Panic in the Streets

This 1950 film, directed by Elia Kazan, saw Richard Widmark's image completely reversed from the sadistic killer Tommy Udo. He plays a government doctor trying to put the lid on a breakout of pneumonic plague in New Orleans. It's a mixture of film noir and medical thriller, and though it's of smaller scale than most of Kazan's pictures, socially speaking, it's mostly absorbing to watch.

Kazan had already made Gentleman's Agreement, but wanted to prove he could be a visually interesting director and not just a stage director working in film. He studied Orson Welles and John Ford films, and from the opening scene it's clear that he has stepped up to the plate: the camera pans from a night shot of rain-soaked streets (a noir staple) to a balcony, with music in the background. A man stands on the balcony, wiping his head. We then cut to a poker game (a foreshadowing of A Streetcar Named Desire, also shot in New Orleans). What follows is a series of impeccable scenes, including one extremely long take involving men chasing a man across railroad yard, complete with a train passing, that doesn't end until the chased man is shot to death.

If you ever see this film, pay attention to how many long takes there are. Kazan shoots them in two ways--moving the camera, or having it sit stationary in a room and letting characters wander in and out of frame, or move from background to foreground and back again.

All of this is a bit more interesting than the plot, which involves Widmark realizing that the man killed in the opening scenes has plague, and warns the police that the killers must be found before the disease spreads. He is teamed with a crusty police captain, played by Paul Douglas, and of course the two men come to a begrudging respect for each other. Also of note in the cast are Zero Mostel and Jack Palance (here billed as Walter Jack Palance, in his film debut) as the two hoodlums on the loose, and Barbara Bel Geddes as Widmark's wife. Fans of the old Lassie show will recognize Tommy Rettig as Widmark's son.

In the grand scheme of things this was a minor picture for Kazan, a transitional one, as the commentary track describes it. It doesn't really have a political agenda, and coming between Gentleman's Agreement and Streetcar, it can be excused that it's not particularly well-remembered. But it does show sings of what was come in both Streetcar and On the Waterfront.