' ' Cinema Romantico: Friday's Old Fashioned: Panic in the Streets (1950)

Friday, October 04, 2024

Friday's Old Fashioned: Panic in the Streets (1950)

“Panic in the Streets” begins with two gangsters, Blackie (Jack Palance) and Fitch (Zero Mostel), killing an illegal immigrant named Kolchak (Lewis Charles) when he deigns to take ill and leave their card game. Turns out, he’s ill because he’s concocted the pneumonic plague, and when Clint Reed (Richard Widmark), an officer in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioner Corps, discovers this, he stresses the need to find the two murderers not just to bring them to justice for the killing but to prevent the plague from spreading. It’s “Outbreak” (1995), in other words, but with patient zero as a frightening Jack Palance rather than a monkey. It also evokes a docudrama as much as a melodrama with director Elia Kazan wringing considerable atmosphere from New Orleans locations and locals in the cast. The guy in the morgue who examines the body of Kolchak is played by George Ehmig, who literally has no other credits on IMDb, and who evinces something genuinely affecting in the way he’s talking about getting lunch at a nearby place – he likes their spaghetti – like it’s any old dead body and then realizing this is more complicated he thought. 

Despite the title, there is no panic in the streets, it is more Clint trying to prevent panic in the streets. No, those well-chosen locations give a sense of the stakes by showing life just sort of going on around him, and also the around the police inspector, Capt. Tom Warren (Poul Douglas), that Clint teams up with much to both their dismays. This is epitomized in a scene where a room full of various officials empties out and just leaves them sitting there, face to face, forced to get up and get along. They are not only forced to deal with one another, however, but with the local press seeking to break the story the two men desperately need to keep a lid on, and with various people in the line of duty suspicious of the inoculations they demand, evoking the intricate plotting of Daniel Fuchs and Richard Murphy’s script.

Palance and Mostel excel as a mismatched pair gradually realizing they are in way over their heads, but “Panic in the Streets” ultimately belongs to Widmark. The actor almost always brought an edge to his roles, even the ones where he was playing a quote-unquote good guy, something about the way his flat Midwestern voice so often became a sneer, and that edge benefits him here, as if we are getting a look at Dr. Fauci behind closed doors after having to deal with so many preening know-nothings. And as good as Widmark’s chemistry is with Douglas, it’s even better with Barbara Bel Geddes as his wife Nancy. A nighttime scene on the porch where Clint is semi-quarantining himself feels hoary in the text, functioning as a reminder of What He’s Fighting For, brought home in an I’m Pregnant reveal. It cuts so much deeper, though, not just in the dialogue but the airs of the respective actors, putting Clint’s plight into harsh perspective, illustrating how a person in his position might not only be required to forget himself but required to forget his family too. 


No comments: