Résumé :
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[BDSP. Notice produite par INIST-CNRS eR0x2hBB. Diffusion soumise à autorisation]. It is a sultry summer evening in New Orleans, Louisiana. An unknown foreigner of Latin or Middle Eastern descent named Kochak is murdered in a scuffle over gambling proceeds by Blackie, one of the port city's most notorious and brutish gangsters. By the next morning, the body of the unidentified man ends up in the county morgue, where the attending coroner becomes alarmed, not at the bullet wound, but rather at the evidence of a deadly infection that ravaged the man's body before he was shot, Within minutes, Dr. Clinton Reed, a United States Public Health Service (PHS) officer, is called to the scene. Reed examines a sputum specimen from the deceased under the microscope and identifies the bacterial culprit as the highly contagious and airborne pneumonic plague. He orders the cremation of the man's remains, the sterilization of all objects with which he came in contact, and doses of serum to vaccinate and streptomycin to treat those exposed to this virulent germ. Convening an emergency meeting with the local authorities, Reed warns that they have only 48 hours to track down the killers and probable plague carriers who threaten to spark an epidemic that could reach far beyond the city of New Orleans. Thus unfolds the drama of Panic in the Streets (1950), a film noir that relies on the familiar Hollywood staples of the gangster, gumshoe detective, and policeman to produce a tale that is as much about the hysteria that gripped the United States during McCarthyism as humans'instinctive fear of devastating diseases. 1 The film was directed by Elia Kazan and based on a story written by Edward and Edna Anhalt that was turned into a screenplay by Richard Murphy. 2 It was favorably reviewed in prominent newspapers and magazines, such as Time and Variety. But unlike other films of the era, Panic in the Streets captures the repressive political currents of the 1950s and expresses an optimistic faith in medical progress and the ability to control disease. The film's hero, Reed, played by Richard Widmark, is a public health servant whose determination to steer the correct course, against the objections and skepticism of many, saves New Orleans, and possibly the world, from a pandemic.
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