Carmen Jones

PLOT (spoiler alert!!!):

Set during World War II, the story focuses on Carmen Jones, a 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, foreman Sgt. Brown assigns young soldier Joe to deliver her to the authorities, much to the dismay of Joe’s fiancée Cindy Lou, who had agreed to marry him during his leave.

While en route, Carmen suggests she and Joe stop for a meal and a little romance, and his refusal intensifies her determination to seduce him. When their army jeep ends up in the river, she 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 locked in the stockade for allowing his prisoner to escape, and Cindy Lou arrives 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 to Chicago with Carmen.

While Joe remains hidden in a shabby rented room, Carmen secretly visits Husky’s gym to ask Frankie for a loan, but she insists she has no money of her own. Carmen returns to the boarding house with a bag of groceries, and Joe questions how she paid for them. The two argue, and she goes to Husky’s hotel suite to play cards with her friends. When she draws the nine of spades, she interprets it as a premonition of impending doom and descends into a quagmire of drink and debauchery.

Cindy Lou arrives at Husky’s gym in search of Carmen just before Joe appears. Ignoring his former sweetheart, he orders Carmen to leave with him and threatens Husky with a knife when he tries to intervene. Carmen helps Joe escape the military police, but during Husky’s big fight, Joe finds Carmen in the crowd and pulls her into a storage room, where he begs her to return to him. When she rebuffs him, Joe strangles Carmen to death just before the police arrive to apprehend him for desertion.

REVIEW:

 A few years ago, I watched The Wiz, a take on the classic tale of The Wizard of Oz, but with an all African-American cast. While that film wasn’t near the masterpiece that the original The Wizard of Oz was, the songs kept it interesting, not to mention the fact that it Michael Jackson and Diana Ross. Unfortunately, though, Carmen Jones doesn’t have any real star power to mask its shortcomings.

This film is a take on Bizet’s iconic opera, Carmen. They don’t really change much of the story, from what I can tell. Well, let me take that back, they don’t change the idea behind much of the story. Everything is still the same, but its just modernized (this was released in 1954, with the original stage production starting in 1943).

Each of the songs is taken from Bizet’s score, but they cover up his gorgeous music with, and I use this term lightly, words. What I mean by that is…take for instance the song that everyone knows, or has at least heard from Carmen, “Habanera”. In the film, this is sung by Carmen and is renamed “Dat’s Love”. Yes, I said dat.

Believe it or not, that isn’t the worst tune, but if I keep going on about that, this review is likely to turn into a rant. Just know that, the music is 50/50 here. Bizet’s music is still here and as great as it has always been, but it is unnecessarily covered up by these words. I really have to wonder what Oscar Hammerstein was thinking when he penned this libretto!

Now, I could sit here and praise this film, but other than its use of an all African-American cast, I really didn’t see anything to make me want to say that it was great.

The acting was so-so, but Dorothy Dandridge, as Carmen was a standout, for most of the film. Harry Belafonte seemed out of his element, or at least that’s how he came off to me. Maybe that’s just his mannerism on the screen.

The rest of the cast is just there filling out the necessary supporting roles. None of them really bring anything to the table.  This is really a shame, when you consider that there is some talent in the supporting roles, including Pearl Bailey, but it is what it is.

In college, I studied the opera, Carmen, and despite not being able to understand the foreign language, found it interesting. I did not get that same feeling with Carmen Jones. There were times where I felt this thing was an insult to Bizet, and others where I was constantly looking at my watch and seeing how much time was left before it was over. This is really a shame because this should have been a really great film. Instead it just ended up as a subpar, below average film that, for me, is forgettable. Sure, this is one of the most  “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” (according to the Library of Congress), and it gets my respect for that, but it just wasn’t up my alley.

3 out of 5 stars