Panic in the Streets

A man is found dead in New Orleans. The autopsy does not look like an ordinary murder: he has pneumonic plague. Clint Reed, a public health officer, has forty eight hours to find everyone who came into contact with him; the disease is contagious and cannot be stopped if it spreads. The trouble is that he has to find the killers and they do not want to talk to anyone. Nor can it be given to the press, in case of panic. Elia Kazan directs. Richard Widmark plays Reed and Jack Palance plays the gangster Blackie, with Paul Douglas and Zero Mostel in the cast. It was shot entirely on location in New Orleans. The docks, warehouses, cafés and neighbourhoods are not sets, and some of the cast are local people. It is Jack Palance's first film. The idea is two different urgencies. The epidemic runs one clock and the murder investigation another; the two advance together and the film sits between the genres. The public health question is concrete inside the narrative: quarantine powers, vaccine stocks and the fight over authority between the city and the police are shown directly. It won the Oscar for best story. Who it is for: viewers who like noir and classical thrillers shot on location. Who it is not for: the science is shallow, the female character has no function, and the closing chase falls into the shape of the genre.