Panic in the Streets (1950)

June 12, 1950, release date

Directed by Elia Kazan

Screenplay by Richard Murphy, Daniel Fuchs

Based on a story by Edna Anhalt, Edward Anhalt

Music by Alfred Newman

Edited by Harmon Jones

Cinematography by Joseph MacDonald

Richard Widmark as Lieutenant Commander Clinton “Clint” Reed, M.D.

Paul Douglas as Captain Tom Warren

Barbara Bel Geddes as Nancy Reed

(Walter) Jack Palance as Blackie

Zero Mostel as Raymond Fitch

Mary Liswood as Angie Fitch

Lewis Charles as Kochak

Alexis Minotis as John Mefaris, the Greek restaurant owner

Aline Stevens as Rita Minotis

Dan Riss as Neff, the newspaper reporter

Tommy Cook as Vince Poldi

Pat Walshe as himself

Tommy Rettig as Tommy, the Reeds’ son

Beverly Brown as Doctor Mackie, Clint’s boss

Distributed by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Produced by Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Panic in the Streets starts with a car ride down a city street in nighttime New Orleans. This car ride continues while the credits roll and jazz music plays, with lots of horns and frenetic pacing.

It’s the same opening music used in Don’t Bother to Knock, another great film noir also starring Richard Widmark. His costars in that film are Marilyn Monroe and Anne Bancroft. I’ll be posting about Don’t Bother to Knock for the Classic Movie Blog Association’s 2019 Spring Blogathon: Femmes/Hommes Fatale of Film Noir later this month (April 2019).

When the credits end, the film cuts to a car as it stops in front of a building. The camera pans up to a man (Kochak) in the second-floor window. On the second floor inside, men are gambling at cards. Kochak is sick and doesn’t want to continue gambling, but the other men don’t want him to leave because he has won too much money. Blackie, one of the gamblers and the leader of the group, wants his money back. He, Poldi, and Fitch follow Kochak to get it back when he leaves the game and heads home. Kochak goes to the docks, where Poldi and Fitch trap him between warehouses, and Blackie shoots Kochak dead.

I wonder if Blackie in particular is modeled on Huey Long, one-time governor of Louisiana and U.S. senator from the state when he was assassinated in Baton Rouge, the Louisiana state capitol, in 1935. Blackie is always smiling, always handing out cash, always doing favors for strangers, all while killing his friends and acquaintances when they have crossed him or when he thinks they have (Long used bribes and other forms of corruption to beat his political opponents). Or maybe corruption on the screen is similar from one film noir to the next and from the screen to real life!

The film cuts to daytime and a boy running down a dock. He is followed by two police officers. They all arrive to find two more police officers who have found a dead body. A crowd has gathered and watches the proceedings before one of the police officers orders them to disperse. The body is taken to the coroner’s office, where an employee named Kleber performs the autopsy.

Panic in the Streets was filmed on location in New Orleans, Louisiana, and many of the city’s local citizens were used as extras and in supporting roles. Turner Classic Movies (TCM) provides a lot of information about Panic in the Streets, including the credits. Click here to see the full cast and crew list. The location filming also gives viewers a look at New Orleans in 1950, a city whose backstreets didn’t look pretty just after World War II.

After this bleak opening, the film cuts to Doctor Clint Reed painting a piece of furniture with his son Tommy. This family interaction is cut short, however: Doctor Reed is called into work on his day off because of what Kleber discovers during the autopsy. The dead man, Kochak, was suffering from pneumonic plague, a pulmonary form of bubonic plague, also known as the black death of the Middle Ages.

Clint Reed, an officer with the United States Public Health Service, joins forces with Captain Tom Warren of the New Orleans Police Department to find the person or persons who killed Kochak because some if not all of them were exposed to pneumonic plague and are likely carriers. The effort to contain the spread of the disease is intercut with the story of Kochak and his unsavory friends Blackie, Poldi, and Fitch. They are unaware of the danger that they face. Their only concerns are to avoid the police and make sure that Kolchak wasn’t trying to cheat them before Blackie killed him.

