"Carmen Jones" is a milestone for African-American cinema and that will cover most of the review so let's start by giving Otto Preminger the credit he deserved to have trusted his instinct and served a wonderful platform to Black talents such as Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Olga James or Pearl Bailey. And let's not forget Saul Bass who designed the rose in the middle of an incandescent red flame, growing and growing under the tempo of "Carmen"'s overture.
Just like the opening credits sequence, some moments are nothing short of brilliant in a precociously modern way. However, other elements are so naively conceived and lacking in inspiration that it prevents the film to reach the same heights than many acclaimed classics. It doesn't do to "Carmen" (Prosper Merimee's story and George Bizet's opera) what "West Side Story" did for "Romeo and Juliet", but the intentions were there, and the Cinemascope musical did a lot for the African-American cinematic presence in the early 1950s.
And there are two things to which "Carmen Jones" owes a great deal of its impact: the iconic music of Bizet's opera and the sex-appeal of Dorothy Dandridge who doesn't even need any music to inflame the screen, her sole presence does the job. Whether dressed in that tight bohemian-like dress or that slinky pink outfit, the woman with the rose, a wild rose herself, is the kind of screen-presence that only a heart made of stone would resist. Dandridge's performance as the titular Carmen will make history as the first to earn a Black performer a nomination for Best Actress, competing with Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland for the golden statuette but ultimately losing for Grace Kelly in "The Country Girl".
But Carmen Jones isn't your average "country girl", as the hedonistic and sultry vixen, she's a winner per essence, a woman who knows how her charm operates and never misses an opportunity to seduce the eyes and catch a resisting heart. As she sings along with the Habanera music "you go for me and I'm taboo but if you're hard to get I'm all for you", we would almost miss the warning if it wasn't for the catchy melody. The voice doesn't belong to her but to Marilyn Horne. I guess it was too much asking to get the voice and the acting in the same body, but Dandridge exudes such vivid sensuality that it suspends our disbelief and we carry on, following the growing romance with Joe, the naïve Corporal who abandons his doll-faced but prude fiancée (Olga James) for the more volcanic beauty.
It doesn't take too long for the romance to take off, interestingly, it's caused by the imprisonment of Carmen for a fight with a co-worker, and even in the realm of violence, there's something fascinatingly torrid and wild in Carmen's body language, making the film unusually sensual by the standards of the fifties. Look at the scene where Carmen literally slides her head between Joe's legs to firmly clean his pants from mud and how this builds up to the great moment where she threw the peach he was eating and put his arm around her hips, as to say "kiss me you big fool" and finally, the epitome of eroticism is reached where she gives her feet to him and he kisses them, subverting the balance of power, becoming the slave of her love.
I can't recall a more sexually loaded picture of the same era except for "A Streetcar Named Desire" but one should wonder whether the Code would have left these scenes uncensored if they were featuring White actors. This is not to review the film under the prism of racial considerations but only to say that there are many timely aspects that date it in a subtler way. Yes it's impossible to overlook what makes the film such a milestone as a Black movie musical... but sometimes, you almost feel a sort of outsider fascination, from director Otto Preminger who adapted the Broadway musical. Sometimes the film gets too intense for its own good and the 'dramatic' moments, which Preminger intended to film as narrative highlights strike for their savorless and condescending superficiality.
It results in an uneven production where great singing moments such as Olga James who plays the poor fiancée and Pearl Bailey, who as Carmen's friend, Frankie steals the show with her unforgettable "Rhythm of a Drum", a spontaneous and not too fancy act that lets the real creativity implode and makes you almost regret the film's insistence to recreate the opera. The boxer who supposedly replaces the toreador is a rather forgettable rival to Joe, who isn't even given much substance especially during the second half of the film. Belafonte is never given a true chance to shine as much as Dandridge and his emotional moments are inevitably ruined by the operatic voice of LeVern Hutcherson, which seems to belong to a a different universe than the one we've been immersed to.
Some scene becomes pathetic but in a sort of a laughable way that shows the limit of an opera modernization when it comes to a contemporary setting. And the awkwardness is enhanced by the fact that there aren't the real singers' voices. Now all these considerations apart, how the film stand as a musical or as entertainment? I think there's something that makes the film a standalone classic, the way it defies many conventions of the musical and the romance genres and even dares to challenge the narrative requirements by not hinting anything condemnable in Carmen's behavior. She's a selfish person, to which it's hard to empathize with, but the film was directed with enough guts to let her be so till the end. She was a natural and strayed loyal to her own personal appetites despite the tragedy pending over her.
