Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		4.0
Audio		4.5
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.5

Carmen Jones Blu-ray Movie Review

Dorothy Dandridge's star turn.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman December 3, 2013

Even those who wouldn’t know a Lerner from a Loewe usually recognize what is arguably the most iconic pairing in the entire history of musical theater, Rodgers and Hammerstein. Part of that recognition has to do with the pair’s marketing savvy, which tended to place their names above the title of whatever show of theirs was lighting up the Great White Way before typically matriculating to Hollywood for screen versions. And even casual fans can come up with Richard Rodgers’ pre-Oscar Hammerstein II writing partner, Lorenz Hart, for so many standards from the Great American Songbook bear the Rodgers and Hart label that that pairing has become virtually as famous as the later one. But when the focus shifts to Hammerstein, things tend to get a little bit trickier, at least for those who aren’t up to snuff on the history of American musicals. Hammerstein actually had more of a successful pre-Rodgers career than Rodgers had pre-Hammerstein, with most of that success due to his partnership with the legendary Jerome Kern. Kern and Hammerstein wrote what is often considered the first truly integrated work of musical theater, Show Boat (both the 1951 and 1936 film versions are still sadly lacking on Blu-ray). But Hammerstein also collaborated with several composers who were attempting to slowly morph the then popular operetta form into something more substantial, composers like Rudolf Friml and Sigmund Romberg. But perhaps Hammerstein’s oddest collaboration was with a composer who had been dead for well over half a century by the time Hammerstein deigned to work “with” him. Georges Bizet had a tragically short life, one which didn’t meet with a lot of success prior to his crowning work, Carmen. Rather interestingly, Hammerstein was working on his modern day adaptation of Bizet’s most famous work, which was renamed Carmen Jones, while he was collaborating with Rodgers on their first and in some ways most legendary musical, Oklahoma! (another great musical film—in two versions, Todd-AO and CinemaScope, no less—which has yet to see the Blu-ray light of day). Oklahoma! (the stage version) is often held up as the true beginning of the so-called Modern American Musical, and while it may seem tame to cynical younger audiences today, when viewed in its proper historical context, it was (and is) a rather revolutionary musical. What’s so very interesting about all of this is that in its own way Carmen Jones, which has never reached the same level of prestige that Oklahoma! has, is just as revolutionary, though for different reasons.

If it weren’t for the fact that traditional stagings of the original Carmen are almost always hugely bright and colorful affairs, the source material for Carmen Jones might almost be called an opera noir, for it posits a femme fatale who lures an unsuspecting male to his downfall, though in this case the downfall doesn’t exactly augur well for Carmen herself. Hammerstein’s conceit was to update the setting of the 19th century opera to the 20th century world of World War II workers—and African American workers, at that. This frankly can be argued to be nothing more than a gimmick, though it’s important to place the film version in the roiling sociopolitical atmosphere in which it appeared. Carmen Jones debuted in late October 1954, barely five months after the Supreme Court had handed down its epochal Brown v. Board of Education ruling. There’s a certain irony in that juxtaposition, for Carmen Jones is pretty resolutely segregationist—albeit not in the way that term is typically used.

Dorothy Dandridge (who burst the historic segregation of the Best Actress Academy Award category by being the first black actress nominated for her performance in this film) portrays Carmen Jones, a sultry, tempestuous worker at a parachute factory in the American south during World War II. When Carmen gets into a pretty scrappy fight with one of her co-workers at the factory, she’s arrested, and a young recruit named Joe (Harry Belafonte) is assigned to transport her to jail. This upsets Joe’s plans to marry Cindy Lou (Olga James), a hopeful young woman who senses a certain seductive subterfuge in Carmen.

Once Carmen has Joe to herself while on the road to incarceration, she manages to successfully seduce him, but in a role reversal from the way these things usually play out, she takes off the next morning, leaving Joe in the lurch. Carmen Jones then plays out fairly anecdotally as a cat and mouse game between Carmen and Joe, with Joe’s obsession with his one night stand growing to epic proportions, and Carmen’s flirtatious ways placing her on the precipice of certain doom.

Director Otto Preminger made two huge musicals in the fifties featuring African American casts, this one and 1959’s ill fated Porgy and Bess (which is still mired in rights issues and frankly may never see the Blu-ray light of day). Preminger was a well known left leaning presence in Hollywood for decades, and there’s probably little doubt that he relished the chance to make a lavish musical featuring an all black cast. That said, Preminger was not an inherently musical director—he has none of the ebullience of, say, Stanley Donen or even the technical flash of Robert Wise. He tends to plant his CinemaScope camera down and then simply lets the action unfold. That gives the film a certain static quality, despite Preminger’s wise efforts to open up the action with some location photography outside and a couple of huge set pieces, including an exciting boxing sequence.

What elevates this sometimes lugubrious effort is the scintillating Dandridge, who simply burns up the screen as Carmen. She was famously dubbed by a young Marilyn Horne, but her acting during the sung moments is just as effective as Horne’s admittedly lustrous singing voice. Harry Belafonte is also excellent as Joe, depicting the rapid devolution of the character in a very believable way (Belafonte, too, was dubbed, though not quite as felicitously as Dandridge). Pearl Bailey rips through a great production number as Frankie, Carmen’s friend who’s constantly on the make, and a very young Diahann Carroll is also on hand as another one of Carmen’s hangers-on.

Bizet is often dismissed as a flashy but empty composer, and there’s probably no denying that there’s a certain amount of glitz in his Carmen, which just as undeniably is probably one of the reasons for its enduring popularity. His bold, brash music makes Carmen Jones a joy to listen to, even if Hammerstein lapses into some now politically incorrect black patois for some of his lyrics. Dandridge unfortunately was never able to successfully capitalize upon her appearance in this film, but her Carmen Jones will forever stand as one of the most viscerally compelling performances—musical or otherwise—of the 1950s.

Carmen Jones Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Carmen Jones is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 2.55:1. The elements utilized for this transfer are in excellent shape, though there are occasional very minor splotching anomalies that may indicate either dupe elements or at least aged elements. As with some other CinemaScope films, there are occasional focus anomalies that are readily apparent, usually toward the middle of the frame (see screenshot 9, where Dandridge's face seems slightly blurry). The color here is just a bit on the brown side, with a slight green tinge some of the time. But reds and oranges (including Carmen's fiery skirt in the early part of the film) pop with great vividness. Preminger was a newcomer to CinemaScope, and doesn't seem to want to get too close to his performers a lot of the time, which tends to mitigate fine detail somewhat. But overall the image here is clean and clear and shows no signs of excessive digital manipulation.

Carmen Jones Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Carmen Jones' original four track mag soundtrack is nicely reproduced here with a boisterous DTS-HD Master Audio 4.0 mix that significantly bolsters the brass centered orchestrations of Herschel Burke Gilbert. The music is nicely splayed through the channels and some of the set pieces—including the boxing segment—also utilize the surrounds in a nicely immersive way. Fidelity is top notch and the track has no issues like dropout or even much noticeable hiss.

Carmen Jones Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Theatrical Trailer (480i; 2:47)

Carmen Jones Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Carmen Jones may in fact appeal more as a concept than in its finally realized form. There's a certain clunky quality to this film that even its extremely gifted cast can't completely overcome, but Dandridge is simply a force of nature and makes this film eminently watchable despite its shortcomings. This Blu-ray offers no substantial supplements (a real letdown) but its video, while occasionally problematic, is good and its audio is excellent. For lovers of musicals at least, Carmen Jones comes Recommended.