Panic in the Streets (film)

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Panic in the Streets
20th Century Fox
Release date
  • September 15, 1950 (1950-9-15)
Running time
96 minutes
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1,400,000[1]

Panic in the Streets is a 1950 American medical-themed

New Orleans, Louisiana, and features numerous scenes around the city and Port of New Orleans along the Mississippi River and showing various New Orleans citizens in speaking and non-speaking roles.[2]

The film tells the story of Lieutenant Commander Clinton Reed (

Medieval Europe), after Reed determines a waterfront homicide victim is also an index case and the first to be found carrying the disease. The supporting cast includes Barbara Bel Geddes as Reed's wife Nancy, along with Jack Palance (in his film debut) and Zero Mostel – the latter two play crooks, associates of the victim who had prompted the public health investigation. The film was also the debut of Tommy Rettig, best known for playing Jeff Miller in the early seasons of the television series Lassie
, who appears as the Reeds' son.

The film was released later on

20th Century Fox as part of the "Fox Film Noir collection", along with Laura and Call Northside 777
, on March 15, 2005.

The score was composed by

Alfred Newman
.

The film was originally named Port of Entry, subsequently later as Outbreak, and ultimately Panic in the Streets.[3]

Plot

In the wharf area of New Orleans a man named Kochak, sick of a flu-like illness, is killed after a brawl by gangster Blackie and his two flunkies, Kochak's cousin Poldi and a man named Fitch. They leave the body on the docks and later when the unidentified dead man is brought to the

U.S. Public Health Service
. Reed is having a day off with his family but decides to inspect the body.

After his examination he figures that Kochak had "

inoculated. He also orders that the victim's identity be traced to find anyone else in contact with him during the previous days. Reed meets with people from the New Orleans Mayor's office, the police commissioner
and other city police and public health officials, but they are ignorant and skeptical of his claims. Eventually, however, his pleas convince them that they have 48 hours to save New Orleans from the plague. Reed must also convince Police Detective Capt. Tom Warren who is assigned to the case and the others that the press must not be notified so as not to spread mass panic.

The New Orleans police and public health experts discuss how to deal with public safety in the possible pandemic emergency in the 1950 film "Panic in the Streets"..

Detective Warren and his men begin to interview Slavic immigrants since the autopsy suggested that the body may be of Armenian, Czech or mixed blood descent. Fearing that their leads may not be enough, Reed accuses Warren of not taking the threat seriously. In turn, Warren suspects Reed of only thinking of his career. Reed, angry, takes matters into his hands and, acting on a hunch that the man may have entered the city illegally, goes to the nearby National Maritime Union's hiring hall and passes out photos of the dead man among the sailors. Although they tell him that seamen never talk, Reed still goes to a café next door hoping that someone will come forward with a tip. Eventually a young woman shows up and takes Reed to see her friend Charlie, who reluctantly admits that he worked aboard the S.S. Nile Queen, upon which the already ill man was smuggled.

Meanwhile, Fitch, who was questioned by Warren but claimed to know nothing, goes to the crook Blackie and warns him about the investigation. Blackie plans to get out of town, suspecting that the police might be after smuggled goods that

hold, the seamen then allow Reed and Warren to inoculate and question them, and reveal that Kochak had boarded at Oran (in North Africa) and was fond of shish kebab. With this lead, Reed and Warren search the city's Greek restaurants
and, just after leaving one of them, Blackie arrives to meet Poldi who is now very ill. Then Reed learns that a woman, Rita, has died of the fever and realizes that she was the wife of the Greek restaurant owner that he had already questioned before and who must have lied.

Reed returns to headquarters to discover that a newspaper

reporter
is asking about the unusual situation and is threatening to break the story. Reed approves when Warren throws the reporter into jail to keep him from publishing. Late in the evening Reed returns home exhausted for a cup of coffee and his wife announces that she is pregnant.

A few hours later, Reed and Warren learn that the

morning paper
in just four hours.

Meanwhile, Blackie goes to Poldi's room and tries to force him to reveal information about the smuggled goods but a dying Poldi is now delirious. Blackie then calls his doctor and tells Poldi's grandmother that they will take care of him. Just then Reed, having been tipped off by the nurse looking after Poldi, arrives on the scene and Blackie and Fitch, who are carrying Poldi down the outside stairs, pitch the sick man over the rail and flee. Reed chases the two to the nearby docks and tells them about the plague danger. The men escape through the docks and at one point Capt. Warren shoots and injures Blackie saving Reed's life. Blackie accidentally shoots Fitch and then, wounded, tries to pull himself up a rope to a tied-up freighter but he is unable to climb over a ratguard on the

mooring line
and falls into the water. The men are finally captured and, his work done, Reed heads for home. On the way Capt. Warren offers to give Reed some of the smuggled perfume that Poldi had indeed received from Kochak. Back at his house, Reed hears the radio announcing the resolution of the crisis, while his proud wife welcomes him home.

