Carmen Jones

Plot

Set during World War II, the story focuses on Carmen Jones, a "shameless vixen" who works in a parachute factory in North Carolina. When she is arrested for fighting with a co-worker who reported her for arriving late for work, the leader of the Army guards, Sgt. Brown, assigns handsome Corporal Joe to deliver her to the civilian authorities over 50 miles away. This is much to the dismay of Joe's fiancée Cindy Lou, who had agreed to marry him during his leave prior to his reporting for flight school and an eventual officer's commission.

Joe plans to deliver his prisoner as soon as possible to return to Cindy Lou and his leave. While en route, he decides to save time by taking his jeep over a road warned unsuitable for motor vehicles that is half the distance to the town where he is taking Carmen. Carmen suggests she and Joe stop for a meal and a little romance, and his refusal intensifies her determination to seduce him. Their army jeep ends up hopelessly stuck in a river. Carmen suggests they spend the night at her grandmother's house nearby and continue their journey by train the following day, and that night Joe succumbs to Carmen's advances. The next morning, he awakens to find a note in which she says although she loves him, she is unable to deal with time in jail and is running away.

Joe is demoted to private and locked in the stockade for allowing his prisoner to escape. Cindy Lou arrives for a visit just as a rose from Carmen is delivered to him, prompting her to leave abruptly. Having found work in a Louisiana nightclub, Carmen awaits his release. One night, champion prizefighter Husky Miller enters with an entourage and introduces himself to Carmen, who expresses no interest in him. Husky orders his manager Rum Daniels to offer her jewelry, furs, and an expensive hotel suite if she and her friends Frankie and Myrt accompany him to Chicago, but she declines the offer. Just then, Joe arrives and announces he must report to flying school immediately. Angered, Carmen decides to leave with Sgt. Brown, who also has appeared on the scene, and Joe severely beats him. Realizing he will be sentenced to a long prison term for hitting his superior, Joe flees on a train to Chicago with Carmen.

Tired of being cooped up in a shabby rented room, Carmen gets dressed and leaves under the guise of buying groceries. Since he can't leave the room at all lest he be arrested, Joe questions her. Carmen becomes annoyed and tells him that she does what she wants. Carmen goes to Husky Miller's gym to ask Frankie for a loan, saying that although she has clothes, furs and diamonds, she has no actual cash. Frankie tries to convince Carmen to sit in Husky's corner so they all can be well taken care of, but Carmen is in love and refuses to double time Joe. Husky believes she is back to finally be with him, but she refuses his advances before leaving, so he tells his entire entourage that they are cut off financially until they produce Carmen (whom he nicknames Heatwave). Carmen pawns a piece of jewelry so she can buy groceries before returning to the room. When she returns not only with a bag of groceries but a new dress and shoes, Joe questions how she paid for them. Offended that he is accusing her of cheating, she argues with him and goes to Husky's hotel suite dressed in her new clothes to spend time with her friends. Frankie begins to tell fortunes by drawing cards. Carmen takes it all lightly until she draws the nine of spades. She interprets it as a premonition of her impending death and chooses to enjoy the rest of her life no matter how long it is.

Cast

Dorothy Dandridge as Carmen Jones, who pursues Joe because he alone ignores her; her singing voice is dubbed by Marilyn Horne

Harry Belafonte as Joe, a soldier selected for flight school; his singing voice is dubbed by LeVern Hutcherson

Pearl Bailey as Frankie, one of Carmen's best friends

Olga James as Cindy Lou, a young woman who loves Joe—and whom Joe loves until he falls in love with Carmen

Joe Adams as "Husky" Miller, contender for heavyweight boxing champion of the world and pursuer of Carmen; his singing voice is dubbed by Marvin Hayes

Brock Peters as Sergeant Brown, who, in his envy of golden "fly boy" Joe, tells Cindy Lou that Joe volunteered to take Carmen to jail, when in reality Brown had given him no choice. He also forces Joe into a fight, leaving him to face a 4-plus-year jail sentence or run away.

Roy Glenn as "Rum" Daniels, Husky's manager; his singing voice is dubbed by costar Brock Peters

Nick Stewart as "Dink" Franklin, Rum Daniels' 'manager'; his singing voice is dubbed by Joe Crawford

Diahann Carroll as Myrtle "Myrt", another close friend of Carmen; her singing voice is dubbed by Bernice Peterson

Production

The Broadway production of Carmen Jones by Billy Rose opened on December 2, 1943, and ran for 503 performances. When he saw it, Otto Preminger dismissed it as a series of "skits loosely based on the opera", with a score "simplified and changed so that the performers who had no operatic training could sing it." In adapting it for the screen, he wanted to make "a dramatic film with music rather than a conventional film musical," so he decided to return to the original source material—the Prosper Mérimée novella. He hired Harry Kleiner, whom he had taught at Yale University, to expand the story beyond the limitations imposed upon it by the Bizet opera and Hammerstein's interpretation.

Preminger realized no major studio would be interested in financing an operatic film with an all-African-American cast, so he decided to produce it independently. He anticipated United Artists executives Arthur B. Krim and Robert S. Benjamin, who had supported him in his censorship battles with The Moon Is Blue, would be willing to invest in the project, but the two felt it was not economically viable and declined. Following the completion of his previous film, River of No Return, Preminger had paid 20th Century Fox $150,000 to cancel the remainder of his contract. He was surprised when Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck contacted him and offered to finance the new film while allowing him to operate as a fully independent filmmaker. In December 1953, he accepted $750,000 and began what became a prolonged pre-production period. He hired cinematographer Sam Leavitt as director of photography, Herschel Burke Gilbert as musical director, and Herbert Ross as choreographer and began to scout locations.

