Panic in the Streets (1950)
1:33.1 (Full Frame)
Dolby Digital 2.0, Monaural
Fox Home Entertainment, $14.98

It’s a humid night deep in New Orleans’ French Quarter, and above a rundown jazz joint, the sneering, angular creep Blackie (Jack Palance) and his stable of thugs are losing their shirts in a round of Five-Card Stud. When the winner, a newly arrived illegal alien, claims he feels sick and heads out the door, the crew tears after him — in Blackie’s game, winners leave when the losers say so. When the winner’s body is found the next morning on the pier, the local coroner discovers disturbing information about the man’s health at the time of his death. Enter Dr. Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) of the Public Health Service, who corroborates the coroner’s findings: pneumonic plague. Reed soon teams with a local police captain (Paul Douglas) who is investigating the murder, and as the men try to track down those who came in contact with the unfortunate victim before he died, the screws are turned tight. The man’s killer will be symptomatic, contagious and, within 48 hours, dead.

Director Elia Kazan had been criticized for the stiffness and theatricality of his earlier films, and he studied the work of Orson Welles and John Ford to improve his visual-storytelling skills for Panic in the Streets. The camera movement and compositions in the picture may have been influenced by those filmmakers, but they were also the handiwork of veteran cinematographer Joseph MacDonald, ASC (My Darling Clementine, Pickup on South Street), who had worked with Kazan on Pinky and would later team with him again for Viva Zapata! The cinematographer helped compose and light the many layered shots and busy long takes that comprise much of the film. Kazan’s use of real locations in New Orleans gave MacDonald ample opportunity to use both available and deftly placed source light. In fact, the cinematographer creates two worlds for the picture: the high-key daytime world of Reed and his family, and the contrasty, diffused world of the riverfront gangs.

Fox Home Entertainment recently released Panic in the Streets as part of its new DVD series of excellent film noirs. The picture transfer is generally sharp and well-produced, offering solid contrasts and a good reproduction of MacDonald’s gray scale. The source material appears clean, aside from minor traces of print dirt that are particularly visible at reel changes. The audio is presented in both a stereo-enhanced track and a monaural track; both are clear and free of distortion, but the stereo track seems to add only an echo-like dimension on a surround system, making the monaural track preferable.

Accompanying the feature presentation is a worthy, dense audio commentary by film historians and authors Alain Silver and James Ursini. Their informative chat offers scene-specific analysis as well as a general discussion of film noir and Kazan’s career. The remaining supplements comprise a gallery of original theatrical trailers for Panic in the Streets and other titles in Fox’s film-noir line.

In an age where the threat of bioterrorism looms large, the time seems ripe for the return of this paranoid thriller. Panic in the Streets is notable for a number of reasons, particularly for being a pivotal film for Kazan, who would return to New Orleans just a year later for A Streetcar Named Desire. An unusual and entertaining mix of Cold War xenophobia, dubious social commentary, and deft, tabloid-flavored thrills, Panic in the Streets is a vivid entry in the film-noir canon. Finally unleashed on DVD in this spiffy, affordable package, this title is a must for the seriously paranoid!

— Kenneth Sweeney