Cast

Pre-production

The production of Panic in the Streets underwent several rounds of edits with the effort to abide by the

Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code). Originally titled Port of Entry, the temporary script of the film was sent on November 11, 1949, to Joseph Breen, the film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America who applied the Production Code to film production. Joseph Breen himself indicated in threads of letters with Colonel Jason S. Joy, the Director of Public Relations of the 20th Century Fox, the changes needed for the script. Suggestions such as "Violet must not be suggestive of a prostitute", "We assume there will be no suggestion that the police officer is killed", and "The scene of Martinez and the mattress falling should not be too realistically gruesome," were made. On December 20, 1949, in Joy's letter responding to the suggestion of Breen, the film had been renamed Outbreak. The sensitive content of the film, especially the scenes pointed out by Breen, were not fully changed until after a couple of back and forth letters that lasted for around 3 months. Ultimately, the film was named Panic in the Streets in the final version of the synopsis on March 8, 1950. Approved by the Production Code Administration (PCA) on March 14, 1950, the film officially entered the production stage.[4]

Reception

Box office

The film failed to recover its costs at the box office which

Darryl Zanuck blamed in part on location shooting. He felt if the film had been made for $850,000 it would have been profitable.[1]

Critical response

The New York Times gave the film a mixed review and wrote, "Although it is excitingly presented, Panic in the Streets misses the mark as superior melodrama because it is not without obvious, sometimes annoying exaggeration that demands more indulgence than some spectators may be willing to contribute. However, there is an electric quality to the climax staged in a warehouse on the New Orleans waterfront that should compensate for minor annoyances which come to the surface spasmodically in Panic in the Streets."[5]

Variety magazine liked the film and wrote, "This is an above-average chase meller. Tightly scripted and directed, it concerns the successful attempts to capture a couple of criminals, who are germ carriers, in order to prevent a plague and panic in a large city. The plague angle is somewhat incidental to the cops-and-bandits theme...There is vivid action, nice human touches and some bizarre moments. Jack Palance gives a sharp performance."[6]

New Orleans film critic David Lee Simmons wrote in 2005, "The film noir elements come from the movie's use of post-war German Expressionist and Italian Neo-Realist techniques. Kazan admired how the Expressionists used chiaroscuro lighting to heighten emotion, and he related to the Neo-Realists' cinéma vérité portrayals of those living on the margin of society. Panic offered him a chance to explore these styles further by experimenting with cinematography and casting real people. After working with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood – Dorothy McGuire, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Dana Andrews, Gregory Peck and Ethel Barrymore – Kazan wanted to go in the opposite direction. To suit the needs of this picture and his new approach, he recruited not only lesser stars, but also some of his rougher cronies from the New York stage scene, and on top of that several New Orleanians with varied levels of acting experience."[7]

Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 24 reviews and gave the film a score of 96%, with an average rating of 7.46 out of 10.[8]

Awards

Wins

Nominations

  • Venice Film Festival: Golden Lion, Elia Kazan; 1950.
  • Writers Guild of America: WGA Award, Best Written American Drama, Richard Murphy; The Robert Meltzer Award (Screenplay Dealing Most Ably with Problems of the American Scene), Richard Murphy; 1951.

References

  1. ^ a b Memo from Darryl F Zanuck to Elia Kazan 1 July 1952, Memo from Darryl F. Zanuck, Grove Press, 1993 p 214
  2. IMDb
    .
  3. ^ "AFI|Catalog". catalog.afi.com. Retrieved 2019-02-14.
  4. ^ Production Code Administration. PANIC IN THE STREETS, 1950. Motion Picture Association of America. Production Code Administration records, Margaret Herrick Library, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
  5. ^ The New York Times. Film review, August 5, 1950. Last accessed: February 8, 2008.
  6. ^ Variety. Film review, 1950. Last accessed: April 6, 2010.
  7. ^ Gambit Weekly film review April 5, 2005: Widespread Panic Retrieved 2011-11-25
  8. ^ "Panic in the Streets". Rotten Tomatoes. Fandango. Retrieved 2017-01-07.
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