's also not good at anything other than its one gimmick.  None of the acting, even from Franz (given a plum part) stands out in a major way, and there's nothing in the way of proper character development.  Modern audiences will see that Eddie is acting out of some sort of perverse sexual repression, but the Hays Code would've made it impossible to explore that in a meaningful way, and it clips the film.  As a result, we're given an historical curiosity with little to recommend other than being a curiosity.