A pandemic is a pandemic is a pandemic

This past weekend I watched only my second proper virus movie of the pandemic, but it was not one I was expecting. Or, I should say, I was expecting it, but I couldn't have guessed how closely it would resemble our current situation.

The movie in question was Jezebel, the 1938 Bette Davis-Henry Fonda vehicle from director William Wyler. I knew from its recent discussion on Filmspotting that the movie dealt with yellow fever, though that was just a coincidence for them when they chose to watch it as part of a Bette Davis marathon during quarantine. For me it was less of a coincidence, as I chose to watch it because I heard them talking about it, particularly because they gave it the highest marks of any of the four films they watched during the marathon.

The first half of the film deals very little with this sort of thing, as it establishes the characters and gives us a chance to understand why Davis' character would receive the titular assignation. She's a bit of a troublemaker -- a protofeminist, I guess you'd say, even in 1852 New Orleans. She's the type of rebel who refuses to wear a white dress to a ball just because she's an unmarried woman, preferring a more scandalous red that will get the gums flapping. Oh the horror! (They get the gums flapping alright, but they also drive away Fonda. Guess that was a bit too much protofeminism.)

The second half of the film, though, is in the midst of the southern U.S. outbreaks of 1853 and 1854, which appear to have been historically accurate. Was it also historically accurate that they dumped fever victims on a nearby leper island to live out their days or, less likely, to get better? Not going to look that one up.

What interested me was how much the reactions of others to possible infection were similar to ours today. This is in a movie made more than 80 years ago about a period of time more than 80 years before that.

First there's the scene where Fonda's character starts to show symptoms of the sickness, fainting in the middle of a crowded hotel bar. (Oops, spoiler alert.) The crowd backs away from him instantly, avoiding him like the ... well, you know. More tellingly, they all raise kerchiefs to their mouths to protect themselves from transmission. Oh how much better we'd get along these days if we all carried kerchiefs.

A bit later on, Fonda has gotten worse and some medical types/hired goons come with a stretcher to take him away to Leper Island. These guys are fitted with actual, proper surgical masks, something I might not have been sure even existed in the pre-Civil War era. Watching them ascend the stairs to fetch Fonda gave me a chill of recognition.

I don't suppose there was anything earth-shattering about this realization, but it reminded me that pandemics have always been and will always continue to be, and that there is still something elementally similar about how humans respond in the face of potentially contracting such a virus.

Damn good movie, too -- it's a bit like Gone With the Wind before Gone With the Wind, and about half the length.

I'd love this virus to be gone with the wind, but we're still wearing our masks -- metaphorically or otherwise.