The Sniper

Eddie Miller, a delivery man in San Francisco, cannot control his rage toward women. He asks for help and nobody at the hospital pays attention. Then he climbs to a rooftop with a rifle and starts shooting women. The police pursue him, but the film is really about a man asking for help and not getting it. Edward Dmytryk directed. Arthur Franz plays Eddie, Adolphe Menjou the police lieutenant. Stanley Kramer produced. The film approaches its subject with an open argument: there is no treatment or preventive system for people with violent sexual compulsions, and the consequences follow from that. For its period the statement is unusually direct. Dmytryk had testified and returned to the industry after being blacklisted; this is among the films from after that return, and the argument around it ran separately from the work. The cinematography uses the real streets of San Francisco; height and hillside views become the shooter's line of sight. It runs around seventy minutes and the telling is dry. Who it is for: viewers who like noir and fifties cinema carrying a social argument. Who it is not for: anyone troubled by the subject; the film shows the killings directly.