{"id":18866,"date":"2026-08-10T20:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-11T00:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/?p=18866"},"modified":"2026-08-10T17:42:55","modified_gmt":"2026-08-10T21:42:55","slug":"panic-in-the-streets-1950-elia-kazan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/archives\/18866","title":{"rendered":"Panic in the Streets (1950, Elia Kazan)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Another 1950s movie about an underpaid, overworked guy who neglects his wife in favor of his job.  This time instead of a newspaper man, he&#8217;s a US health guy trying to save the country from a deadly outbreak, slightly more excusable.  Our guy is Richard Widmark (same year as <em>Night and the City<\/em> and <em>No Way Out<\/em>) and the wife is Midge from <em>Vertigo<\/em>&#8230; he&#8217;s neglecting Midge!  So, it&#8217;s back to being inexcusable.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/panic4.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/panic1.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>Murderer Jack Palance (in his sharp-faced debut) isn&#8217;t about to let himself get caught, and he&#8217;ll throw any obstacle or friend under the bus to escape from the cops assisting the health guy, not realizing (or giving two shits) that the immigrant he knocked off was patient zero.  I&#8217;m surprised his whiney friend Zero Mostel makes it all the way to the end.  Their other friend Tommy Cook (<em><a href=\"\/journal\/archives\/183\">American Guerrilla in the Philippines<\/a><\/em> the same year), sick on a stretcher, gets hurled down the stairs as a diversion.  Meanwhile, Widmark tries to convince any of the locals to help but everyone is uncooperative.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/panic2.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/panic3.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>In the end, Jack Palance is defeated by a baffle on a rope, exactly the same way I stop squirrels from getting to my bird feeder.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"\/journal\/image26\/panic5.jpeg\"><\/p>\n<p>My main takeaway is that I don&#8217;t see Richard Widmark often enough, and I could easily program a <strong>Richard Widmonth<\/strong> with ten good movies I haven&#8217;t seen before:<br \/>\n1947 Kiss of Death<br \/>\n1948 Road House<br \/>\n1948 Street With No Name<br \/>\n1950 No Way Out<br \/>\n1952 Don&#8217;t Bother to Knock<br \/>\n1955 The Cobweb<br \/>\n1961 Two Rode Together<br \/>\n1961 Judgement at Nuremberg<br \/>\n1964 Cheyenne Autumn<br \/>\n1968 Madigan<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Another 1950s movie about an underpaid, overworked guy who neglects his wife in favor of his job. This time instead of a newspaper man, he&#8217;s a US health guy trying to save the country from a deadly outbreak, slightly more excusable. Our guy is Richard Widmark (same year as Night and the City and No [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[342,1105,1243,3520,1896,335],"class_list":["post-18866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-movie","tag-1950s","tag-elia-kazan","tag-gangsters","tag-jack-palance","tag-plague","tag-richard-widmark"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18866"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18912,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18866\/revisions\/18912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/deeperintomovies.net\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}