- If you're systematically watching film noir during a global pandemic like I am, you're bound to run across Elia Kazan's Panic in the Streets. A rare film noir whose true villain is a contagious disease rather than a person, the story focuses on the efforts of heroic U.S. Public Health Service officer Reed (Richard Widmark) to staunch the spread of a deadly strain of pneumonic plague before it has the chance to ravage New Orleans. With the reluctant assistance of the wonderfully gruff police captain Warren (Paul Douglas), Reed tracks the plague outbreak from an initially unidentified corpse (Lewis Charles) all the way back to the trio of gangsters (Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, and Guy Thomajan) who killed him, inadvertently transforming themselves into plague vectors in the process.
- Although Kazan's masterful direction is always worth watching, the highlight of this film is its terrific location filming that spends as much time touring the French quarter as it does down at the docks. The extended final chase scene is particularly memorable and realistic, too, in that the bad guys eventually just run out of steam and get caught. Correctly realizing that Widmark would have trouble portraying a noble hero, the film makes him into an overbearing jerk who finds his perfect foil in Paul Douglas' no-nonsense cop. As Reed's wife, the talented Barbara Bel Geddes isn't given quite enough to do, while Palance (in his film debut) steals all of his scenes with the weirdly intimidating persona that defined his entire career. In the end, the plague loses, which I suppose should give modern audiences a glimmer of hope.
