Scenes of Immunization (Driftwood 1947)

Compared to Contagion, Driftwood (1947), directed by Allan Dwan, is a quaint zoonotic fable, whose version of epidemiological realism explores the modalities of a shared living situation on the American frontier. Everybody has a lesson in cohabitation to learn in the fictional small town of Panbucket, Nevada. The ticks that transmit spotted fever do not learn. Because they bite and infect regardless of class distinctions, class distinction has to be reinvented in the guise of immunization.