Panic in the Streets (1950)

Panic in the Streets is an American thriller film first released in 1950, directed by Elia Kazan.  The film stars Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jack Palance and Zero Mostel.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


When a dead body is found on the New Orleans waterfront, its gunshot wounds leave no doubt as to the cause of death.  But the man would have died even if he had not been shot, as he was infected with pneumonic plague, a lethal strain of bubonic plague.   Dr Clinton Reed, a public health officer, immediately realises the consequences of this finding.  Anyone who was in contact with the man before he died must also be carrying the disease.  If it is not contained, this outbreak could turn into a national or even international pandemic.  Reed finally persuades police captain Tom Warren to help him scour the city for anyone who knew the dead man.  Unfortunately, the dead man’s killers are hoodlums who have no intention of yielding themselves to the authorities...

Panic in the Streets exemplifies how the film noir thriller genre had evolved since the early 1940s.  Previously, the film noir tag was synonymous with claustrophobic, studio-bound B-movie crime dramas, invariably shot on a shoestring budget, and often with highly stylised sets and caricatured protagonists.  In the 1950s, directors retained the film noir feel, usually through expressionistic lighting and camerawork, but sought much greater realism.  Films were now shot in recognisable real locations, the characters were more complex and believable, the storylines more credible.  This 1950 film from Elia Kazan provided a virtual template for the film noir thrillers which were to prevail over the next decade.

Kazan was a director who was keen to move away from conventional film melodrama and embrace a more naturalistic style of filmmaking.  Panic in the Streets and Kazan’s subsequent films - most notably On the Waterfront (1954) - show the influence of Italian neo-realism, in the greater use of real locations, with real people (not Hollywood actors) filling out the background.  Kazan also sought greater realism from his actors - he was an advocate of the method school of acting and established the Actors’ Studio, which would turn out such superlative performers as Marlon Brando and Montogomery Clift.

Panic in the Streets is a serious attempt to engineer a new kind of crime drama which audiences could more readily relate to.  Here we we can see the origins of the police procedural which became hugely popular in later decades, pretty well dominating television and cinema in the 1970s.  The characters are not the familiar noir thriller ciphers but individuals with complex motivations and a context that fits naturally with the storyline. There is also a gritty, soiled reality to this film which makes previous Hollywood crime offerings appear bland and sterile by comparison.

Jack Palance makes an extraordinary screen debut in this film as a sadistic and paranoid crook, the kind of taciturn tough guy role in which he would excel but become typecast for much of his career.  Palance brings a psychotic and unpredictable menace, making him a worthy adversary to Richard Widmark’s noble but straight-laced hero (who, interestingly, is not a cop but a public health worker).  Notice how both Widmark’s  and Palance’s characters are humanised and given greater depth through their relationship with their nearest and dearest - Barbara Bel Geddes for the former, Zero Mostel for the latter.  The film deservedly won an Oscar for its screenplay.

Panic in the Streets clearly has echoes of the McCarthyist anti-communist paranoia that was sweeping America in the late 1940s.  The film isn’t so much about the consequences of a real epidemic, but rather about the danger that society faces from hysteria, from an irrational hyped-up fear of the unknown.  For Kazan, McCarthyism was a real concern, since he himself had belonged to the American Communist Party and risked losing everything if he was denounced as a red sympathiser.  As it happened, he saved himself from persecution by naming names in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) in 1952, losing several friends in the process.  Politics and art are seldom the best of bedfellows, as several of Kazan’s less fortunate contemporaries discovered in this shameful period of American history.

© Steve Chandler 2010

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