Carmen Jones (1954)

Carmen Jones is a 1954 American musical film starring Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte, produced and directed by Otto Preminger. The screenplay by Harry Kleiner is based on the libretto for the 1943 stage production of the same name by Oscar Hammerstein II, which was inspired by an adaptation of the 1845 Prosper Mérimée novella Carmen by Henri Meilhac and Ludovic Halévy. Hammerstein also wrote the lyrics to music composed by Georges Bizet for his 1875 opera Carmen.

Carmen Jones was a CinemaScope motion picture that had begun shooting within the first 12 months of Twentieth Century Fox's venture in 1953 to CinemaScope Technicolor as its main production mode. The historical costume drama, the western and the war film had filled Fox's production schedule and this all-black musical drama based on an established and popular opera would surely be a box-office success, as proved true. Carmen Jones was released in October 1954, exactly one year and one month after Fox's first CinemaScope venture, the Biblical epic The Robe, had entered the motion picture houses.

In 1992, Carmen Jones was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

Synopsis

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.

Actors