Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger; 20th Century-Fox). The rattle of the cash register does not often serve as the drum roll of social progress. With this picture it may. Otto Preminger's Hollywood version of Billy Rose's Broadway version of Georges Bizet's grand opera seems sure to be a big hit. It also seems likely that the picture will fling somewhat wider the gates of opportunity for Negro entertainers in Hollywood. For in this picture the actors present themselves not merely as racial phenomena but as individuals, and they put across a Carmen that may blister the rear walls of many a movie house.
All this is the more remarkable because the very idea of doing a black Carmen is a pretty obvious device for converting color into coin. Furthermore, there is a musical objection to the scheme. Bizet wrote French romantic music that, as many critics feel, is hardly even suitable to its original Spanish subject. With back-country U.S. Negroes, it goes about as well as pink champagne at a hoedown. On top of this, Oscar Hammerstein II dipped his big toe in the Mississippi mud and wrote some lyrics that should be thrown back to the catfish. Fortunately, he also supplied a book that is considerably better than the original libretto, with a shift of the plot to Jacksonville, Fla., and into high colloquial gear.
Carmen Jones (Dorothy Dandridge) is a fold girl in a parachute factory during World War II. She has every man of the military guard wrapped up—every one except Corporal Joe (Harry Belafonte), who loves Cindy Lou (Olga James). But one day Carmen gets in a hair-tearing fight with another working girl, and off to the pokey she goes with Corporal Joe. On the way she lures the corporal beyond the call of duty, and escapes.
When Joe gets out of the guardhouse, Carmen gets the poor boy into hot water again, and leaves him to stew in it while she joins the camp-following of Husky Miller (Joe Adams), the heavyweight champ. The green-eyed monster takes care of the rest of the plot.
At its best, the original Carmen is pattern passion: a rose, a flame and a blade, woven into drama as formal as a Spanish dance. In Carmen Jones the dance is a ring of savages in firelight, jumping any way the devil pulls the strings, terrible and beautiful and simple as God's chillun without their wings.
Energy, in fact, is the essence of this picture; the audience is not merely stimulated, it is all but electrocuted. Even the huge CinemaScope screen seems hardly big enough to carry the mass scenes. And yet, through the pelt of colors and the whirl of action, Carmen herself holds the eye—like a match burning steadily in a tornado. Actress Dandridge employs to perfection the method of the coquette: by never giving more than she has to, she hints that she has more than she has given—and sometimes even more than she really has to give.