"Carmen Jones" was a true anti-heroine, and certainly a decade-defining and culturally significant character, which is enough to redeem the musical.
Just like the opening credits sequence, some moments are nothing short of brilliant in a precociously modern way. However, other elements are so naively conceived and lacking in inspiration that it prevents the film to reach the same heights than many acclaimed classics. It doesn't do to "Carmen" (Prosper Merimee's story and George Bizet's opera) what "West Side Story" did for "Romeo and Juliet", but the intentions were there, and the Cinemascope musical did a lot for the African-American cinematic presence in the early 1950s.
And there are two things to which "Carmen Jones" owes a great deal of its impact: the iconic music of Bizet's opera and the sex-appeal of Dorothy Dandridge who doesn't even need any music to inflame the screen, her sole presence does the job. Whether dressed in that tight bohemian-like dress or that slinky pink outfit, the woman with the rose, a wild rose herself, is the kind of screen-presence that only a heart made of stone would resist. Dandridge's performance as the titular Carmen will make history as the first to earn a Black performer a nomination for Best Actress, competing with Audrey Hepburn and Judy Garland for the golden statuette but ultimately losing for Grace Kelly in "The Country Girl".
But Carmen Jones isn't your average "country girl", as the hedonistic and sultry vixen, she's a winner per essence, a woman who knows how her charm operates and never misses an opportunity to seduce the eyes and catch a resisting heart. As she sings along with the Habanera music "you go for me and I'm taboo but if you're hard to get I'm all for you", we would almost miss the warning if it wasn't for the catchy melody. The voice doesn't belong to her but to Marilyn Horne. I guess it was too much asking to get the voice and the acting in the same body, but Dandridge exudes such vivid sensuality that it suspends our disbelief and we carry on, following the growing romance with Joe, the naïve Corporal who abandons his doll-faced but prude fiancée (Olga James) for the more volcanic beauty.
It doesn't take too long for the romance to take off, interestingly, it's caused by the imprisonment of Carmen for a fight with a co-worker, and even in the realm of violence, there's something fascinatingly torrid and wild in Carmen's body language, making the film unusually sensual by the standards of the fifties. Look at the scene where Carmen literally slides her head between Joe's legs to firmly clean his pants from mud and how this builds up to the great moment where she threw the peach he was eating and put his arm around her hips, as to say "kiss me you big fool" and finally, the epitome of eroticism is reached where she gives her feet to him and he kisses them, subverting the balance of power, becoming the slave of her love.
I can't recall a more sexually loaded picture of the same era except for "A Streetcar Named Desire" but one should wonder whether the Code would have left these scenes uncensored if they were featuring White actors. This is not to review the film under the prism of racial considerations but only to say that there are many timely aspects that date it in a subtler way. Yes it's impossible to overlook what makes the film such a milestone as a Black movie musical... but sometimes, you almost feel a sort of outsider fascination, from director Otto Preminger who adapted the Broadway musical. Sometimes the film gets too intense for its own good and the 'dramatic' moments, which Preminger intended to film as narrative highlights strike for their savorless and condescending superficiality.
It results in an uneven production where great singing moments such as Olga James who plays the poor fiancée and Pearl Bailey, who as Carmen's friend, Frankie steals the show with her unforgettable "Rhythm of a Drum", a spontaneous and not too fancy act that lets the real creativity implode and makes you almost regret the film's insistence to recreate the opera. The boxer who supposedly replaces the toreador is a rather forgettable rival to Joe, who isn't even given much substance especially during the second half of the film. Belafonte is never given a true chance to shine as much as Dandridge and his emotional moments are inevitably ruined by the operatic voice of LeVern Hutcherson, which seems to belong to a a different universe than the one we've been immersed to.
Some scene becomes pathetic but in a sort of a laughable way that shows the limit of an opera modernization when it comes to a contemporary setting. And the awkwardness is enhanced by the fact that there aren't the real singers' voices. Now all these considerations apart, how the film stand as a musical or as entertainment? I think there's something that makes the film a standalone classic, the way it defies many conventions of the musical and the romance genres and even dares to challenge the narrative requirements by not hinting anything condemnable in Carmen's behavior. She's a selfish person, to which it's hard to empathize with, but the film was directed with enough guts to let her be so till the end. She was a natural and strayed loyal to her own personal appetites despite the tragedy pending over her.
"Carmen Jones" was a true anti-heroine, and certainly a decade-defining and culturally significant character, which is enough to redeem the musical.