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1950 film by Elia Kazan

Panic in the Streets is a 1950 American film noir medical drama / thriller, directed by Elia Kazan. released by 20th Century Fox studios in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. It was shot exclusively on location in New Orleans, Louisiana, and features numerous scenes around the city and Port of New Orleans along the Mississippi River and showing various New Orleans citizens in speaking and non speaking roles. The film tells the story of Lieutenant Commander Clinton Reed, an U. S. Public Health officer of the United States Public Health Service (now in the United States Department of Health and Human Services), Officer / Lt. Cmdr. Reed is played by Richard Widmark and accompanied by a grizzled old veteran detective of the New Orleans Police Department, a captain Tom Warren, portrayed by Paul Douglas. They have only a day or two of frantic intense search and interviews in which to prevent a greater outbreak of a deadly epidemic of pneumonic plague (nicknamed from the Middle Ages / Medieval era pandemic disease in Europe known as the "Black Death"), after Reed determines a waterfront homicide victim is also an index case and the first to be found carrying the disease. Co stars include Barbara Bel Geddes (as Reed's wife Nancy), Jack Palance (in his film debut) and Zero Mostel – the latter two play crooks, associates of the victim who had prompted the public health investigation. The film was also the debut of Tommy Rettig, (first farm boy owner of collie dog "Lassie" in 1950s TV show "Lassie" who played the Reeds' son. The film was released later on DVD format by 20th Century Fox as part of the "Fox Film Noir collection", along with Laura and Call Northside 777, on March 15, 2005. The score was composed by Alfred Newman. The film was originally named Port of Entry, subsequently later as Outbreak, and ultimately Panic in the Streets.

After brawling over a card game in the wharf area of New Orleans, a man named Kochak, suffering visibly from a flu like illness, is killed by gangster Blackie and his two flunkies, Kochak's cousin Poldi and a man named Fitch. They leave the body on the docks, and later when the dead man, who carries no identification, is brought to the morgue, the coroner grows suspicious about the bacteria present in his blood and calls Lieutenant Commander Clinton Reed, a doctor and commissioned corps officer of the U. S. Public Health Service. Reed is enjoying a rare day off with his wife Nancy and their son Tommy, but decides to inspect the body. After careful examination, he determines that Kochak had "pneumonic plague," the pulmonary version of the extremely dangerous deadly contagious bubonic plague. Lieutenant Commander Reed having medical knowledge and experience, springs into action, insisting that everyone who came into contact with the body be inoculated. He also orders that the dead man's identity be traced to determine as well as his comings and goings and anyone else in contact with him during the previous few days. Reed meets with people from the New Orleans Mayor's office, the police commissioner and other city police and public health officials, but they are inexperienced and unfortunately stupidly skeptical of his claims. Eventually, however, his impassioned pleas convince them that they have forty eight hours to save New Orleans from the plague. Reed must also convince Police Detective Captain Tom Warren who is assigned to the case and the others that the press must not be notified, because previous experiences in other cases told them that report of a plague would spread mass panic and riots and make it far more difficult to search and find the infected line of people. Detective Warren and his men begin to interview Slavic immigrants, as it has been determined by autopsy and scientific evidence testing the blood, that the body may be of Armenian, Czech or mixed blood descent (in this 1950s era of pre DNA biological heredity knowledge). Burdened by the knowledge that the massive investigation despite their best efforts, has little chance of success (like old saying of "finding a needle in a haystack"), Lt. Cmdr. Reed accuses Police Captain Warren of not taking the threat seriously enough. In turn, Warren admits that he thinks Officer Reed is driven and ambitious and trying to use the situation to further his career. Reed, angry, decides to take matters into his own hands and, acting on a hunch that the man may have entered the city's river port illegally, goes to the nearby National Maritime Union's hiring hall and passes out copies of the dead man's picture among the seamen / sailors. Although the workers tell Officer Reed that seamen never talk, he still goes to a café next door hoping to find that someone will come forward with a tip. Eventually a young woman shows up and takes Reed to see her friend Charlie, who reluctantly admits that he worked aboard the freighter ship, the S. S. Nile Queen, upon which the already ill man was smuggled. Meanwhile, Fitch, who was questioned by Warren but claimed to know nothing, goes to the crook Blackie and warns him about the investigation. Blackie plans to get out of town, but begins to suspect that his sidekick Poldi received expensive smuggled goods from Kochak, explaining the police's intense investigation of the man's murder. Reed and Warren, (who is now convinced of Reed's integrity), go to the steamship freighter "Nile Queen" and convince the crew to talk by telling them that they will die if the sick man was indeed on their ship. After carrying up a sick cook from the hold, the seamen then permit Reed and Warren to inoculate and question them, revealing in the process that Kochak boarded at Oran in North Africa and was fond of shish kebab. With this lead, Reed and Warren canvas the city's Greek restaurants, and just after they leave one such establishment, Blackie arrives to meet his partner Poldi, who is now very ill. A short time later, Reed receives word that a woman, Rita, has died of the fever and realizes that she was the wife of the Greek restaurant proprietor John Mefaris that he repeatedly questioned before and who apparently had earlier lied about having served food to Kochak and hidden the truth. And now his wife is dead because she told him to lie to the detectives and say he knew nothing. Reed returns back to headquarters to discover that a muckraking investigative newspaper reporter is asking questions about the unusual situation which seems out of control and is threatening to break the story that a pathogenic bacteria is endangering the city. Officer Reed is now impressed when the deeply committed yet unorthodox police detective captain Warren resorts to old fashioned strong arm methods and throws the reporter into jail to keep his mouth shut and quiet. Late in the evening, a beleaguered Reed returns home to his family for a cup of coffee and his wife announces that she is pregnant. She then tries to restore her husband's flagging self confidence and lift up his spirits. A few hours later, Reed and Warren learn that the New Orleans mayor is angry about their treatment of the newspaper reporter and his complaints about press freedom The reporter, who has been released, announces that the story will appear in tomorrow's morning paper hitting the streets in four hours, giving Reed and Warren only a little more little time to find their man. Meanwhile, Blackie goes to Poldi's room and tries to force him to reveal information about some smuggled goods, but the dying Poldi is now sick and delirious and only rants nonsensically. Blackie then brings in his own doctor and tells Poldi's grandmother that they will take care of him. Just then, Lt. Cmdr. Reed, having been tipped off by the nurse looking after Poldi, arrives on the scene, and Blackie and Fitch, who are carrying Poldi down the outside stairs, pitch the sick man over the side railing and flee. Reed chases the two to the nearby river docks, where he tries to shout and explain to them about the plague danger. The men run desperately through depots, docks and a warehouse, and under the piers to a tied up small boat and at one point, Capt. Warren shoots and injures Blackie, preventing him from shooting Reed in turn. Blackie accidentally shoots Fitch and then wounded tries to struggle onto a docked ship pulling himself up a rope to the tied up freighter but, bleeding and exhausted, he is unable to climb over a rat guard on the mooring line, and falls into the water. The men are finally captured and in custody heading for the hospital and jail. His work finally done, Reed heads for home, and on the way, Capt. Warren offers to give him some of the smuggled perfume that Poldi had indeed received from Kochak for Mrs. Reed. Back at his house, Reed hears the blaring radio news announces the resolution of the crisis reporting some details of the story, while a proud Nancy Reed greets her public health officer husband who was responsible for it all.

