1954 Directed by Otto Preminger
The tale of the cigarette-maker Carmen and the Spanish cavalry soldier Don Jose is translated into a modern-day story of a parachute factory worker and a stalwart GI named Joe who is about to go to flying school. Conflict arises when a prize-ring champ captures the heart of Carmen after she has seduced Joe and caused him to go AWOL.
카르멘 존스, Кармен Джонс, 卡门·琼斯
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Carmen Jones is a grand, colorful and important musical. This is one of the first major movies to have an all black cast and it had the first African-American nominee in Best Actress (Dorothy Dandridge). It’s a lot of fun as every song is really, really good. It’s the opera music from the opera Carmen and it’s so catchy and will get stuck in your head for sure. The standout is Dat’s Love. The use of Technicolor is, as always, perfect. It oozes with bold colors and is never bland from a visual standpoint. There are a few weird and unnecessary plotholes though. Some of these left me either confused or simply bored, but not enough to ruin the movie.…
Keeping the melodies to Bizet's opera but replacing the words with modern lyrics might have been a mistake. Using "de" and "dere" was definitely a mistake. Dubbing over Harry Belafonte was just rude (Dorothy Dandridge, too, probably, but Belafonte is one of my favorites). But almost everything else was rather wonderful.
The rich colors, the excellent casting, the boldness of the production all converge to make a compelling, beautiful film in bright 50s melodrama. The operatic origins are well respected insofar as the plot goes--you could easily transpose this back to the original without much effort. The story of Carmen plays out here with more sympathy and understanding for the title character than other adaptations I've seen; there's a respect…
Inspired by seeing Dorothy Dandridge on the big screen at the Academy Museum, I finally checked this out. Same ole Preminger…fortunately, I like him. Boldly lit and designed but too static (move the camera!), and slightly dyspeptic, it’s illuminated by two of the most stunning stars in history—Dandridge and Harry Belafonte—at the apex of their beauty. Carmen is a strange opera but I like the Hammerstein songs fitted to Bizet. This probably deserves more of a seat at the table in The Great Hollywood Musicals conversation.
Surprising how readily legible this film's gender and class politics are six decades after its release, which itself was eight decades after the premiere of its operatic source material. Will the subject of economic dependence tangled up with smoldering eroticism ever fall out of date? Were this not a widescreen musical, it could've been a red-hot film noir: Belafonte burning with sexual obsession, Dandridge playing one of the sultriest femmes who ever fatale'd. Preminger choreographs the growth of their lethal love through one emphatically horizontal composition after another, moving from country to city and ever farther into the maw of tragedy. The story's deeply rooted in those two earthy fundamentals, sex and money, which makes the dubbed-over vastness of the film's soundscape that much more bewitching.
Otto Preminger's innovative adaptation of Georges Bizet's classic opera Carmen sees the Austrian born filmmaker giving the mellifluous tale a delightfully contemporary spin.
Instead of the titular character being a footloose Spanish bohemian this version finds her as a provocative unmarried woman employed at a parachute sweatshop near a North Carolina army base during WWII. Dorothy Dandridge's performance in the role of Carmen is indisputably one of the most outstanding components of the film, and this interpretation was additionally pioneering enough to see her command an entirely African-American cast.
Its a considerate adaptation and prevails as being relatively faithful to the source material for while it alters its ornamentations and adds new lyrics it leaves the broader story fundamentally intact. It inevitably doesn't accomplish on the screen what it would in a live theatre, but that said, the extraordinary conclusion, with considerable singing and dancing before that moment arrives, ensures this being a gratifying story about unrequited love.
"If I love you that's the end of you!"
Joe (Harry Belafonte) is a man whose life is on the upswing. He's about to start training to be a pilot and about to marry his sweet heart Cindy Lou (Olga James). Life is good. That is, until he meets free as a bird temptress Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge) and succumbs to her wiles.
It's obvious from the jump that Carmen is in no way as serious about Joe as he is about her. Her opening number even announces as much. For her, being trapped by a man is tantamount to prison and, as she says multiple times, she can't abide being cooped up. What follows is essentially a tragedy, with…
Otto Preminger's updated melodramatic version of Georges Bizet's opera 'Carmen', with an all-black cast, was not as good as I remember from watching in my youth. Possibly because I now know the singing was dubbed, but also because both Joe's and Carmen's character arcs shift too abruptly.
Still a beautiful looking film with wonderful music and songs.
Ideologically intolerable yet often fascinating and intermittently pungent. Preminger always seems to love biting off more than he can chew.
"If I love you, dat's de end of you." ~ Carmen Jones
This film directed by Otto Preminger is based upon the 1943 Broadway musical by Oscar Hammerstein II, which was adapted from Georges Bizet's famous 1875 opera "Carmen," which was in turn derived from the 1845 novella "Carmen" by Henri Meilhac. The time and location has been updated to North Carolina during World War II in place of Seville, Spain circa 1820.
First off, what an incredible all-black cast. Harry Belefonte plays Corporal Joe, who's getting set to transfer to flight school; Olga James is his hometown honey Cindy Lou, who's anxious to get married; Pearl Bailey plays Frankie, a club hostess with the desire to do better; and…
old hollywood: I have brought you something.....groundbreaking......
me: thank you
old hollywood: .......groundbreakingly racist and sexist
I'll give it that... its the best opera adaptation I've seen or gotten through... though granted, I haven't seen many opera, so...
But in regards to the movie, this is his weakest film I've seen from him. The story and musical cues were overly generic, like we've seen and heard this a thousand times by now - and even done better.
Also there was something off with the whole setting and all. Like, as time has gone by, the whole afro culture has made a name for itself thanks to some of the elements that have brought up to the music scene and that has made stand out from the rest. I felt none of this in the entire film…
Why on God’s green earth would you dub Harry Belafonte’s beautiful singing voice? Knowing very well how he sounds and hearing a completely different voice took me out of the film. I guess they wanted an operatic voice. I have no idea but it doesn’t work.
This film has the distinction of being the first all-Black cast in a Hollywood production. Director Otro Preminger is definitely not and I suspect neither were the crew. Still it’s notable. Dorothy Dandridge starts as the title character. She’s the first Black actress to be nominated in the lead category. I watched for these historical reasons. Unfortunately it doesn’t stand the test of time.