On April 14, 1954, six weeks before principal photography was scheduled to begin, Preminger was contacted by Joseph Breen, who was in the final months of his leadership of the office of the Motion Picture Production Code. Breen had clashed with Preminger over The Moon Is Blue and still resented the director's success in releasing that film without a seal of approval. He cited the "over-emphasis on lustfulness" in Carmen Jones and was outraged by the screenplay's failure to include "any voice of morality properly condemning Carmen's complete lack of morals." Preminger agreed to make some minor adjustments to the script and even filmed two versions of scenes Breen found objectionable, although he included the more controversial ones in the final film.

Because he was sensitive to the issue of racial representation in the film, Preminger had no objections when Zanuck urged him to submit the script to Walter Francis White, executive secretary of the NAACP. White had no objection to it.

Music

Song list

"Send Them Along" – Chorus (not as version heard on Soundtrack album)

"Lift 'Em Up an' Put 'Em Down" – Children's Chorus (not as version heard on Soundtrack Album)

"Dat Love" ("Habanera") – Carmen

"You Talk Jus' Like My Maw" – Joe and Cindy Lou

"You Go For Me" – Carmen (Note: This song is the shortest reprise of "Dat's Love" in the soundtrack.)

"Carmen Jones is Going to Jail" – Chorus

"There's a Cafe on the Corner ("Séguedille") – Carmen

"Dis Flower ("Flower Song") – Joe

"Beat Out Dat Rhythm on a Drum ("Gypsy Song") – Frankie

"Stan' Up an' Fight ("Toreador Song") – Husky Miller

"Whizzin' Away Along de Track ("Quintet") – Carmen, Frankie, Myrt, Dink, and Rum

"There's a Man I'm Crazy For" – Carmen, Frankie, Mert, Rum, and Dink

"Card Song" – Carmen, Frankie, and Chorus

"My Joe ("Micaëla's Prayer") – Cindy Lou

"He Got His Self Another Woman" – Cindy Lou

"Final Duet" – Carmen and Joe

"String Me High on a Tree" – Joe

Original soundtrack recording

The soundtrack recording featuring Marilyn Horne and LeVern Hutcherson was originally released on LP by RCA Victor (LM-1881).

RCA reissued the album on compact disc for the first time in 1988.

Release

The film had its world premiere at the Rivoli Theatre in New York City on October 28, 1954. The following February, it opened in London and Berlin, and in both cities it played for more than a year in exclusive first-run engagements. Because of a technicality in French copyright laws on order of the estate of composer Georges Bizet (who wrote the opera on which the film was based), the film was banned in France until 1981. The film was permitted to open the 1955 Cannes Film Festival, where for the first time Preminger and Dandridge openly flaunted their relationship. Soon after Cannes, Dandridge was offered the role of Tuptim in the screen adaptation of The King and I, but Preminger, acting as both lover and mentor, urged her not to accept a supporting role after proving her worth as a star. Dandridge complied but later regretted her decision, certain it had been instrumental in starting the slow but steady decline of her career.

Box office

The film earned estimated rentals in the US and Canada of $2.8 million.

Critical reception

Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called the film "a big musical shenanigan and theatrical tour-de-force" and added,

"In essence, it is a poignant story. It was in the opera of Bizet, and it is in the rich nostalgic folklore of the American Negro in the South. But here it is not so much poignant as it is lurid and lightly farcical, with the African American characters presented by Mr. Preminger as serio-comic devotees of sex ... The incongruity is pointed when these people break into song to the wholly surprising and unnatural aria airs from Bizet's opera. The tempos are alien to their spirits, the melodies are foreign to their moods, but they have at those classical numbers as though they were cutting rugs. And whatever illusions and exaltations the musical eloquence might remotely inspire are doused by the realistic settings in which Mr. Preminger has played his film ... There is nothing wrong with the music—except that it does not fit the people or the words. But that did not seem to make much difference to Mr. Hammerstein or Mr. Preminger. They were carried away by their precocity. The present consequence is a crazy mixed-up film."

Variety magazine wrote that Preminger transferred the play from stage to screen "with taste and imagination in an opulent production" and directed "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."

The Los Angeles Tribune review was mixed: "It's as wide as all outdoors. Its color outdoes nature by several tints and tones....Possibly never has the music of George Bizet been so fulsomely treated as it is here in stereophonic sound....Technically, 'Carmen Jones' is superb. It's too bad that slightly less may be said of its content....We've grown to accept the thesis that a Hollywood musical is just that—a gay mish-mash of nothingness, strung together by an idiotic story and some song and dance numbers. But in 'Carmen Jones,' these inanities, these absurdities, become direct reflections upon Negroes. They become 'traits' because no one else is around to shoulder the blame. The all-Negro idea became especially absurd in 'Carmen Jones' during the prize-fight sequence. Here, we had a scene presumably showing several thousand spectators. And there wasn't a white person in the arena. This glared like chauvinism in reverse."

Awards and nominations

Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American to be nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress, but lost to Grace Kelly for The Country Girl.

Home media

Fox Video released the film on VHS for the first time on November 2, 1994, in the United States. 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment released the film on DVD on January 22, 2002. It is in anamorphic widescreen format with an audio track in English and subtitles in English and Spanish.

Fox released a second DVD and a high-definition Blu-ray, both derived from a new 4K restoration, on December 3, 2013.