Carmen

If anyone is ever looking for an introduction to opera - then they could do much, much worse than this abridged version of Bizet's "Carmen". Telling the story of the anonymous temptress (Geraldine Farrar) who helps her smuggling friends by seducing the erstwhile incorruptible "Don José" (Wallace Reid) so they can continue to ply their trade. Soon, the poor captain is ensnared in her trap and when he kills his brother to help her, finds himself in the soup, so to speak. Whilst the detail of the story is largely lost here, the gist remains and the performances from the truly world class soprano Farrar and from Reid do their job fine. The design of the production is also quite effective: it hasn't the static look of so many of these early stage-to-screen adaptations - especially around the torero scenes - and, of course, it has the wonderful score to underpin it. The inter-titles are sparing - we get most of the plot from their expressions and the music, and that largely works well too. It is a bit clunky at times, the big crowd scenes are a bit confusing but the cat-fight is quite fun and it offers enough of a soupçon of the original, quite visceral, story to make it well worth watching.

"Carmen" the 1845 novella by Prosper Merimee and the Georges Bizet opera have been adapted on screen numerous times since 1913. The oldest existing film version is Cecil B. DeMille's October 1915 "Carmen." Famed opera singer Geraldine Farrar played the gypsy Carmen. Being a silent movie, however, her golden voice wasn't heard on screen. But in its premier and selected cities, Hugo Riesenfeld's original film score was played by an orchestra alongside the projected film.

"Carmen," set in 1830 Spain, dealt with smugglers who conscripted the female gypsy to persuade a high-moral young Army officer manning the city gates to allow the group in to sell their goods. Naturally, the officer succumbs to Carmen's sexy whiles and his slippery slide down the corrupt ladder begins.

Farrar, born and raised in Melrose, Massachusetts, became a world famous opera singer, starring in numerous higly-regarded operas. "Carmen" was her film debut, a performance drawing praise from a number of newspaper reviews. One critic wrote, "the beautiful and gifted star, to employ her talents in the attaining of success in the films is one of the greatest steps in advancing the dignity of the motion pictures."

Playing opposite Farrar was Wallace Reid, called "the screen's most perfect lover." Having a successful film career for five years before he appeared in this Lasky Feature Play Company feature, Reid went on to play opposite cinema's top leading silent film actresses. He passed away at the young age of 32 from an addiction of morphine caused from being stressed in the middle of a hectic movie production schedule.

Sunday January 15, 4:00pm The Paramount Theater

By 1915 Geraldine Farrar had established herself as premier soprano of the opera world. With radio nearly a decade away, her phonograph records had found their way into millions of homes. These audible wonders of the modern age made Farrar immensely popular. Records could not convey the wonderful theatrics of her performance on the stage. She held a captive audience from La Scala to San Francisco and chose the moment of her greatest popularity to step in front of the camera. Farrar was drawn into this other new and equally exciting indulgence of motion pictures by one of the greatest popular directors of the day, Cecil B. DeMille. For two years she was the jewel in his crown, making six feature films for DeMille, five with her co-star Wallace Reid. Film work also allowed Farrar to rest her fragile voice after years of abuse. Her brilliance and intensity on stage was fully realized in these films, which made Farrar unique in both the worlds of opera and film. No other performer had ever approached this simultaneous degree of popularity and success. Legions of obsessed young fans even referred to themselves as "Gerry–flappers". Among the brightest stars in the universe of twentieth century entertainment, Farrar also became a great social leveler, horrifying the class conscious opera world by lowering herself to the level of common everyday moviegoers. In turn, the price of a ticket offered the illusion of entering the privileged world of Grand Opera. There are sadly only two of these six films known to survive today, they are however, likely the best, Carmen and Joan The Woman. They are also among the very best works of C. B. DeMille. Carmen is the story of a wild and beautiful gypsy girl from Seville. She seduces handsome young Don José, ruins him, betrays him, and in the passionate climax of the story he seeks his revenge. Few tales have gained such admiration and have been retold in film and on the stage as often. Carmen was the greatest role of Geraldine Farrar's illustrious career and the signature piece for which she was known around the world. She played the dark-haired cigarette girl of Prosper Mérimés' novella with ferocious intensity for decades. Signing this legendary star to a multi-picture contract with his greatest director Cecil B. Demille was quite a feather in the cap for Jesse Lasky. Wisely, DeMille insisted Farrar shoot another film, "Marie Rose" first, so she could acclimate to the film environment. The first picture was then held back until after Carmen was released. On screen Farrar displayed a magnetic and effortless, natural quality. Two scenes in particular are tremendously exciting, the first, a knockdown drag-out fight between Carmen and another girl in the cigarette factory was added to the original story for the film, the other is the spectacular finale at the bullring. The fight, with DeMille's future screenwriter Jeanie Macpherson, created such a sensation it has been included in most versions of the story ever since.

