Panic in the Streets

TCM's Dave Karger introduces Panic In The Streets, 1950.

Ben Mankiewicz introduces Panic In The Streets, 1950.

Struggling to contain pneumonic plague in New Orleans, military public health official Reed (Richard Widmark) tries to find common cause with cop Warren (Paul Douglas) who’s not convinced of the emergency and wants to use conventional police tactics, in Panic In The Streets, 1950, directed by Elia Kazan.

The title but not this opening scene would suggest the topic, of a contagious disease outbreak in a port city, as clearly ill and probably-immigrant Kochak (Lewis Charles) tries to leave a poker game run by Blackie (Jack Palance), Fitch and Poldi (Zero Mostel, Guy Thomajan) his henchmen, in Elia Kazan’s Panic In The Streets, 1950.

Joining a scene in which uniformed Public Health Service doctor Reed (Richard Widmark) is trying to tell the New Orleans mayor (H. Waller Fowler Jr.), police commissioner (Val Winter) and detective Warren (Paul Douglas) how to deal with a murder victim who had pneumonic plauge, early in Elia Kazan’s Panic In The Streets, 1950.

Commanding work by Richard Widmark as New Orleans public health officer Reed, called in to inspect the body of a murder victim that suggests infectious disease, Elia Kazan directing, Paul Hostetler, Waldo Pitkin and George Ehmig his alert colleagues, early in Panic In The Streets, 1950.

Remarkable intimate family scene though still expository, Elia Kazan directing from Daniel Fuchs’ screenplay, we’ve just met Richard Widmark who’s a dad and public health officer in probably-New Orleans, and Barbara Bel Geddes his wife, when he’s called in on a rare day off, after an unwell immigrant was shot and dumped in the opening scenes, early in Panic In The Streets, 1950.

A killer evades the police not knowing he has a deadly plague in Panic in the Streets (1950).