Carmen Jones

1954

1h 45m

IMDb RATING

6.0/10

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2 Videos

30 Images

Drama

Romance

At a parachute factory during WWII, vixen Carmen Jones seduces an engaged soldier to avoid imprisonment.

Directors

Otto Preminger

Writers

Harry Kleiner(screenplay by)

Oscar Hammerstein II(book by)

Oscar Hammerstein II(lyricist by)

Stars

Dorothy Dandridge

Harry Belafonte

Pearl Bailey

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Videos2

Trailer
Watch Carmen Jones (trailer)
Clip
Watch Carmen Jones (1954) Clip | Out on BFI Blu-ray 19 September | BFI

Top cast

Carmen Jones

Joe

Frankie

Cindy Lou

Husky Miller

Myrt

Sergeant Brown

Rum Daniels

Dink Franklin

Joe (voice)

Carmen Jones (voice)

Husky Miller (voice)

Reporter

Hagar – Carmen's Grandmother (Uncredited)

Directors

Otto Preminger

Writers

Harry Kleiner(screenplay by)

Oscar Hammerstein II(book by)

Oscar Hammerstein II(lyricist by)

All cast & crew

Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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...

Geronimo196721 Nov, 2022