Greed runs like a virus through institutions noble and ignoble alike in Elia Kazan’s “Panic in the Streets.” 

The director’s neorealist noir depicts the rush to contain cases of bubonic plague in New Orleans, after its arrival via a black market shipping vessel. Kazan’s valiant heroes in the piece are a doctor and a detective, played by Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas. 

In a recurring early Kazan theme, “Panic” operates on the optimism that the valour of individuals can be the balm for corrupt systems. The systems lacking these individuals, though, are forever condemned.

Opposite the tag team of Widmark/Douglas is a far more interesting pairing; two hoodlums, in Jack Palance and Zero Mostel. It somewhat undermines Kazan’s thesis of civility…

Panic in the Streets is your prototypical shouldn't-be-this-good-but-it-is movie. The plot masquerades as a tight noir whose bare storyline offers little to no suspense, but whose subtle under-the-facade message is no less than heart-warming. Director Kazan exposes the story through two threads whose immersiveness can be attributed to the two star vehicles carrying them on their shoulders: Richard Widmark and Jack Palance. On the moral scale, they play opposite characters. Widmark gives a selfless, value-driven, passionately committed performance that contrasts well with Palance's methodical unhingedness. Kazan is remarkably adept at nuancing the conventional good guy vs bad guy aspect in three converging ways, and that is why his movie works better than what the material would suggest at first glance:…

A very cool and unique epidemic-thriller concept for a manhunt procedural noir where the murderer being chased down is a gangster whose most recent corpse is found to be carrying the plague and the noir detective is a public health worker trying to raise the alarm on the dangers of the infection spreading across town via the murderer.

I'm not sure if Elia Kazan has much of a feel for the actual ticking time-clock thriller component (its climactic chase/gunfight feels a bit generic compared to what comes before it) and I have a reservation or two about the some of the vaguely anti-public/pro-authority developments this makes regarding the ethics of solving this medical dilemma (the self-righteous quest our protagonists are…

When you watch a couple of Film Noirs, it becomes apparent very quickly that the Genre had a lot of very different Sub-Genres. This one is an epidemic/medical Noir… if that makes sense. It’s also a race against time movie and a very effective one at that. It goes without saying that the subject matter is as relevant today as it apparently was 70+ years ago.

All the elements work really well together here. It a relevant story, a strong script, very competent direction by Elia Kazan and an excellent cast. Richard Widmark, an all-time favorite of mine, is great in one of his first major good-guys roles and he has great chemistry with the always great Paul Douglas. Jack…

"I could leave here today, and I could be in Africa tomorrow; and whatever disease I had would go right with me."

Leave it to the Hollywood dream factory to concoct the most preposterous scenarios to titillate ole' John Q. Public. In this harebrained yarn runaway complacency and jurisdictional sniping mar the U.S. governmental response to the introduction of a highly communicable airborne disease, through myopic inaction creating the conditions for a deadly pandemic. I had to keep reminding myself it's just a film. Of course I'm only fooling, y'all; I live in the U.S.A., a dystopian nightmare-scape with a feebleminded reality-TV star for a president/would-be-autocrat who said as recently as this week that he hopes the virus which has…

Richard Widmark is the public health official trying to prevent an outbreak of the pneumonic plague in Elia Kazan's noir tinged disaster movie. It gets off to a slow start - introducing the lead characters and setting the plot in motion via the killing of an illegal immigrant, who just happened to be infected. It's a real clock ticker as Kazan builds the tension by splitting the focus between the authority response and attempts by the criminals to escape capture. An inferiority complex plagues Widmark's health official - driving him to try maybe just a little bit too hard as he runs around innoculating as many people as possible while offering a wad of cash for information. On the flipside,…

"As far as I know, nobody's yet figured out a way to get money back from the U.S. Government... quickly, that is."

I consider myself a fan of the many Elia Kazan films I've seen over the years, so I'm quite disappointed by his lackluster efforts on Panic in the Streets, a drama currently streaming on Criterion Channel in the "Fox Noir" set. Edna and Edward Anhalt's Oscar-winning motion picture story is less a matter of panic in New Orleans than moderate irritation as public health official Lt. Cmdr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) and police captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) attempt to trace the origins of a now-deceased plague carrier under a 48-hour deadline, facing opposition from citizens who don't…

I‘ve seen this disease work and I‘m telling you, if it ever gets loose it can spread over the entire country and the result will be more horrible than any of you can imagine.

Who would have guessed that Elia Kazan‘s terrific noir thriller would acquire a whole new and quite unexpected topicality some 70 years after its initial release? It’s near impossible not to view this surprisingly prescient story about the desperate attempts to contain a deadly viral epidemic, through Covid glasses, now that we all involuntarily became low-level experts on infection, viral spread, inoculation and disease control.
Instead of Covid we’re presented with the scenario of a potentially even more lethal outbreak of pneumonic plague, threatening the city…