One year before A Streetcar Named Desire, director Elia Kazan delivered another sweaty tale set in New Orleans. This one is about federal health officer Clinton Reed (Richard Widmark) and his attempt to help prevent a case of plague from making life difficult in the Big Easy. Since a criminal is suspected of carrying the disease, much of the film assumes the rhythms of a police chase flick, as Reed and the New Orleans police try to track down the man within 48 hours. Still, as TIME’s original review put it, “The combination of a real city and Kazan’s knack for closely observed human detail … charges the picture with such pungent atmosphere that the moviegoer can all but smell it.”
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