Directed by Otto Preminger
At an all-Black army camp, civilian parachute maker and "hot bundle" Carmen Jones is desired by many of the men. Naturally, she wants Joe, who's engaged to sweet Cindy Lou and about to go into pilot training for the Korean War.
卡门·琼斯, Кармен Джонс, 카르멘 존스, Czarna Carmen
USANR USANR 
IrelandG 
UKU Ireland UK USA 
it’s good. you can definitely tell that there wasn’t as much money poured into this as other well-received classical musicals from the era, but its middle-class mundanity is (in its own way) a small step forward. Dorothy Dandrige is literally why you watched this and she makes it worth it, she’s so self-actualized as a lead. her sly gaze and glamorous figure frame her as this irresistible object of desire and yet she is also combative, autonomous and experimental in her nature. such memorable star power. oh and Dat’s Love is amazing
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 Will the subject of economic dependence tangled up with smoldering eroticism ever fall out of date?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.
Ideologically intolerable yet often fascinating and intermittently pungent. Preminger always seems to love biting off more than he can chew.
old hollywood: I have brought you something.....groundbreaking......
me: thank you
old hollywood: .......groundbreakingly racist and sexist
"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…
Maybe you ain‘t got the message yet, but Carmen‘s one gal nobody puts on a leash. No man‘s gonna tell me when I can come and go. I gotta be free.
Right until the mid-60s you could always rely on Otto Preminger to deliver the cinematic goods, no matter which genre he tackled. Carmen Jones is his only stab at a musical and he turns this all-black modernisation of the legendary Bizet opera into a lively, energetic and colourful CinemaScope entertainment.
The well-known story is transposed from 19th century Spain to the US during the WW2 years and centers on the amour fou love story between hot chick Carmen Jones and attractive Corporal Joe, which spirals into romantic obsession, desertion, violence…
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.
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…
One of the fascinating constant struggles of Preminger’s body of work is an attraction to romantic material and the harsher, often distant tone imposed into them. This is particularly central in Carmen Jones which is heightened stylized as a musical, and one with the added element of existing in its own segregated world, but whose take of sexual obsession follow its logic of a trap with more emphasis in its inevitability than the desires behind it. One admires the architecture behind, the same way one admires how Preminger pulls off his world. The precision would be all there is if not for Dorothy Dandridge terrific performance, too human and passionate in the middle of the construction. The tension between them is the movie most memorable element.
