When I look back on "Panic in the Streets," I think of Blacky, Raymond, and Poldi. It could be because I'm a cat lover, and these three are like three stray cats more or less hanging together as they sneak through an unprivileged existence. But I think the pivotal reason is that these noir inhabitants of the dock's underworld is what's most memorable about Kazan's "Panic."
Perhaps there are good reasons for this. For one, Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, and Tommy Cook assume roles that are not beholden to the plot in the sense that they're parts don't get jerked around. But, they're also not beholden to the military, the law, the family, professions, success, or the establishment in the way their pursuers are. Nor are their lives translatable to anyone but themselves. Like the plague, they are what civil life avoids at all costs.
Although their tense adversaries intersect with them in some ways, the military doctor, police captain, and mayor are not only pat in comparison but bound to victory in a winner-loser scenario. These officials get to play the heroes, and as such, they're hardly concerned with those who conceal their enemy--the plague. For they are the standard-bearers of a civil society and its order, and the gang is only on the fringe of it, and thus incidental to their lives.
But despite the fact that we learn the full stories of both the doctor and the police captain, and know almost nothing about the plague gang, it is the lives of the latter that live in memory. More emanates from them and their world, more noir, more reality, and more locatedness. These guys are both stuck in their lowly environment and yet inseparably bound to it. They are not suspect for murder, because life in their nabe is too cheap to bother with, but rather for, in their minds, some illegal booty of preposterous worth. They and their neighbors could be aflame with fever, and this would not register with them, because what they grasp is that their lives cannot be of import to others unless tied to the key to a bank vault.
Memorable too is the gang's inimitable physicality, which is totally at odds with that of the forces bearing down on them. Flight, flight from each other, and from the law seems inherent--but physical flight, namely running. They don't drive cars, they run, and they run a lot and it's totally unlike the running of a runner. And if their pursuers ever ran, it would not be in the way these guys do. Yes, the "panic" of the title definitely should belong to them. Money does this, fear does this, nervousness does this. They live the panic. They are lives on the edge. They are lives propelled toward self-extinction. And yet these black cats emerge--and live on.
Perhaps there are good reasons for this. For one, Jack Palance, Zero Mostel, and Tommy Cook assume roles that are not beholden to the plot in the sense that they're parts don't get jerked around. But, they're also not beholden to the military, the law, the family, professions, success, or the establishment in the way their pursuers are. Nor are their lives translatable to anyone but themselves. Like the plague, they are what civil life avoids at all costs.
Although their tense adversaries intersect with them in some ways, the military doctor, police captain, and mayor are not only pat in comparison but bound to victory in a winner-loser scenario. These officials get to play the heroes, and as such, they're hardly concerned with those who conceal their enemy--the plague. For they are the standard-bearers of a civil society and its order, and the gang is only on the fringe of it, and thus incidental to their lives.
But despite the fact that we learn the full stories of both the doctor and the police captain, and know almost nothing about the plague gang, it is the lives of the latter that live in memory. More emanates from them and their world, more noir, more reality, and more locatedness. These guys are both stuck in their lowly environment and yet inseparably bound to it. They are not suspect for murder, because life in their nabe is too cheap to bother with, but rather for, in their minds, some illegal booty of preposterous worth. They and their neighbors could be aflame with fever, and this would not register with them, because what they grasp is that their lives cannot be of import to others unless tied to the key to a bank vault.
Memorable too is the gang's inimitable physicality, which is totally at odds with that of the forces bearing down on them. Flight, flight from each other, and from the law seems inherent--but physical flight, namely running. They don't drive cars, they run, and they run a lot and it's totally unlike the running of a runner. And if their pursuers ever ran, it would not be in the way these guys do. Yes, the "panic" of the title definitely should belong to them. Money does this, fear does this, nervousness does this. They live the panic. They are lives on the edge. They are lives propelled toward self-extinction. And yet these black cats emerge--and live on.