CARMEN JONES

The title credit announces this as 'Hammerstein's Carmen Jones' which seems rather tough on Bizet who after all did write the music.   All Oscar did was to adapt the opera so as to create a stage musical set in World War II which features an all black cast.

Otto Preminger then adapted the musical for the cinema. My understanding is that in so doing he moved the music more back to its opera roots.  Maybe because of this the end result is a film that falls between several stools, not being successful as either a musical, or an opera, or as a drama. 

Bizarrely we have two lead performers (Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte) who are fine singers in their own right but who here are dubbed by opera singers.  Although the dubbing is done well enough it still seems odd for Belafonte in particular to be singing in an operatic style.

The racial politics of this film are a potential minefield.  Preminger deserves credit for getting the film made with an all black cast but having them working within a white musical tradition rather than within say jazz or blues or gospel, seems an opportunity missed to say the least.  

Dorothy Dandridge takes the opportunity to give a career-defining performance which earned her an Oscar nomination, the first of its type for a black performer.  For its time (1954) the film is quite explicit regarding Carmen's sexual appetite (her brief appearance in a black lace bra and black-and-white zebra-striped panties stays in the memory).   This is all well and good, and true to the character, who is uncompromising in her search for freedom from social strictures, but does it play to racial stereotypes?

Anyway, the film looks handsome and the music is fine, so it's not a hardship to be taken along on this particular ride.