One Paragraph Movie Review: Carmen Jones

Seventieth film: Carmen Jones, a 1958 musical that I hated based on Bizet’s Opera Carmen, that I liked. For starters it’s a musical, and I maintain my view that musicals would be fifteen minutes long if everyone just got on with it. Secondly, I’m uncomfortable with phrases in a film with an all-African-American cast like “dat’s love” and “I is your Cindy Lou” and the fact that Harry Belafonte tells his girlfriend that she’s exactly like his mother. And thirdly, call me a stick-in-the-mud, but I just don’t like it when a perfectly good song about toreadors is re-worded to make it into a song about punching people. Basically the only thing I liked about this film is the fact that it’s about sex, so I get the opportunity to make an ‘everybody’s getting Bizet’ joke. And then apologise for it, obviously. One makeshift bra-wallet out of five.