CARMEN JONES
Sir,-CinemaScope has arrived at last with Carmen Jones. I want to shout it from the rooftops because up to now this fine development has been a giant ladle for old Hollywood soup of about three plots, fervour and cloying sentimentality, new gymnastic hoofing and stereophonically stirred S-E-X, right across the screen (in case you miss it) as typified in the last offering. Me, I went for the joy of Ethel Merman! ; Now Carmen Jones has originality and a star so bright and purely sensual that we may expect never to see her again, except as an "artiste" in odd spots, because like Lena Horne and other gifted personalities she is a Negro. CinemaScope doesn’t leave it there. Here is a masterly production that hurtles off the screen: Bizet’s music, a gift for fidelity recording, and Merimee’s Carmen in a light brown make-up that fits her like a skin. The wide screen brings us into Chicago streets, with noise, colour and a living impact all Negro as if the white man’s city is no longer here. Somewhere under this pageant is what we paid to hear and see, a version of Bizet’s opera. We get Carmen all right, new lyrics to the arias that make the tragedy lead not only the music but the flesh and blood protagonists. Pearl
Bailey may be hard to take as Frasquita, but as Frankie she gives whole-heartedly without detracting from the score of Bizet. When Cindy Lou sings Micaela’s sorrowful prayer in a close focus, the film has an unforgettable power and beauty. The scene would bring an opera house audiénée to its’ feét. If we doubt this we have a contrast’in a weak ending dropping right back to the European stage opera tradition. Despite this I came out convinced that Carmen is an opera adapted for a polite society which is yet unwilling to believe that the boisterous tragedy of Carmen Jones and Joe equally belongs to human beings. This is not a film for everyone, but the mirror-wide screen has this time revealed some rea] depth.
PORGY
(Wellington).
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550429.2.9.12
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 822, 29 April 1955, Page 24
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347CARMEN JONES New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 822, 29 April 1955, Page 24
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