Directed by Elia Kazan • 1950 • United States
Starring Richard Widmark, Paul Douglas, Barbara Bel Geddes
One night in the New Orleans slums, vicious hoodlum Blackie (Jack Palance, in his film debut) and his friends kill an undocumented immigrant who won too much in a card game. When Dr. Clint Reed (Richard Widmark) confirms that the dead man had pneumonic plague, he must find and inoculate the killers and their associates. Can a doctor turn detective? He has forty-eight hours to try. Vividly shot on location in New Orleans using the city’s citizens as supporting characters and extras, this gripping thriller combines neorealist-influenced authenticity with the atmospheric visual style of classic noir.
Up Next in Classic Hollywood
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Blood and Sand
Directed by Rouben Mamoulian • 1941 • United States
Starring Tyrone Power, Linda Darnell, Rita HayworthGorgeous, Academy Award–winning Technicolor cinematography (with a palette inspired by the Spanish painters El Greco, Goya, and Velázquez) adorns this torrid tale of lust and bullfighting. A d...
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Detour
Directed by Edgar G. Ulmer • 1945 • United States
Starring Tom Neal, Ann SavageFrom Poverty Row came a movie that, perhaps more than any other, epitomizes the dark fatalism at the heart of film noir. As he hitchhikes his way from New York to Los Angeles, a down-on-his-luck nightclub pianist ...
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Bell, Book and Candle
Directed by Richard Quine • 1958 • United States
Starring James Stewart, Kim Novak, Jack LemmonThe same year that they costarred in Alfred Hitchcock’s VERTIGO, James Stewart and Kim Novak teamed up for this imaginative romantic comedy based on the Broadway hit. Novak is Gillian Holroyd, a norma...
