Carmen Jones 1954
Carmen Jones
At a parachute factory during WWII, vixen Carmen Jones seduces an engaged soldier to avoid imprisonment.
At a parachute factory during WWII, vixen Carmen Jones seduces an engaged soldier to avoid imprisonment.
Videos & Photos
All 1 Videos & 15 Photoscast
Full Cast & Crew... Joe
... Carmen Jones
... Frankie
... Cindy Lou
... Husky Miller
... Sergeant Brown
User reviews
See All 1 Reviews21 Nov 2022 by CinemaSerf
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...
Release Date:
Oct 28, 1954 (United States)
Run Time:
1hr 45`
MMPA Rating:
NR
Original Language:
English
Production Countries:
United States
Status:
Released
Plot Keywords:
Related Movies To
Carmen Jones
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...
Cast & Crew of
Carmen Jones
Directors & Credit Writers
... Director
DS
David Silver... Assistant Director
Cast
... Joe
... Carmen Jones
... Frankie
... Cindy Lou
... Husky Miller
... Sergeant Brown
... Rum Daniels
... Dink Franklin
... Myrt
... Joe (voice)
... Carmen Jones (voice)
MH
Marvin Hayes... Husky Miller (voice)
... Reporter
... Hagar – Carmen's Grandmother (Uncredited)