An hour to tell the tale of Carmen the gypsy tease may not seem much, but this is a nicely succinct version with some very appealing tinting - blue for the smugglers, reds and pinks for Carmen. Geraldine Farrar is a little too much on the overacting side at stages, but she makes a passionate and fiery little Carmen who scratches and bites her way through life. Wallace Reid is a charming Don Jose, driven mad with love to the tragic conclusion. The video version I saw has some Farrar arias tacked on with stills from the film, and the whole is extremely affecting. Joan the Woman is better but this is still a fascinating little piece.

The relationship between cinema and opera has always been a bit on-off, but occasionally has yielded some good things. Cecil B. De Mille was one of the first filmmakers to acknowledge the similarities between the two mediums, creating what was perhaps the first true opera film.

The casting of renowned opera star Geraldine Farrar was more than just a publicity stunt. Screen acting was still in development, but opera acting – which is similar in that plot and character must primarily revealed visually through gesture and presence – had been going for centuries. Farrar fits right in on the screen, giving a realistic performance with a touch of dynamic dramatics – the style that De Mille favoured and that was central to his silent era work.

Farrar apparently enjoyed the freedom of not being so constrained by the music, and being able to act in her own time. However, De Mille's Carmen is still very much an adaptation of Georges Bizet's opera, rather than Prosper Merimee's novel. It not only follows the opera's libretto more closely than it does the original text, certain key sequences do appear to have been staged to fit Bizet's music – in particular the final climactic scene. Funnily enough, when Raoul Walsh made his Carmen the same year, he deliberately based it on the novel, not the opera, as Fox could not afford the hefty fee for the rights to the libretto. Sadly Walsh's version, which he goes into some detail about in his autobiography, is lost.

In Carmen we can also see the De Mille style which made his silent films so watchable was really beginning to mature. One of the best things about his silent pictures is the sparseness of the intertitles. Not only are they used purely when necessary, De Mille also ensures they are spaced out we are never bombarded with them. Whereas many silent films might have a title when a character asks a question, followed a few seconds later by another title giving the response, with De Mille each title stands alone. If two characters are talking to each other, the majority of the conversation will be conveyed by gesture, expression and context. This means that the flow of each scene is not broken up. A good example is when Don Jose and Carmen are dancing in the tavern, Don Jose hears the bugler calling him back to his post, he is reluctant to go, but an officer persuades him. Whereas many other directors would have interrupted this sequence with two or three speech titles, De Mille credits the audience with the ability to be able to read the scene visually, which allows us to really watch the performances.

De Mille was also coming along in his handling of crowds scenes – the extras in the cigarette factory and the bullring look particularly naturalistic, although he perhaps needed a bit more practice and drawing the audience's eyes to the most important part of the frame. Another De Mille trademark makes an early appearance here too – the scene in which Carmen has her fortune read is shown with "Rembrandt lighting", that is with actors illuminated while that background is shrouded in darkness. This not only gives a moody atmosphere, it also isolates characters, really focusing us upon their performance.

Good as he was, De Mille was certainly also a rather pompous and pretentious figure, and it seems his contemporaries were already onto him. Charlie Chaplin's brilliant Burlesque on Carmen expertly skewers the seriousness of De Mille's vision (the parody is clearly based on this version, mimicking the sets, costumes and even some of the camera set ups). In his autobiography Walsh also talks about rushing out his version in order to upstage his rival (although he was a single day late). The self-important De Mille was probably more or less deserving of this derision, but he still made some great films. It is also interesting that De Mille, Walsh and Chaplin all took on Carmen at this time, as it was these three very different directors who would now take over from Griffith as being at the forefront of cinematic development.