I think I've only seen this twice -- once in its release, when I was a kid, and again on TV, about ten years ago, so my memory of the details are a bit fuzzy. The plot is rudimentary by our standards. A sniper (Arthur Franz) is stalking San Francisco. The police (Adolf Menjou) want to either shoot him or catch him and send him to the gas chamber. The humanist psychiatrist (Richard Kiley) argues that anyone who snipes women who are strangers to him must be mentally ill and the object of his capture should be incarceration and treatment rather than death.
As I said, it's pretty dated, isn't it? Compare it to "Dirty Harry," in which the sniper is nothing more than an evildoer who shoots San Franciscans "because he likes it." The Dirty Harry sniper is protected by an ineffectual judicial system. We root for Harry who simply wants to "shoot the b******." How times have changed. About the time this movie was released, my underaged friends and I used to peek through the windows of a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village. Every third or fourth time we were lined up with our noses against the glass, a police officer would sneak up behind us and go down the row hitting us on top of the head with his baton -- BOP,BOP,BOP... Always the same cop! And without even reading us our rights! That's the attitude of the police in this movie. The cops are practically paleolithic. Nobody's hampered by this business about fair treatment. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out! (Please, that's called "sarcasm".)
Menjou is outraged and snappish, Kiley the voice of sweet reason. And Franz, the sniper? Well, it had something to do with his mother. We don't find this out until about half way through the movie when his landlady tells him to be careful with his stove, didn't his mother ever teach him that? Franz stops in mid-stair and grimly announces, "My mother never taught me anything."
The movie is dated in two other ways. I can't tell you how shocking the murder scenes were in 1952. The critics were appalled and some theaters edited out the shootings. But the two or three that are shown on the screen are in long shot and by current standards ludicrously tame.
Here's the other way in which its dated -- the resolution. The police finally identify the sniper, find out which barren room Franz lives in, determine that he's at home, and surround the place with an army of cop cars and tommy-gun agents of the law, every sight trained on the windows of Franz's digs. Franz spots them, assembles and loads his rifle, and waits for them. Menjou, who has by this time begun to see what Kiley has been driving at, calls through a bullhorn for Franz to come out with his hands up. Silence. The cops want to turn the apartment into lace but Menjou demurs. Let's try to talk to him first. A party of them, bristling with guns, sneaks up the stairs and slowly swings open the door to Franz's room expecting him to start shooting. Instead they find Franz sitting in front of the windows, rifle across his lap, catatonic, tears on his face.
Imagine a similar contemporary movie ending with such a dying fall. Would the cops find Franz sitting quietly alone? That's meant to be a rhetorical question. I think we all know what would happen in a modern movie when the police surrounded Franz's apartment. Just follow the numbers. Every window for miles around would be shattered by bullets. The walls would be splattered with blood and brains. The sniper would drag a 40 millimeter cannon out of his closet. San Francisco would be levelled. The actual quiet resolution would generate in modern audiences a vague sense of disappointment. "Talky," the kids would complain between gulps of high-energy soft drinks. "Too slow."
Stanley Kramer, never an articulate man in his own right, turned extraordinarily preachy in his later movies, but this is Kramer during his early period, when he didn't LOOM over his productions quite so much. Splendid use is made of unfamiliar and very ordinary San Francisco locations, by the way. The movie was shot at a time when the city still had a sizable working-class population, now largely disappeared.
Worth seeing, definitely.
As I said, it's pretty dated, isn't it? Compare it to "Dirty Harry," in which the sniper is nothing more than an evildoer who shoots San Franciscans "because he likes it." The Dirty Harry sniper is protected by an ineffectual judicial system. We root for Harry who simply wants to "shoot the b******." How times have changed. About the time this movie was released, my underaged friends and I used to peek through the windows of a lesbian bar in Greenwich Village. Every third or fourth time we were lined up with our noses against the glass, a police officer would sneak up behind us and go down the row hitting us on top of the head with his baton -- BOP,BOP,BOP... Always the same cop! And without even reading us our rights! That's the attitude of the police in this movie. The cops are practically paleolithic. Nobody's hampered by this business about fair treatment. Kill 'em all and let God sort 'em out! (Please, that's called "sarcasm".)
Menjou is outraged and snappish, Kiley the voice of sweet reason. And Franz, the sniper? Well, it had something to do with his mother. We don't find this out until about half way through the movie when his landlady tells him to be careful with his stove, didn't his mother ever teach him that? Franz stops in mid-stair and grimly announces, "My mother never taught me anything."
The movie is dated in two other ways. I can't tell you how shocking the murder scenes were in 1952. The critics were appalled and some theaters edited out the shootings. But the two or three that are shown on the screen are in long shot and by current standards ludicrously tame.
Here's the other way in which its dated -- the resolution. The police finally identify the sniper, find out which barren room Franz lives in, determine that he's at home, and surround the place with an army of cop cars and tommy-gun agents of the law, every sight trained on the windows of Franz's digs. Franz spots them, assembles and loads his rifle, and waits for them. Menjou, who has by this time begun to see what Kiley has been driving at, calls through a bullhorn for Franz to come out with his hands up. Silence. The cops want to turn the apartment into lace but Menjou demurs. Let's try to talk to him first. A party of them, bristling with guns, sneaks up the stairs and slowly swings open the door to Franz's room expecting him to start shooting. Instead they find Franz sitting in front of the windows, rifle across his lap, catatonic, tears on his face.
Imagine a similar contemporary movie ending with such a dying fall. Would the cops find Franz sitting quietly alone? That's meant to be a rhetorical question. I think we all know what would happen in a modern movie when the police surrounded Franz's apartment. Just follow the numbers. Every window for miles around would be shattered by bullets. The walls would be splattered with blood and brains. The sniper would drag a 40 millimeter cannon out of his closet. San Francisco would be levelled. The actual quiet resolution would generate in modern audiences a vague sense of disappointment. "Talky," the kids would complain between gulps of high-energy soft drinks. "Too slow."
Stanley Kramer, never an articulate man in his own right, turned extraordinarily preachy in his later movies, but this is Kramer during his early period, when he didn't LOOM over his productions quite so much. Splendid use is made of unfamiliar and very ordinary San Francisco locations, by the way. The movie was shot at a time when the city still had a sizable working-class population, now largely disappeared.
Worth seeing, definitely.