Panic in the Streets

After seeing Pickup on South Street last week, I wanted another Richard Widmark film. And this one's fresh out on DVD with a beautiful transfer. Plus, it's directed by Elia Kazan, famed helmer of classics like Streetcar Named Desire. I've actually seen this film once before, and was so-so on it, but after a recommendation from my movie nerd e-mail circle, I decided to bring it home.



Basically, my earlier appraisal was confirmed. There are very effective moments in Kazan's Panic in the Streets, and an overall mood of foreboding that I very much enjoy. Also, it includes a fabulously cold, mean-spirited performance by Jack Palance, even if he's woefully underused. But it's not really a movie that maintains my interest like the really classic noirs. All the ingredients are there, but it doesn't add up to the same impact as other films of the same genre and era.

In fact, that may be the problem right there...the films overstuffed and kind of undercooked. In the best noirs, no matter how scattered and complicated the plotting gets (and some of it gets very complicated in films like The Big Sleep, for example) there's always a central figure to focus in on, someone navigating the mystery so we the viewer can relax and enjoy ourselves.

Panic instead focuses on several storylines unfolding simultaneously, and though the ambition inherent in Kazan's approach is admirable, it's not really the most interesting way to tell this story. The film's central plot remains fairly straight-forward. The police find the body of an unidentified man dumped at the docks who has been infected with The Plague. They must find everyone who has come into contact with the man within 48 hours, before they can spread the infection to other people and start an epidemic.

Sounds like a set-up for a police procedural, really. In fact, it could be the exact plot of some "CSI" "Law and Order"-type show on prime time television. But Kazan chooses to jump back and forth between three different storylines. In the primary story, a government public health official (played by Widmark) and a cynical local cop (a flat Paul Douglas) bicker as they search for clues, first to the missing man's identity and second to the identities of the man or men who shot him.

In the secondary story, the hooligans who killed the foreigner following a poker game gone wrong (ably played by Jack Palance and Zero Mostel) search the city for the dead man's cousin, Poldi (Tommy Cook). They misunderstand the police interest in finding the killer's of a lowly immigrant, suspecting that he has brought something valuable into the country rather than hosting an infection.

I'd say this storyline works the best, and Kazan might have been well served by devoting more of the film's running time to Palance and Mostel. They make an exceedingly unlikable and yet fascinating twosome, with Palance's Blackie vascillating between simply evil and downright psychopathic. He makes a terrific villain, and gets almost all of the film's best lines. Mostel, as well, works as toady Raymond Fitch, who follows Blackie around like a dog and takes the brunt of his verbal abuse.

In one highly effective, almost difficult-to-watch scene, Blackie torments and taunts Fitch in front of the man's wife, with no real purpose aside from his friend and colleague's utter debasement and humiliation. That's way more interesting than the cop arguing with the health inspector.

And about Widmark's straight-laced Dr. Clinton Reed. He's the focus of the film's third and least engaging storyline, a predictable side plot about Reed's often difficult relationship with his loving wife Nancy (Barbara Bel Geddes, best known to me as Midge in Alfred Hitchcock's immortal Vertigo). I honestly don't understand Kazan's decision-making here at all. He's got, on one hand, a massive municipal crisis. Every cop in New Orleans is out looking for Blackie, Blackie himself is scanning all the back alleys for a man he mistakenly thinks is holding out on him, and Kazan spends the bulk of the film's final half hour dissecting the government suit's marriage?

Maybe if the family drama here were really interesting, I could understand the decision to completely derail the entire "killer plague" storyline. But it's actually pretty rote - Reed learns that he should be more patient with his family, that their happiness is even more important to him than the safety and health of all the citizens for whom he's employed. Oh, and I think he learns something about controlling his temper and being less self-centered, but I'm not really sure. You see, he had to leave therapy for a few minutes to save the entire planet from The Plague!

You can spot the influence of Panic in the Streets in just about every subsequent disaster film. Take Armageddon, for example, another film that ties worldwide calamity to interpersonal conflict within one family. Or Volcano, which also features a plucky protagonist whose descriptions of tragedies destined to occur fall on deaf ears. Or The Perfect Storm, where two professionals who don't get along agree to make up and work together in order to get the job done. I could go on and on, but you get the message. I can't say if any of this speaks well for Panic on the Streets. I've grown tired of these kind of formula disaster films by now, as I expect most Americans have.

But you can't fault the original for that. In its time, Kazan's film was rather innovative. And as I mentioned before, the black and white cinematography is gorgeous, the dialogue really crackles on occasion, and there's enough solid performances and great little moments to make it worthwhile as a film. It's just not in the same category as the other noirs released recently by Fox (Laura and Call Northside 777), nor the other noirs and crime dramas I've reviewed lately (like Asphalt Jungle or Pickup on South Street). Those films are classics, this is merely effective entertainment.