Slideshow
CARMEN JONES
U.S., 1954
Directed by Otto Preminger
Starring Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Pearl Bailey
Screenplay by Harry Kleiner
Approx. 105 min. DCP.
Dorothy Dandridge became the first African American woman ever nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her role as the fiery femme fatale of Bizet’s opera — but with an all-Black cast and new lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II . TIME magazine observed that she “holds the eye — like a match burning steadily in a tornado.”
Reviews
“... CARMEN JONES is one of the defining film melodramas of the 50s. The tension between freedom and conformity, between social acceptability and erotic desire, is mapped out as poignantly here as in any of the films of Douglas Sirk.”
– David Melville, Senses of Cinema