For an older portrayal of disease outbreaks, we have #Jezebel (1938), with #BetteDavis and #HenryFonda. The denouement, set in 1858 New Orleans, involves an outbreak of #YellowFever, and the town's attempt to clean the air / quarantine / solve the disease. Great music-for-the-carts of the sick and the dead

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Frontline always does a good job with its scores; #CoronavirusPandemic (2020) is no exception. What was most notable to me were the echoes of the music from #Contagion. Have a listen to the opening of the 2011 films and its low eerie soundscape, then listen to the background of the documentary. I do not think the similarities were coincidental!

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Back to a bit more normal fare: #Outbreak (1995). A familiar storyline and score; the social tensions of attempts at containment vs research vs care for the individual vs finding a cure.

A good use of driving percussion and upbeat tempo to create tension; that, combined with the layered score and the sometimes exotic orchestration gives a lot to talk about

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If Cholera isn't your thing, the film #Blindness (2008) shows the slide of humanity into chaos in the face of disease's disruption. An exciting score for exciting action, but a grim view of human nature

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Sticking with our #cholera theme, there's the lovely period drama, The Painted Veil (2006). Based on the Somerset Maugham novel, a socialite marries a bacteriologist and the relationship does not go well. She follows him to a remote village in China, and the music does a good job of capturing the angst of the citizens, the stressors of the hospital, and the true ick of the disease.

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Picking up Music, Pandemics and History with more on film music for pandemics:

#Contagious (1997): when shrimp go bad! A great example of a film with two plots -- the disease plot and the drug smuggler plot, with clear musical distinctions between the two. #cholera is hard to depict, and cholera patients aren't fun to watch, so the chase scenes give you some leavening.

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Then there's the Black Death film, "The #Navigator: A #Medieval Odyssey" (1988). Hard to explain in just a few words, but poignant story with a time-travel base. The music does some signposting toward its medieval past (there are modal melodies and monophonic singing, but also bagpipes and organ bits, all a "periodizing tell"). The disease itself is less presence -- a source of plot movement not the focus

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Tilting over toward the documentary was the Korean film "The Flu" (2013), by director Kim Sung-su. The film explores (among other things) the effect of quarantine, necessitated by the deadly strain of #AvianFlu (H5N1) that kills its victims within 36 hours. The music of poignancy and of crowd chaos were both easy teachable moments. The take-away: disease is a social phenomenon

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Another new-to-me film was the Noir film "The Killer That Stalked NY." The 1950s were such a great time for film and film scores! Big and bold, the film gets almost schlocky with its musical content. The scene where the little girl gets infected -- oh, that hug! -- underscored by big swelling "tell" in the orchestra. #smallpox was a real genuine risk in the 1950s, and #PublicHealth a thing!

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Of course, the student gave away one detail (SPOILER ALERT). The film Perfect Sense takes seriously the loss of the sense of hearing, so the music disappears during the last 15 minutes of the film...

This is, of course, on my watch list -- after I finish the rewrite on my current R&R

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Another pandemic film that I've yet to see is Perfect Sense, but the student made it seem very cool. R-rated, though, and evidently some "ick" sit through, so caution is advised.

The premise of the film is that the disease gradually takes away senses after a period of intense emotion. The music of grief, again, teaches well, and the loss of taste that follows is eerily akin to Covid

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That "no zombies" clause is paying off in my Pandemic and Music class.

Perhaps the most teachable of all the films out there is #Contagion -- the score is interesting but also "easy and obvious" as it marks, for instance, the moments when touch-based transmission happens at the start of the film. The students were also drawn to the prom scene -- something this group never had on their own

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teaching is fun when you have to have a "no zombies" clause on the oral presentation assignment. I'm looking forward to what they have to say about #filmmusic and its role in portraying disease and its response

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