The Sniper (1952)

The Sniper is a very strange movie in many ways. In the first place we follow a serial killer for most of the movie. We watch him lose his mind and fight with his own murderous tendencies, we watch him try to stop himself from killing. And then we watch him kill many times. The camera even occasionally takes the point of view of the rifle – of course it does.

The other thing that is very interesting about The Sniper is its emphasis on a kind of delinquent mapping of the abnormal person who can kill, the case history that can predict who will become violent. This is the kind of thing Foucault was describing in his lectures in the early 1970s. And then there is the ending – which doesn't end with a shootout, just a crying serial killer, sitting on his bed and clutching his rifle. It's a very strange end for a crime film like this.