Nashville Panic in the Streets (1950)

Movie Showtimes

Genre: Drama, Suspense/Thriller
Release Date: 12/31/1969
Running Time: 93 mins
Director: Elia Kazan
Cast: Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes, Jack Palance, Zero Mostel
Producer:
Writer: Richard Murphy, Elia Kazan
Distributor:
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Legion, 3.4 mil, 34.6 mil
Sherlock Holmes, 2.6 mil, 201.6 mil

Movie Title, Weekly Earnings, Total Earnings

Panic in the Streets (1950)

Elia Kazan may have shot 1951’s A Streetcar Named Desire mostly on studio sets, but for this nifty, underrated thriller made a year earlier he shot right on the streets of New Orleans. The result is a grimy and unusually persuasive noir, with dogged health investigator Richard Widmark and cop Paul Douglas pursuing the Patient Zero who could turn the Big Easy into a plague zone. Noir suited Kazan’s all-caps emotional pitch and exaggerated visuals down to a doomed man’s looming shadow on a railroad-jungle wall: Truth be told, I’d rather watch this again than On the Waterfront, but that’s just a Widmark fanatic’s prejudice. Watch for Jack Palance (as skeletal and stylized as a Dick Tracy villain) in his film debut and Zero Mostel. The movie screens as part of The Belcourt’s monthlong Kazan retrospective. Nov. 14-16 at The Belcourt —