An alert newspaper reporter named Neff suspects that Kochak’s death involves something more than simple murder. When he learns the truth, Doctor Reed wants to avoid a citywide panic by keeping the story about pneumonic plague out of the papers. At first, Captain Warren thinks Doctor Reed is exaggerating the danger, but he changes his mind as the investigation progresses and he sees some of the disease’s effects. He starts to agree with Doctor Reed that the city would be better served if the story is kept confidential. He goes a bit too far, however: He crosses the line when he has the newspaper reporter arrested, even though he has no grounds for such an arrest and is in fact violating the reporter’s constitutional rights (freedom of the press, freedom of speech). Captain Warren listens to Doctor Reed, who believes that publishing the story, as Neff wants, would alarm the public at large and not just the residents of New Orleans. Doctor Reed is afraid that the men who knew Kochak and are probably responsible for his death—and are likely carriers of the plague—would leave the city if they knew the police were looking for them.

The mayor of New Orleans is appalled that Captain Warren would arrest the reporter without cause and orders the reporter released. The mayor, Doctor Reed, and others explain their positions in the following conversation:

• Mayor of New Orleans: “. . . I had Mackie make up a statement, a complete explanation of the facts as they stand. Before I give it to Neff [the newspaper reporter] here, I want a confirmation from you that the disease can be contained and there’s no reason for panic.”

• Doctor Mackie: “Our only chance, Clint, is to inform the public.”

• Mayor: [to Reed] “You agree?”

• Doctor Reed: “No. The minute he [Neff] prints it [the statement], the men we’re looking for will leave the city. Now I’ve told you once, and I’ll tell you again, anyone leaving here with . . . with plague endangers the entire country.”

• Bob, the mayor’s assistant: “The entire country hasn’t got it. We have. A woman died here last night. This problem lies right here in our own community.”

• Doctor Reed: “Community? What community? Do you think you’re living in the Middle Ages?”

• Bob: “Oh, come now, Doctor.”

• Doctor Reed: “Anybody that leaves here can be in any city in the country within ten hours. I could leave here today and I can be in Africa tomorrow. And whatever disease I had would go right with me.”

• Bob: “I know that.”

• Doctor Reed: “Then think of it when you’re talking about communities. We’re all in a community. The same one!”

The arguments that Clint Reed makes about the spread of disease are reminiscent of modern-day epidemics. Fears about the spread of pneumonic plague in Panic in the Streets are very similar to the following real-life incidents, among many, many others:

◊ Flu pandemic in 1918

◊ HIV/AIDS epidemic in the 1980s

◊ Ebola fever, Zika virus, and measles outbreaks in the 2000s

◊ Flu season of 2017–2018

And some obstacles to public safety and disease prevention remain the same: ease of travel, close proximity to others in large urban areas, difficulty of finding the source of the infection, thinking locally instead of globally.

The film reminds me of other films noir with similar themes of fear about the spread of deadly disease or radioactivity (click on each film title to see my blog post about that film):

◊ The Killer That Stalked New York, a 1950 film about the spread of a smallpox epidemic in New York City.

◊ City of Fear, a 1959 film about an escaped convict who has a canister of cobalt-60, a substance dangerous enough to kill everyone in Los Angeles. The handling of contaminated materials in Panic in the Streets is dated compared to the techniques in use today when such materials are encountered. The same was true of the handling of radioactive materials in City of Fear.

The DVD commentary by Alain Silver and James Ursini gives a lot of background information about the film and the director Elia Kazan. In particular, Silver and Ursini make an interesting point about Kazan: He does not take sides between Neff the reporter and Clint Reed, and between Clint Reed and Bob, the mayor’s assistant. Kazan seems to value liberal ideals, which are the subjects of many of his films, but he did name names in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and destroyed the careers of many associates in the process.

I wasn’t sure that I would enjoy Panic in the Streets. I knew already about Elia Kazan’s testimony before HUAC. And before I saw the film, I kept thinking of it as a disaster film. But the disaster, the threat of an epidemic, is just one piece of the whole story. The relationships between Clint Reed and his wife and between Clint and Captain Warren are allowed to develop and thus draw viewers in. The ability to balance competing needs—the need to respect civil liberties (freedom of the press and the right to free speech) and the need to protect the public—is also explored at the personal level for several of the characters.

The film’s themes are relevant today. Like many ethical dilemmas—and many films noir—there is no right answer, and the film doesn’t offer a neat solution. It is one of those films that presents different sides to the issues and lets viewers ponder the alternatives. I find myself doing just that after seeing the film and listening to the DVD commentary.