Panic in the Streets (1950)

This movie garnered an Oscar for Edna and Edward Anhalt's writing of the original story for a motion picture. And, WHAT a great idea for a story this is--even today. It was shot completely on location in what used to be a truly great and important gulf port city, New Orleans, Louisiana. This movie ingeniously teams up a crotchety, skeptical policeman (Paul Douglas) with a totally devoted doctor (Richard Widmark) from the US Public Health Service, a regular branch of the service that doesn't get enough attention for ITS service to our country. Here, we get to see Widmark as the good guy for a change. He is workaholic family man— struggling to make ends meet--who doesn't have enough time for wife (Barbara Bel Geddes) and his young son.As the movie opens, we see a group of gangsters playing cards in some cheap hotel room. Blackie (Jack Palance) is the boss of the gang, Fitch (Zero Mosel) is his go-for guy, and Poldi (Guy Thomajan) is another gang member. When Poldi's cousin wants to drop out of the card game because he is sick, Blackie doesn't want him to leave since he is too far ahead in the game. When he does leave, the gang chases him though the city and down to the train tracks where he is shot and left. The police discover his body the next day and have it taken to the Coroner's office for an autopsy.... We first get to know Lieutenant Commander Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) and his family in the next scene. 'Clint' and his wife, Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes), have money problems (and bill collectors) which worry them. But, right now, Clint is trying to take some time off from work to spend it his young son who he hardly ever sees because of his job...When the coroner's autopsy reveals that the man's body is loaded with pneumonic plague---a disease related to bubonic plague but more serious since it can be so easily contracted from sneezing, sputum, or simple contact--the Coroner's office calls in Clint to handle the possible effects of a ravaging plague epidemic. Clint immediately calls for help from the NOPD. He needs them to help quickly find, and contain, the source of the plague before it spreads.Clint is teamed with a cynical Police Captain, Tom Warren (Paul Douglas), who doesn't care much for doctors or Navy men. (In fact, though Clint's uniform may look like that of a Navy officer, the US Public Health Service and the Navy have nothing whatsoever to do with each other.) Tom and Clint soon learn to work together as they realize each other's roles in the almost impossible mission of finding where the dead man came from while keeping their search 'under wraps' to prevent any possible panic. Added to the difficulty of finding where the dead man came from is the fact that his body, and therefore the dead man's ID, was immediately incinerated to prevent contagion. Also, they have to work fast since the incubation period is only 48 hours.As Clint and Tom chase down clues, they are eventually led to a restaurant in a Greek neighborhood. They find out that the restaurant owner's wife had suddenly died of a high fever. This brings them closer to the plague's source than they had ever been; it brings them close to where Poldi in now lying sick in his mother's apartment. Poldi's mother had ordered a nurse, who had reported his symptoms to a local hospital and ordered an ambulance.On the other hand, when Blackie and Fitch find Poldi, they believe that he and his cousin had been into something with a VERY big payoff. (After all—in their minds--why else wold the whole police department be looking SO hard to find Poldi and his cousin?) Blackie assumes that Poldi's cousin must have been in on a huge drug haul and Poldi must know about it. They try to pump Poldi for information before he dies. But, he is too sick to tell them anything. As Blackie and Fitch try to carry Poldi out of his mother's upstairs apartment, they meet Clint and Tom on the steps, throw Poldi down the steps, and are chased by the police.The final running foot-chase sequence, with the police in hot pursuit of Blackie and Fitch, is one of the best of it kind in film noir! The foot-chase takes us to the docks and in the warehouses and back streets of New Orleans. The two gangsters are seen on the levees, structures, and substructures of the once-famous gulf port city.The noir shots of Blackie and Fitch (Palance and Mosel) running across structures, popping up and dropping down from one level of a coffee and banana warehouse to another is almost visually poetic. In fact, they remind us of rats crawling along beams, bridges and other structures (occasionally falling in the swampy water only to get up and run some more). The rat analogy reminds us of the plague that ships sometime bring into ports and refocuses us on WHY the two are being chased in the first place: to stop and control an possible plague epidemic. After Fitch has been shot dead, the final rat-plague analogy is brought home as we see Blackie climbing a fruit freighter's line. He falls to his death, not by a bullet from the police, but by the line's rat catcher.

In New Orleans, Blackie (Jack Palance) and his thugs attack and kill a sick man who walked out of his game after winning his money. The coroner finds something suspicious and calls in Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark). He declares it the extremely contagious pneumonic plague. He faces opposition as he tries to raise the alarm.This is a rough and meandering thriller. The most compelling thing about the movie is the title. It's a lot of cop and robber procedural. Jack Palance is a good ruffian when he's on the screen. I like the dark gritty opening. Richard Widmark is a solid tough guy. None of the other actors are quite as striking. I don't find the investigation that compelling. It would be better if lots of people start dropping dead. The real world locations are great but the movie isn't terribly thrilling.

Not every black and white melodrama from the Fifties needs to be considered a noir film; that designation doesn't work for me here. Nor does the title actually, because there's really never any panic to speak of except in the feverish race by authorities to find the source of pneumonic plague brought into the country by a stowaway on a cargo ship. For what it is though, there are some intermittent thrills as Dr. Clint Reed (Richard Widmark) and Police Captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) combine forces to methodically pinpoint the the cause of the infection and bring those responsible to light.The one to keep your eyes on here is gangster Blackie, 'Walter' Jack Palance in his big screen debut. Almost gangly in comparison to his later film roles, Palance brings a hostile malice to his character that seethes in every scene he's in. Which made it almost comical to me why he seemed so determined to pin down subordinate Poldi (Guy Thomajan) for some undetermined loot that he thought cousin Kochak smuggled into the country (it turned out to be perfume!). You knew Blackie could play rough, but I never expected to see him throw Poldi over the stairwell with his mother watching - yikes!Richard Widmark's character takes charge right from the start after he's called in from his day off as a naval medical officer. The picture juxtaposes his high pressure job requirements with a serene home life, but he always exhibits an intensity throughout, even as his wife tries to keep him grounded in family responsibilities. Funny, but every time I saw Barbara Bel Geddes I couldn't help thinking of June Cleaver waiting for Wally and the Beaver to come walking through the door any minute.The finale was a pretty realistic nail biter considering how Palance, Mostel and Widmark had to maneuver their way around those slick pilings under the warehouse dock. I was expecting one of them to lose their balance and go completely in the drink, and had to wonder whether they did that all in one take. I never doubted Palance's athleticism though, after watching him maneuver his way up the tow line of the docked ship in port. The film makers really put him through the wringer for his very first picture.

This is a real good thriller with Richard Widmark working for the Health Department as a physician. The usually sinister Jack Palance does well as the killer of someone who came into the country with pneumatic plague. There is an interesting performance by Zero Mostel as Palance's foil.The picture also brings up the issue of how much the media should know in a crisis and reveal to the public.Barbara Bel Geddes is the dutiful wife to Widmark, who for a change, was not the heavy as was the case in his early films. Paul Douglas fits the bill as the police officer involved in the case. The movie also shows how much resistance the police and others can incur when depending upon help from the public in an emergency. Palance's greed ultimately does him in.