Carmen Jones (1954)

Carmen Jones
Directed by Otto Preminger
Witten by Oscar Hammerstein II and Harry Kleiner
1954/USA
Carlyle Productions
First viewing/Netflix rental
#291 of 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die

[box] Joe: Thanks, but I don’t drink.

Carmen Jones: Boy, if the army was made up of nothin’ but soldiers like you, war wouldn’t do nobody no good.[/box]

I love the opera.  I enjoyed the movie.

Basically, the Carmen story is moved to the American South during WWII.  Joe (Harry Belafonte) is an Air Force corporal who has been selected for flight school.  It is his last day on base.  His fiancee Cindy Lou comes to visit him.  Joe wants to get married that same day.  Before he can get the permission to do so, Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge), who already has set her sights on Joe, gets into a brawl with another factory worker on base.  Joe is ordered to take her to jail in another town.

Carmen uses every trick of seduction in the book while they are on the road to escape.  Joe stays strong until she cooks him a meal at her grandmother’s house.  While he is not looking, she slips away.  Joe gets the stockade for letting her go.

But Carmen seems really to have fallen in love with the soldier.  She is now spending her evenings at a nightclub where she catches the eye of Huskey Miller, a prize fighter.  He orders his manager to get her to join him in Chicago.  But Carmen prefers to wait for Joe. He finally shows up.  All has been forgiven and he has once again been slated for flight school.  Instead, he gets into a fight with a sergeant over Carmen and must flee with her to escape another, longer stint in the stockade.

The pair go to Chicago.  Joe cannot show his face because the military police are on his tail.  Now that Joe is completely in her spell, Carmen becomes restless in the shabby room they share.  Soon she pays a visit to Huskey Miller.  The climax plays out the same as in the opera.  With Pearl Bailey as a friend of Carmen.  Marilyn Horne dubbed Dandridge’s singing voice.

I know the opera very well having listened to it over and over when I was young.  The English lyrics seemed totally incongruous to me.  Others may not have any problem with them.  The performances are all strong.  I think Dandridge deserved her Oscar nod.  The music is, of course, glorious.

Dorothy Dandridge was nominated for Best Actress and Herschel Burke Gilbert was nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Musical Picture.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jBlWEB9BVGE

Trailer