Finds: January 17, 2014

Florencia Carabias Martin, "Threat of Plagues: Panic in the Streets (1950)" at the Journal of Medicine and Movies:

http://campus.usal.es/~revistamedicinacine/Volumen_2_1/n3/ing_3_htlm/Panico.htm

In a journal I did not even know existed, a neat medical analysis of an excellent film noir about a potential plague outbreak in New Orleans, directed on location by Elia Kazan. The article contains one of the few references I've seen to the film's connection with Albert Camus' novel The Plague, which had appeared in France in 1947 and in English translation in 1948:

In Panic in the Streets we can find some subtle references to the novel by Camus. Members of the crew declare that both the murdered sailor and another stowaway, who died of plague during the course of the voyage, went on board in the city of Oran, the same city where the action of Camus’ novel takes place. Interestingly, Camus was born in Algeria.

When I saw Panic in the Streets for the first time about a decade ago, I wasn't aware of this connection going in, but I caught it immediately when Oran was mentioned in the film, and thought to myself, "Now, THAT is neat!" I hadn't yet read The Plague, a truly great novel, at that time, but I was aware of where it was set.
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Sylvie Bigar, "Beneath Martinique's Beauty, Guided by a Poet" at the New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/travel/beneath-martiniques-beauty-guided-by-a-poet.html

A nice piece that looks at the relationship between the great Franco-Caribbean poet Aime Cesaire (1913-2008) and his home island of Martinique. At their Learning Network, the Times pairs this article with a poem by Cesaire's protegee Lucie Thesee:

http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/16/poetry-pairing-sarabande/

http://samizdatblog.blogspot.mx/2014/01/womens-afro-caribbean-surrealism-hits.html

http://www.poetryfoundation.org/poemcomment/242044

I wish that I might have visited more Caribbean islands by now, but I am lucky to have made it to St. Martin with a side jaunt to nearby Anguilla a few years ago. Respecting Martinique, I have read La Catastrophe, Alwyn Scarth's fine account of the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelee that completely destroyed the then-capital city of St. Pierre and killed its 30,000 inhabitants, leaving but three survivors, one of them a prisoner ironically protected by the thick walls of his prison.
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A great selection of photographs from John Thomson's 1878 classic Street Life in London at the Daily Mail:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2487041/Dickens-London-brought-life-Fascinating-snapshot-Victorian-street-traders-taken-dawn-photography.html