Barbara Bel Geddes | Through the Shattered Lens

The plague has come to New Orleans.

A dead body is found on the New Orleans wharf. He’s dead because he was shot several times but an autopsy reveals that he would have died anyways because he was suffering from a form of the bubonic plague! In order to keep the plague from spreading through the city (and also to hopefully save the lives of anyone who has been infected), Dr. Clint Reed (Richard Widmark) and police captain Tom Warren (Paul Douglas) have to isolate everyone who the man came into contact with. But first, they’re going to have to discover that man’s identity and also how he came to end up dead on the docks of New Orleans.

What Dr. Reed doesn’t know is that the man was named Kolchak and that he was murdered by a small-time gangster named Blackie (Jack Palance, making his film debut). Now, Blackie and his associate, Fitch (Zero Mostel) are both infected and are both looking to get out of town. Of course, if either one of them succeeds in leaving New Orleans, they’ll spread the plague through the entire country.

Largely filmed on location in New Orleans and focusing as much on Dr. Reed as it does on the criminals that he’s pursuing, Panic In The Streets is an effective mix of film noir, medical drama and police procedural. Seen under normal circumstances, Panic in the Streets is a good thriller. Seen during a time when the news is dominated by COVID-19 and riots in large cities, Panic in the Streets feels damn near prophetic.

Richard Widmark does a good job playing Dr. Reed, who is portrayed as being a no-nonsense professional. He’s type of doctor who you want on your side if there’s a plague coming to town. Not surprisingly, though, the film is stolen by Jack Palance as the smirking Blackie. This was Palance’s film debut but he already knew how to be the most intimidating man in the room. Zero Mostel also has some good scenes as Blackie’s associate and his sweaty and fearful performance provides a good contrast to Palance’s more controlled villainy.

One interesting thing about Panic in The Streets is that Dr. Reed and Capt. Warren are actually able to convince a newspaper reporter to delay filing a report about the plague, mostly to avoid a mass panic in the streets. Though he takes some convincing (and Warren’s methods aren’t exactly Constitutional), the reporter finally agrees to hold off on reporting for four hours. With the 24-hour news cycle and the dominance of social media, that’s not something that could happen today.

As a genre, film noir has always been associated with crime: murder, brutish gangsters, seductive femme fatales, and occasionally a cynical private detective doing the right thing almost despite himself. However, not all film noirs are about criminals. Some are just about desperate characters who have found themselves on the fringes, living in a shadow-filled world that appears to be monstrously indifferent to all human suffering.

That’s certainly the case with the 1951 noir, 14 Hours. The film centers around Robert Cosick (Richard Basehart, who previously played a murderer in another classic noir, He Walked By Night). Robert isn’t a gangster. He’s not a private detective. He doesn’t carry a gun and he doesn’t provide any sort of hard-boiled narration. In fact, for the majority of the film, Robert is defined by less who he is and more by what he’s doing. Robert Cosick, having earlier checked into a room on the 15th floor of a New York hotel, has climbed out of a window and is now standing on a ledge. Robert says that he’s going to jump.

What has driven Robert Cosik to consider such an extreme action? The film never settles on any one reason, though it gives us several clues. When his father (Robert Keith) and his mother (Agnes Moorehead) show up at the scene, they immediately start bickering about old family dramas. When Robert’s ex-fiancee (Barbara Bel Geddes) begs him to step in from the ledge, he listens a bit more to her than he did to his parents but he still refuses to come in from the ledge.

But perhaps the real reason that Robert Cosick is out on that ledge can be found in the film’s shadowy visuals. Directed in a semi-documentary fashion by Henry Hathaway and featuring harsh, black-and-white cinematography that’s credited to Joe MacDonald, Fourteen Hours emphasizes the indifference of the city. From the menacing landscape of concrete buildings to the crowds gathering below the ledge to see if Robert lives or dies, New York City is as much as a character in this film as Robert, his family, or the cop (played by Paul Douglas) who finds himself trying to talk Robert into reentering his hotel room. When night falls, the city may light up but it does nothing to alleviate the shadows that seem to be wrapping themselves around Robert. For the fourteen hours that Robert is on that ledge, he may be the center of the world but the film leaves little doubt that New York City will continue to exist in all of its glory and its horror regardless of how Robert’s drama plays out. Whether he lives or dies, Robert appears to be destined to be forgotten.

When the film isn’t concentrating on the cops trying to talk Robert into getting back in the hotel room, it shows us the reactions of the people who see him standing out on that ledge. (If this film were made today, everyone would be holding up their phones and uploading Robert’s plight to social media.) Some people are moved by Robert’s struggle. For instance, a young woman played by Grace Kelly (in her film debut) reaches a decision on whether or not to get a divorce based on what she sees happening on the ledge. Two office workers (played by Jeffrey Hunter and Debra Paget) even strike up a romance as they wait to see what will happen. Some people view Robert as being a madman. Others see him as being a victim. And then there’s the many others who view him as being either a minor distraction or a piece of entertainment. For them, it’s less important why Robert’s on the ledge or even who Robert is. What’s important to them is how the story is going to end.

It’s not a particularly happy film but it’s made watchable by Hathaway’s intelligent direction and the performances of Paul Douglas and Richard Basehart. With its theme of instant fame and hollow indifference, it’s a film that remains as relevant today as when it was initially released.