Carmen Jones

10/28/19541h 45m

Theatrical Release (US)

~ Something Really New! Something Truly Different! ~

Overview:

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.

Director:

Otto Preminger

Status:

Released

Language:

English

Buget:

$800,000.00

Revenue:

$9,800,000.00

Key words:

opera
world war ii
seduction
musical
north carolina
based on play or musical
love
desire
stockade
1940s
african american

Cast

Dorothy Dandridge

~ as ~

Carmen Jones

Harry Belafonte

~ as ~

Joe

Pearl Bailey

~ as ~

Frankie

Olga James

~ as ~

Cindy Lou

Joe Adams

~ as ~

Husky Miller

Diahann Carroll

~ as ~

Myrt

Brock Peters

~ as ~

Sergeant Brown

Roy Glenn

~ as ~

Rum Daniels

Nick Stewart

~ as ~

Dink Franklin

Le Vern Hutcherson

~ as ~

Joe (voice)

View full cast & crew

Reviews (1)

CinemaSerf
Written 2 year(s) ago
6
To be frank, I struggled with this... Dorothy Dandridge is superb and both she and Harry Belafonte belt out Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrical adaptations of George Bizet's rousing comic opera tunefully; but not particularly stylishly. That may have been down to the relocation of the story from elegant 19th Century Seville to gritty 20th century North Carolina via which it loses much of the vigour and vibrancy of the original story. Instead, it depicts more of a tale of the aspirational grind of African Americans against poverty and oppression and so I found that rather hijacked the original sentiment, somewhat. The narrative is also, frequently, very disjointed. It was never meant to be a straightforward love story: "Carmen" isn't actually a very nice woman - and her noble lover "Joe" is really just a means to an end for her, leaving his fiancée "Cindy Lou" (Olga James) left high and dry in what is, essentially, a rather sad love triangle. Otto Preminger certainly went out on a limb with it - the extent to which 1950s America was ready for this was very much a gamble; but that doesn't make the film better than it actually is - a wonderfully erudite comment on social mobility and love in America that uses Bizet as it's vehicle; nothing more nothing less...