This is a good film, and there can be no saying in the story because it’s Bizet’s Carmen, so we know what it is already, no surprises, if anyone doesn’t like the Carmen story there’s no reason why they should watch the movie.
This rendition is well done, adapted for America with English songs and a cast entirely African-American. It was very good, with good actors and good singing.
In adapting to America, Joe (Harry Belafonte) is a soldier applying to flight school to become a pilot. Before he goes, his girlfriend Cindy Lou (Olga James) comes to visit, and he decides they should get married right away, that same night, without waiting his return. Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge) is a sexy, provocative woman that works there making parachutes. Every man likes her but Joe, and because of this she falls for him, and the best piece of movie/opera, the most famous piece of music from the Carmen, is here when she sings “if you’re hard to get then I fall for you” stating that if she wants someone she’ll have him.
Soon after that she gets into a fight with another woman and put under arrest. A sergeant (Broc Peters) orders Joe to take her into town so she can arrested there because they can’t hold a civilian (so with Joe gone he tries to make a move on Cindy Lou but she says she trusts Joe..). Joe is not happy about it but can do nothing about it because it’s an order. While he drives her there, she tries to seduce him and then escape when he insists on carrying out his order, but eventually she seduces him and he falls for her. She escapes first chance she gets because as she told him she could not live in a cage, she must feel free to survive. He’s put in detention for two months while she waits for him outside, after being cleared. Finally he gets out and meets with her. She runs into his arms, but is very disappointed when he tells her he’s supposed to go away to flight school right away. She says that he doesn’t love her or he’d stay with her, and when his sergeant arrives she says so and moves to go inside the club with him. Joe then beats the sergeant up, and has to run away or face prison for beating a superior officer. They go away together, and rent a room in Chicago. They have no money, he can’t get out because he’s a fugitive, running away he became a deserter. After a while she feels like in prison. Meanwhile her two friends live in luxury with a famous boxer’s managers. The fighter, Husky Miller (Joe Adams) is in love with Carmen, and they tell her he would give her the world if she wanted to. She loved Joe, but faced with this offer from a charming man, and the prison-like life she was living, she wants to feel free and alive again and chooses Husky.
Joe is jealous, but Carmen tells him that she’s tired of being locked up. She becomes Husky’s girl, so Cindy Lou knows where to find her in her search for Joe. She can’t get him out of her mind and heart, and goes to ask Carmen where she can find him, but they both meet Joe right there. Carmen tells him that it’s over between them, Cindy Lou tells him to go back home with her but he dismisses her, now he’s obsessed with Carmen. When guards arrive to get him, Carmen helps him, rather forces him to get away.
Cindy Lou goes home and Carmen likes her life again joyful, with her friends and Husky. The night of his big fight, she’s there cheering for him. He wins and is celebrated by all. When she goes out Joe catches her and tells her that he wants her back. She’ll have none of that, tells him it’s over, gives back the ring, says she wants to be free and to leave her alone, he tells her she’ll be his or nobody’s. She says either kill me or let me go, and he kills her, strangles her, then cries over her dead body for the woman he loved. He’s been seen though, and he’ll pay for it.
All big operas were tragedies, and at least the protagonist girl is sure to die at the end, it’s a common denominator.
ITA Carmen Jones
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