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| Twentieth Century Fox | Release Date: October 28, 1954 |
Starring:
Brock Peters, Diahann Carroll, Dorothy Dandridge, Harry Belafonte, Joe Adams, LeVern Hutcherson, Nick Stewart, Olga James, Pearl Bailey, Roy Glenn
Summary:
Contemporary version of the Bizet opera, with new lyrics and an African-American cast.
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Preminger strips the musical of all excess and frills. He creates an austere, depoeticized, anti-lyrical world in which nothing obstructs his camera's detached recording of the action. The great themes of Preminger's oeuvre are obsession and the conflict between freedom and repression, themes which are central to Carmen Jones.
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Preminger directs with a deft touch, blending the comedy and tragedy easily and building his scenes to some suspenseful heights. He gets fine performances from the cast toppers, notably Dorothy Dandridge, a sultry Carmen whose performance maintains the right hedonistic note throughout.
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This movie is terribly uneven -- best when it's gaudy and electric, worst in its more realistically staged melodramatic moments, especially toward the end. Overall, it's an entertaining show.
The 1954 film version of Oscar Hammerstein's all-black Broadway musical now feels like a relic from the gruesome social straitjacket that was segregation; every frame, you feel, is freighted with the tension imposed by the never-appearing white folks. It was, however, laudable in its desire to showcase the talents of African-American performers who were denied opportunities in Hollywood.
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