Carmen Jones

"Something Really New! Something Truly Different!"

1954 1h 45m EN

😐

6.2

MID

🍅

72%

FRESH

👌

METACRITIC

⭐

6.7

IMDB

★6.2TMDB · 103🍅72%Rotten Tomatoes●65Metacritic★6.7IMDB · 6,076

DramaRomance

Synopsis

Spoiler shield

In this musical set in an all-Black army camp, civilian parachute maker and "hot bundle" Carmen Jones is desired by many of the men. Naturally, she wants Joe, who's engaged to sweet Cindy Lou and about to go into pilot training for the Korean War.

“Something Really New! Something Truly Different!”

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Cast

Harry Belafonte
Joe
Dorothy Dandridge
Carmen Jones
Pearl Bailey
Frankie
Olga James
Cindy Lou
Joe Adams
Husky Miller
Brock Peters
Sergeant Brown
Roy Glenn
Rum Daniels
Nick Stewart
Dink Franklin

Credits

Behind the camera

Director: Otto Preminger
Writers: Harry Kleiner
Languages: English
Countries: United States of America

Want more? Switch to Cinephile mode in the header for DP, composer, budget, box office, production companies, keywords, and release history.

Did you know?

Fun facts 🍿

1 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Shot for just $0.8M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.

MoodPlayr · trivia#01

2 / 8

MONEY

Did you know

Grossed $10M — a 12.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.

MoodPlayr · trivia#02

3 / 8

ERA

Did you know

72 years old — a genuine piece of film history.

MoodPlayr · trivia#03

4 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Directed by Otto Preminger, shot by Sam Leavitt. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.

MoodPlayr · trivia#04

5 / 8

DIRECTOR

Did you know

Editor Louis R. Loeffler shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.

MoodPlayr · trivia#05

6 / 8

CAST

Did you know

Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey carry the top of the cast.

MoodPlayr · trivia#06

7 / 8

FACT

Did you know

Marketing tagline: "Something Really New! Something Truly Different!".

MoodPlayr · trivia#07

8 / 8

WILD

Did you know

IMDB entry: tt0046828 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.

MoodPlayr · trivia#08

Cinephile deep dive

The take

Otto Preminger directs. Sam Leavitt behind the camera. Louis R. Loeffler cuts. Made its budget back several times over at the box office. Produced in United States of America. Dialogue in English.

Trivia

Things worth knowing

1Shot for just $0.8M — micro-budget by Hollywood standards.
2Grossed $10M — a 12.3× return. The kind of profit studios chase for a decade.
372 years old — a genuine piece of film history.
4Directed by Otto Preminger, shot by Sam Leavitt. Note their partnership — DPs and directors often return to each other across a career.
5Editor Louis R. Loeffler shaped the rhythm. On an edit-heavy film, the editor does more to control your pulse than the director.
6Harry Belafonte and Dorothy Dandridge and Pearl Bailey carry the top of the cast.
7Marketing tagline: "Something Really New! Something Truly Different!".
8IMDB entry: tt0046828 — still the authoritative cross-reference for credits and trivia.
9Classified under 11 themes, including "opera", "world war ii", "seduction", "musical".

The technical file

Cinematography: Sam Leavitt
Editing: Louis R. Loeffler
Costume design: Mary Ann Nyberg
Runtime: 105 min · 1h 45m
Status: Released
Budget: $800,000
Box office: $9,800,000
Return: 1225% of budget
Original language: EN
Certification (US): NR
IMDB: Carmen Jones (1954)
Rotten Tomatoes: 72% 🍅 Fresh
Metacritic: 65/100
IMDB rating: 6.7/10 · 6,076 votes
MPAA: Approved

Awards

Nominated for 2 Oscars. 5 wins & 8 nominations total

Golden Globe Award for New Star of the Year – Actor
Golden Globe Award for Best Motion Picture – Musical or Comedy

Individual records documented via Wikidata; the summary above may count more.

Also by

Otto Preminger

Trailers & featurettes

Watch the pieces

Community reviews

What people are saying

CinemaSerf2022-11-21
★ 6/10
To be frank, I struggled with this... Dorothy Dandridge is superb and both she and Harry Belafonte belt out Oscar Hammerstein II's lyrical adaptations of George Bizet's rousing comic opera tunefully; but not particularly stylishly. That may have been down to the relocation of the story from elegant 19th Century Seville to gritty 20th century North Carolina via which it loses much of the vigour and vibrancy of the original story. Instead, it depicts more of a tale of the aspirational grind of African Americans against poverty and oppression and so I found that rather hijacked the original sentiment, somewhat. The narrative is also, frequently, very disjointed. It was never meant to be a straightforward love story: "Carmen" isn't actually a very nice woman - and her noble lover "Joe" is really just a means to an end for her, leaving his fiancée "Cindy Lou" (Olga James) left high and dry in what is, essentially, a rather sad love triangle. Otto Preminger certainly went out on a limb with it - the extent to which 1950s America was ready for this was very much a gamble; but that doesn't make the film better than it actually is - a wonderfully erudite comment on social mobility and love in America that uses Bizet as it's vehicle; nothing more nothing less...

Production companies