Copyright by Jesse L. Lasky: 4 October 1915. A Paramount Picture. New York opening at the Strand: 31 October 1915. 75 minutes.
COMMENT: The story is too well-known to need repeating but let me just say that the film is based on the novel, not the opera. The main difference is that Carmen is just an out-and-out no-good in the novel. She is not at all romanticized as in Georges Bizet's opera. In this, her first movie, world-famed soprano Farrar was so impressed with this more realistic (if less sympathetic) characerization, she employed it when she returned to the Metropolitan, much to the annoyance of her stage co-star, Enrico Caruso, who was playing the opera's more rounded (if still luckless), Don José. In the movie (as in the novel), Don José is almost a minor part. Wallace Reid's offhand performance doesn't help gain audience sympathy either. But then Escamillo, the toreador, hardly figures in the movie action at all. Blink, and you'll miss Pedro de Cordoba.
Geraldine Farrar deservedly became the screen's model Carmen - super-sexy, viciously self-centered yet thoroughly charismatic. DeMille's direction was likewise always remarkably assured. Aside from the obvious use of newsreel material at the bullfight climax, all the action - particularly the fight in the cigarette factory - is staged most realistically. A typically extensive DeMille budget helps, while the photography (thanks to the beautiful tinted print available on the VAI DVD) cannot be rated as anything less than superb. An added attraction is Hugo Riesenfeld's original arrangement of Bizet's score, now played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.
COMMENT: The story is too well-known to need repeating but let me just say that the film is based on the novel, not the opera. The main difference is that Carmen is just an out-and-out no-good in the novel. She is not at all romanticized as in Georges Bizet's opera. In this, her first movie, world-famed soprano Farrar was so impressed with this more realistic (if less sympathetic) characerization, she employed it when she returned to the Metropolitan, much to the annoyance of her stage co-star, Enrico Caruso, who was playing the opera's more rounded (if still luckless), Don José. In the movie (as in the novel), Don José is almost a minor part. Wallace Reid's offhand performance doesn't help gain audience sympathy either. But then Escamillo, the toreador, hardly figures in the movie action at all. Blink, and you'll miss Pedro de Cordoba.
Geraldine Farrar deservedly became the screen's model Carmen - super-sexy, viciously self-centered yet thoroughly charismatic. DeMille's direction was likewise always remarkably assured. Aside from the obvious use of newsreel material at the bullfight climax, all the action - particularly the fight in the cigarette factory - is staged most realistically. A typically extensive DeMille budget helps, while the photography (thanks to the beautiful tinted print available on the VAI DVD) cannot be rated as anything less than superb. An added attraction is Hugo Riesenfeld's original arrangement of Bizet's score, now played by the London Philharmonic Orchestra.