I am not really an opera buff, so I have not taken a lot of interest in films based upon operas; the few I have seen have not really convinced me that this is an art-form that transfers well to the cinema screen. "Carmen Jones" is different, largely because the opera on which it is based is different. Georges Bizet's "Carmen" was controversial when it was first produced in the 1870s, largely because it did not fit into either of the two then accepted categories of opera. Its spoken dialogue, working-class characters and merry tunes were more reminiscent of comic opera than of grand opera, but its plot, centred upon sexual passion, jealousy and murder, is far from comic. In some respects the work even in its original form is closer to a Broadway musical than it is to traditional ideas of opera, so it was not surprising when, in 1943, Oscar Hammerstein turned it into just that.
Hammerstein kept Bizet's music and the basic outlines of his plot but provided new lyrics and updated the story from nineteenth-century Spain to America in World War II. In this version Carmen works in a parachute factory, and her lover (named Joe rather than Jose) is a GI with ambitions to train as a pilot. Most of the main characters have similar names to those in the opera; Carmen's friends Frasquita and Mercedes become Frankie and Mert (presumably a diminutive of Myrtle), Lillas Pastia is Billy Pastor and the bullfighter Escamillo becomes (a rather strained one this) the boxer Husky Miller. The one exception is Micaela who should by rights have been Michelle but instead becomes Cindy-Lou.
The stage musical had one distinctive feature which is faithfully followed in the film; an all African-American cast. Although the film has far more actors than most stage productions would, there is not a single white face to be seen, not even as a minor character, not even as an extra in the crowd scenes. A times this can seem a bit unrealistic (are there really no white boxing fans in Chicago?) but the aim was presumably not realism but symbolism. In the 1950s Hollywood was still a very racist institution, with black actors generally limited to minor roles, often as servants or other working-class characters. Most films had all-white casts, even in situations where one might have expected to see some black faces. By making "Carmen Jones" with an all-black cast, the filmmakers were sending out a message, not only about the talents of black performers, but also about their unfair treatment within the film industry.
Since her tragic early death from an accidental overdose, Dorothy Dandridge has become known as the "black Marilyn Monroe", and her performance here shows her to have been just as beautiful and at least as talented as Marilyn herself. She received a nomination for a "Best Actress" Oscar, something Marilyn never achieved. (She was the first African-American actress so nominated). This should have been the part that made Dandridge's career, but in fact she had to wait three years for her next film role. I doubt if any white Oscar nominee would have had that problem. Harry Belafonte, her co-star here, also appears in that film, "Island in the Sun". Oddly enough, although Dandridge and Belafonte were as well-known for their singing as they were for their acting, their singing voices are both dubbed in "Carmen Jones". Perhaps they were considered to be not "operatic" enough for their roles.
Belafonte was not Oscar-nominated, but he is very good as Joe, making sympathetic a character who could easily have been seen simply as a self-destructive idiot. (Joe does, after all, sacrifice both his relationship with his loving sweetheart Cindy-Lou and a promising military career for the sake of a woman who eventually rejects him). Dandridge also has a difficult balancing act to perform, needing to make Carmen seductive and alluring but not so hard and amoral that she forfeits our sympathy altogether. (The film character is perhaps rather more sympathetic than her counterpart in the opera, a work that sometimes strikes me as being rather misogynistic in tone).
Like a number of fifties musicals, "Carmen Jones" can today seem somewhat dated. Apart from the sterling contributions of its two stars, however, it does have one great advantage in its music; for a story that ends tragically there are a surprisingly large number of light-hearted, cheerful melodies. Even though he had been dead for nearly seventy years, Hammerstein had found in Bizet a collaborator even more gifted than Richard Rodgers. 7/10
Hammerstein kept Bizet's music and the basic outlines of his plot but provided new lyrics and updated the story from nineteenth-century Spain to America in World War II. In this version Carmen works in a parachute factory, and her lover (named Joe rather than Jose) is a GI with ambitions to train as a pilot. Most of the main characters have similar names to those in the opera; Carmen's friends Frasquita and Mercedes become Frankie and Mert (presumably a diminutive of Myrtle), Lillas Pastia is Billy Pastor and the bullfighter Escamillo becomes (a rather strained one this) the boxer Husky Miller. The one exception is Micaela who should by rights have been Michelle but instead becomes Cindy-Lou.
The stage musical had one distinctive feature which is faithfully followed in the film; an all African-American cast. Although the film has far more actors than most stage productions would, there is not a single white face to be seen, not even as a minor character, not even as an extra in the crowd scenes. A times this can seem a bit unrealistic (are there really no white boxing fans in Chicago?) but the aim was presumably not realism but symbolism. In the 1950s Hollywood was still a very racist institution, with black actors generally limited to minor roles, often as servants or other working-class characters. Most films had all-white casts, even in situations where one might have expected to see some black faces. By making "Carmen Jones" with an all-black cast, the filmmakers were sending out a message, not only about the talents of black performers, but also about their unfair treatment within the film industry.
Since her tragic early death from an accidental overdose, Dorothy Dandridge has become known as the "black Marilyn Monroe", and her performance here shows her to have been just as beautiful and at least as talented as Marilyn herself. She received a nomination for a "Best Actress" Oscar, something Marilyn never achieved. (She was the first African-American actress so nominated). This should have been the part that made Dandridge's career, but in fact she had to wait three years for her next film role. I doubt if any white Oscar nominee would have had that problem. Harry Belafonte, her co-star here, also appears in that film, "Island in the Sun". Oddly enough, although Dandridge and Belafonte were as well-known for their singing as they were for their acting, their singing voices are both dubbed in "Carmen Jones". Perhaps they were considered to be not "operatic" enough for their roles.
Belafonte was not Oscar-nominated, but he is very good as Joe, making sympathetic a character who could easily have been seen simply as a self-destructive idiot. (Joe does, after all, sacrifice both his relationship with his loving sweetheart Cindy-Lou and a promising military career for the sake of a woman who eventually rejects him). Dandridge also has a difficult balancing act to perform, needing to make Carmen seductive and alluring but not so hard and amoral that she forfeits our sympathy altogether. (The film character is perhaps rather more sympathetic than her counterpart in the opera, a work that sometimes strikes me as being rather misogynistic in tone).
Like a number of fifties musicals, "Carmen Jones" can today seem somewhat dated. Apart from the sterling contributions of its two stars, however, it does have one great advantage in its music; for a story that ends tragically there are a surprisingly large number of light-hearted, cheerful melodies. Even though he had been dead for nearly seventy years, Hammerstein had found in Bizet a collaborator even more gifted than Richard Rodgers. 7/10