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Richard Widmark and Barbara Bel Geddes
PANIC IN THE STREETS
Starring: Richard Widmark, Paul
Douglas, Barbara del Geddes. Director: Elia Kazan. Producer: Sol C. Siegel. A 20th CenturyFox Production. Certificate : A. Category : B. Running time : 95 minutes.
Our interest in a film will depend on the measure in which we can identify ourselves with the characters and events depicted. “How about interest which is aroused by scenery, music or intellectual considerations?” you may say if you are in a combative mood, as 1 hope you are. From that searching criticism I take refuge in the philosophic concept that in knowing something, that thing becomes in some sense part of us, and that therefore scenery, music and so on can only be appreciated in so far as we can interpret them in terms of ourselves, or if you like in terms of our experience. This
is exemplified by the boredom of children with adult plays. They can understand action but not the subtleties of life that come with maturer experience. It explains why it is easier to be enthralled with drama among English people than with the emotional upheavals of Eskimos ; why, too, a modern setting has an easier appeal than a medieval or ancient one.
These approaches to the mind are easier, but not necessarily better. It is good for us by a process of comparison and judgment to understand conditions outside our particular experience. Films should not be considered simply as a method of turning Sunday’s tough meat into a highly spiced but twice dead rissole for Monday’s dinner. If the cinema is to survive as an art, it should seek the substance and not be content with the shadow. To consider it merely as a form of escapism is to sign its death warrant.
By these standards this excellent thriller must be considered shallow. It is very well done, but could have been so very much better. It has such a theme as could have raised it to the immortals, but in the desire for excitement it misses life and thus its own immortality.
But at least it illustrates how attention is grasped. With a certain
detachment we see a murder in the slums of New Orleans. With awakening interest we learn that the victim was suffering from a dread and virulent disease. With real concern we realise that there is an absence of clues as to the identity of the murderers and that they are probably carriers of a fatal germ that will cause wholesale
Richard Widmark and Paul Douglas