On ‘Panic in the Streets’ and other Elia Kazan classics
If you’re stuck in a motel room in some place off the beaten track, you play CCR’S “Lodi,” or so I’m told.
At least that’s what funny guy Bruce Mccullough once asserted.
So it follows you should watch Elia Kazan’s “Panic in the Streets” if you’re self-quarantining and social distancing for the next couple of weeks. To my knowledge, it’s the first Hollywood production that tackles the subject of a pending epidemic in a dramatic fashion.
Plus, viewers receive the benefit of viewing the 1950 film in their homes, where there’s far less chance of exposure to airborne nasties you might find in a movie theater. Who can forget an early scene in the 1995 film “Outbreak” wherein a sneezing movie patron infects an entire audience? Gross.
Whereas “Outbreak” dealt with Motaba, a fictionalized form of Ebola, “Panic in the Streets” deals with pneumonic plague, a malady passed along in the underworld of New Orleans gangsters as portrayed by Jack Palance, Tommy Cook and Zero Mostel. Because “Panic in the Streets” is a Hollywood production in the early 1950s, the story’s framed as a film noir crime drama.
It’s also a buddy movie. Two highly competent government employees, portrayed by Richard Widmark, a government health employee, and Paul Douglas, a New Orleans police detective, with vastly different styles and mutual distrust must form an alliance to crack the caper. The original working title for the film, by the way, was “Port of Entry,” eventually changed to “Outbreak” before finally settling on “Panic in the Streets.”
The casting of Widmark as the hero was inspired, considering he had only made his debut in director Henry Hathaway’s “Kiss of Death” three years prior. In that classic film noir, Widmark played Tommy Udo, one of the best-known bad guys in all of cinematic history.
For those unfamiliar with “Kiss of Death,” Widmark’s Udo earned celluloid infamy for pushing an old lady in a wheelchair down the steps outside her apartment while cackling with psychotic glee.
Fun fact: Widmark based his performance on the
Joker from the Batman comics. Two decades later, Frank Gorshin would base his performance of the Riddler on the 1960s’ Batman ABC television series on Widmark’s Udo.
Another fact: Kazan made two movies set in New Orleans of which “Panic in the Streets” is the lesser known. One year later, he would direct the film version of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” although, unlike “Panic in the Streets,” Marlon Brando’s breakout performance wasn’t actually shot in New Orleans. Incidentally, Brando lost an Academy Award nomination to film noir veteran Humphrey Bogart for his performance in “The African Queen,” although Brando’s co-stars all took home Oscars. Kazan lost to director George Stevens, who had helmed “A Place in the Sun” with Montgomery Clift, Shelley Winters and Elizabeth Taylor.
Another coincidence:
The climax of “Panic in the Streets” takes place on the waterfront, which, most readers already are aware, is another Kazan-directed cinematic classic from 1954, also starring Brando and Malden with support from Eva Marie Saint, Rod Steiger and Lee J. Cobb. “On the Waterfront” is perhaps the best of Kazan’s most popular works, although “Panic in the Streets” still holds up as a topical film noir with plenty of suspense and great acting.
Afterward, fellow cineastes should immerse themselves in Kazan’s other works, including: “Man on a Tightrope” with Fredric March; “Wild River” with
Lee Remick, Clift, Jo Van Fleet and marking the film debut of Bruce Dern; and my personal favorite: “America, America” with a cast of unknowns other than John Marley and masterful cinematography by Haskell Wexler.
Or, readers could check out all 15 films in “The Elia Kazan Collection,” curated by Martin Scorsese. Come for the eventually averted epidemic, but stay for classic cinema.