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.

Bad Times at the El Royale (2018)

September 27, 2018 (Fantastic Fest, Austin, Texas), October 12, 2018 (United States) release dates

Directed by Drew Goddard

Screenplay by Drew Goddard

Music by Michael Giacchino

Edited by Lisa Lassek

Cinematography by Seamus McGarvey

Jeff Bridges as Donald “Dock” O’Kelly/Father Daniel Flynn

Cynthia Erivo as Darlene Sweet

Dakota Johnson as Emily Summerspring

Hannah Zirke as young Emily

Jon Hamm as Dwight Broadbeck/Laramie Seymour Sullivan

Cailee Spaeny as Rose Summerspring, Emily’s sister

Charlotte Mosby as young Rose

Lewis Pullman as Miles Miller

Austin Abell as young Miles

Chris Hemsworth as Billy Lee

Nick Offerman as Felix O’Kelly, Dock’s brother

Xavier Dolan as Buddy Sunday, a music producer who fires Darlene

Shea Whigham as Dr. Woodbury Laurence, the prison doctor

Mark O’Brien as Larsen Rogers, Dock’s and Felix’s accomplice

Charles Halford as Sammy Wilds, Dock’s prison cellmate

Jim O’Heir as Milton Wyrick, the presenter at Darlene’s show in Reno

Manny Jacinto as Waring “Wade” Espiritu, a member of Billy Lee’s cult

Alvina August as Vesta Shears, the singer who replaces Darlene

Gerry Nairn as Paul Kraemer, a reporter

William B. Davis as Judge Gordon Hoffman, who sentences Dock

Distributed by 20th Century Fox

Produced by Goddard Textiles, TSG Entertainment

I had heard that Bad Times at the El Royale is an homage to film noir, and I looked forward to seeing it. It didn’t disappoint: The story is completely absorbing, and I often didn’t know what to expect next. It has many of the hallmarks of noir: flashbacks, angst, despair, revenge, greed, murder, robbery. This is one film that seems easy to categorize.

(This blog post about Bad Times at the El Royale contains spoilers.)

The film opens with a black screen and audio only: the sound of a car running and then stopping, and then a car door opening. Then the visual starts with a man entering a hotel room. He puts his suitcases on the bed. He takes out a gun and draws the curtains when he hears footsteps, but it’s nothing. This character is in the shot above, a shot that evokes the cover of a 1930s or 1940s pulp novel, or an Edward Hopper painting. Later in the film, viewers learn that he is Felix O’Kelly, Dock O’Kelly’s brother.

Felix O’Kelly starts dismantling the room: He takes up the floorboards, hides one of his overnight bags under the floor, then puts the room back together. Someone knocks on the door, which he opens. He invites the man at the door in and turns toward the center of the room. The guest shoots Felix O’Kelly in the back with a shotgun.

The film cuts to the title card, then cuts to show the following words: “Ten years later.” And now it’s the 1970s; Nixon is president. Singer Darlene Sweet and Father Daniel Flynn arrive at about the same time at the El Royale Hotel. Laramie Seymour Sullivan is already in the hotel lobby waiting for the front desk clerk and states that he gets the honeymoon suite.

Viewers learn details about the characters, their current circumstances, and their back stories slowly and deliberately. The film doesn’t rush anything, but the tension builds and subsides and then builds and subsides once again. And there is rarely a dull moment. The set is the El Royale itself, which is a shabby establishment that is past its glory days and has a seedy back story itself. And yet the set is lush and beautiful and evocative of the 1970s. The cinematography also evokes the period, the past in general, with its dim lighting and yellowish tinges. Viewers never doubt the time period.

Sullivan, Father Flynn, and Darlene check in and take up residence in their respective rooms. Sullivan looks for listening devices in his and finds several. He leaves his room to do some additional investigating. He returns to the lobby and finds it unattended. He takes the master key from the front desk and explores the area behind the desk. He discovers that the front desk clerk, Miles Miller, is a heroin junkie and is in the middle of knockout high. And he finds a secret passageway that goes past all the rooms. The mirrors in each room are two-way, providing views from the secret passageway. There are also one-way intercoms. He sees Father Flynn taking up the floorboards in his room; sees and hears Darlene practicing her singing; and sees Emily Summerspring, the last guest to arrive, dragging a female body, that of her sister Rose, into her room. Rose’s wrists are bound, and Emily ties her into a chair.

Sullivan is an FBI agent working undercover as an appliance salesman. He calls J. Edgar Hoover from a pay phone outside the hotel to tell him that they have a problem because he found several bugs in his room, not all of them the FBI’s. He also mentions the woman, Emily Summerspring, taking an unconscious hostage into her room. Hoover tells Sullivan not to interfere because the hostage is not part of his mission.

The fact that Sullivan is an FBI agent is the first of many surprises in Bad Times at the El Royale. Many of the main characters have secrets, some decidedly unpleasant. Even the El Royale has a dark past linked to illicit surveillance by the FBI. Sullivan is at the hotel to collect the FBI’s paraphernalia, including microphones and listening devices in his own room. From this point on, the narrative goes in several unexpected directions.

Intertitles (“Room 4,” “Room 5,” “the maintenance closet,” “Reno,” and so on) place viewers in the story. These intertitles also clue viewers that the following sequence focuses on a particular character. Sometimes the sequences include flashbacks that reveal a character’s back story. The narrative from one sequence to the next sometimes overlaps so that viewers see the same part of the story but from another character’s perspective. This structure reveals a lot about the characters and it allows viewers to get a more complete version of particular events.

Bad Times at the El Royale is completely absorbing, but the plot wasn’t quite neat and tidy throughout. Some questions did pop up for me as I was watching the film:

◊ FBI agent Sullivan is killed by Emily Summerspring in her room, and I wondered why someone didn’t arrive looking for him. I know he was working undercover, but he does call Director Hoover from a phone booth outside the hotel. If Sullivan’s case was so important as to warrant direct contact with the head of the FBI, surely someone at the FBI would be interested in his findings and his general well-being. Where were Sullivan’s fellow agents?

◊ I also wondered how Darlene Sweet and Father Flynn, who viewers now know is Dock O’Kelly, made it to Reno with the money that Flynn and his brother Felix stole ten years earlier. Was the FBI interested only in covering up its covert surveillance of the famous people who once frequented the El Royale during its heyday?

◊ Why weren’t the bank robbery and its perpetrators never linked to the El Royale by law enforcement? After all, one of the O’Kelly brothers’ crew found Felix easily enough ten years earlier and murdered him in his hotel room.

◊ Dock O’Kelly undergoes a transformation of sorts as a result of his experiences at the El Royale, but I did wonder if all the violence was necessary for his transformation to occur. Darlene Sweet and Dock O’Kelly help each other get away after everyone else is killed at the El Royale; in fact, Darlene arrives in Reno in time for her next singing gig. My own interpretation is that each character accepts the violence on her or his own terms: Each one makes the decision to be redeemed or not, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that each one escapes being killed.

In spite of my lingering questions, the film doesn’t disappoint. I was absorbed completely by the story and the twists and turns. My questions may mean that I have to see Bad Times at El Royale again, and I don’t think that’s such a bad idea.