The Sniper (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The Sniper (1952) – E. Dmytryk

An edgy serial killer film that creates a lot of suspense, as the police (led by Adolphe Menjou) follow clues to track down the sniper, but which also seeks to generate some empathy toward the killer himself, making a plea for using treatment rather than punishment for youths committing acts of violence.  Although this is a Stanley Kramer production (and his films had a tendency to be heavy-handed and preachy), the message is conveyed only in a couple of speeches by the police psychiatrist and the rest of the film focuses primarily on the actions of the killer and those of the police.  This is the first film by director Edward Dmytryk after returning from being blacklisted (he was one of the Hollywood Ten who refused to name names to the House Un-American Activities Committee) and he keeps things taut.  Arthur Franz is excellent as the sniper who wants badly to control himself but cannot; fortunately, the psychological underpinnings of his condition (he experiences strong anger toward women) are not laid out, allowing us to maintain our suspension of disbelief.  Whether he can or cannot be cured and whether people like him can or cannot be identified and treated early are points that the film can only speculate about, taking care to present different viewpoints.  As brutal and upsetting though this noir may be, its heart is in the right place.

The White Sheik (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

The White Sheik (1952) – F. Fellini

Fellini’s first film is a comic fantasy that already shows signs of his penchant for unusual faces and detours from reality.  A newlywed couple travels from the provinces to Rome for their honeymoon, but unbeknownst to the husband (Leopoldo Trieste), his young wife (Brunella Bovo) has been writing to the photoplay magazine star, The White Sheik (played by Alberto Sordi), and immediately escapes to seek a meeting with her fangirl crush.  Of course, he turns out to be much less than imagined, although she is swept off her feet at first onto a photography set 26 km from Rome from whence it proves difficult to return.  At the same time, the husband has to make excuses to his uncle and aunt and extended family who had planned to take them to visit the Pope among other destinations. Trieste’s eyes bulge and he sweats profusely as he struggles to keep this secret under wraps.  Giulietta Masina has a cameo as Cabiria, a sympathetic prostitute (a character she would later play to acclaim in Nights of Cabiria, 1957).  The whole thing is short and sweet, funny and impossible without Nino Rota’s distinctive score (a definite preview of his later work with Fellini).  A great start to a masterful career. 

Scandal Sheet (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Scandal Sheet (1952) – P. Karlson

Phil Karlson directed this “newspaper noir” adapted from the novel (The Dark Page) by Sam Fuller (a director in his own right).  In fact, if you watch The Big Red One (1980), Fuller’s late autobiographical war film, you’ll find that one of the characters has just had his first novel accepted by a publisher – this was Fuller’s own experience, having his book bought up by Howard Hawks (who did not go on to direct it) when he was a young kid fighting overseas.  The story is high melodrama, in line with Fuller’s usual approach, but Karlson makes it a bit more mainstream and less didactic than Fuller might have.  Broderick Crawford stars as a tabloid editor going for the sensational and tawdry headline to boost subscription rates who soon finds himself hoisted on his own petard when he accidentally kills his long estranged wife (resurfacing under an alias) and his own paper begins a high profile investigation, looking for the unknown killer.  So, the noose tightens around his neck, slowly but surely, led by reporters John Derek and Donna Reed.  Karlson handles the well-scripted plot admirably and the supporting cast are all top notch. Better than I expected.

Invasion U.S.A. (1952)

☆ ☆ 

Invasion U.S.A. (1952) – A. E. Green

A curio or an artefact – but a chilling paranoid one that details how the enemy (assumed to be the Soviets) might attack the U.S. by way of Alaska.  Perhaps unrealistically they drop 4 or 5 atomic bombs in the Pacific Northwest and then parachute their troops right into the radiation.  In fact, the shock and horror of the attack is minimized by the screenwriters in favour of a look at several people in a bar and how they cope with the incipient war.  Compare this to Peter Watkins’ 1965 pseudo-doc, The War Game, where Britain suffers an A-bomb dropped on London and you can see the difference between a quickie exploitation flick and the contemplation of real horror.  Almost 50% or more of Invasion U.S.A. is stock footage, which sometimes evokes the horror of war on its own (given its status as real footage) rather than serves the plot here.  Given that most of the tragedy in the film is revealed through TV reporting (with the station occasionally going off air), the nearest resemblance is to Night of the Living Dead (or was it Dawn of the Dead?).  But those films are far superior, if somewhat less realistic (given the potential for President Trump). For the record, the Americans retaliate by dropping even more nuclear bombs on Russia in the film. All we can hope is that no one has their finger on the button ever again.    

Park Row (1952)

☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Park Row (1952) – S. Fuller

Clearly a labor of love for director Sam Fuller who financed this NY newspaper story out of his own pocket in order to do it his way.  The result is a punchy gutsy drama that sees an idealist new editor (Gene Evans) of a start-up paper fighting a larger corrupt rag that uses its wide circulation and power maliciously.  The publisher of that other paper (Mary Welch) is wrong-headed but her underlings use real violence to try to smash the smaller new paper.  At the same time, Fuller didactically shows us the mechanics of printing a newspaper and the birth of new technologies and innovations.  Although a case could be made that the cigar-chomping editor is his surrogate, we also know that he was a copy-boy (perhaps a “printer’s devil”) when he was a kid.  Park Row, the street in NYC near The Bowery where newspapers had their offices/presses, is artificially recreated on a studio set where Fuller is able to move the camera around in long tracking shots and nothing “real” distracts from the sense that we are in 1886.  A big part of the story focuses on France’s donation of the Statue of Liberty to America and the newspaper’s involvement in securing donations for the pedestal on Beddoe’s Island.  A gritty slab of history told from the heart.