The production of Panic in the Streets underwent several rounds of edits with the effort to abide by the Motion Picture Production Code (Hays Code). Originally titled Port of Entry, the temporary script of the film was sent on November 11, 1949, to Joseph Breen, the film censor with the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America who applied the Production Code to film production. Joseph Breen himself indicated in threads of letters with Colonel Jason S. Joy, the Director of Public Relations of the 20th Century Fox, the changes needed for the script. Suggestions such as "Violet must not be suggestive of a prostitute", "We assume there will be no suggestion that the police officer is killed", and "The scene of Martinez and the mattress falling should not be too realistically gruesome," were made. On December 20, 1949, in Joy's letter responding to the suggestion of Breen, the film had been renamed Outbreak. The sensitive content of the film, especially the scenes pointed out by Breen, were not fully changed until after a of couple back and forth letters that lasted for around 3 months. Ultimately, the film was named Panic in the Streets in the final version of the synopsis on March 8, 1950. Approved by the Production Code Administration (PCA) on March 14, 1950, the film officially entered the production stage.

The film failed to recover its costs at the box office which Darryl Zanuck blamed in part on location shooting. He felt if the film had been made for $850,000 it would have been profitable. Variety magazine liked the film and wrote, "This is an above average chase meller. Tightly scripted and directed, it concerns the successful attempts to capture a couple of criminals, who are germ carriers, in order to prevent a plague and panic in a large city. The plague angle is somewhat incidental to the cops and bandits theme There is vivid action, nice human touches and some bizarre moments. Jack Palance gives a sharp performance." New Orleans film critic David Lee Simmons wrote in 2005, "The film noir elements come from the movie's use of post war German Expressionist and Italian Neo Realist techniques. Kazan admired how the Expressionists used chiaroscuro lighting to heighten emotion, and he related to the Neo Realists' cinéma vérité portrayals of those living on the margin of society. Panic offered him a chance to explore these styles further by experimenting with cinematography and casting real people. After working with some of the biggest stars in Hollywood – Dorothy McGuire, Spencer Tracy, Katharine Hepburn, Dana Andrews, Gregory Peck and Ethel Barrymore – Kazan wanted to go in the opposite direction. To suit the needs of this picture and his new approach, he recruited not only lesser stars, but also some of his rougher cronies from the New York stage scene, and on top of that several New Orleanians with varied levels of acting experience." Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes retrospectively collected 24 reviews and gave the film a score of 96%, with an average rating of 7.46 out of 10.