Gli amori di Carmen

Fresh on the heels of the mega hit Gilda and Rita going blonde in Then Lady from Shanghai producer Roy Cohn got his director (Charles Vidor) and stars (Rita Hayworth, Glenn Ford) back in the studio with this high brow opera story minus the music from Carmen. Denied of its lifeblood it is a colorfully dull re-working of the hit with Rita as alluring as ever and Glenn, hair dyed and curled looking uncomfortable and foolish as a Spanish soldier.

Vidor's drab direction fails to create much spark as his leads fail to re-capture the chemistry of Gilda. Victor Jory as the sadistic bandit Garcia and Margaret Wycherly as Old Crone are notable but minus the music it remains a colorful balloon with no air in it.

...And at the zenith of her 'love goddess' period. This films is a literal (and completely non-musical) version of the Carmen story. When Rita dances in the film (and she does dance!)-- she is always hidden from the camera/audience--as a way of saying: love goddess at work--no frills necessary. Even so, she makes Carmen truly naughty--so much so that you wonder that she lives as long as she does. Carmen is a woman with more than the necessary number of tragic flaws. Rita makes her beautiful and vibrant--but tragic nevertheless.

When the naive and honored soldier Don José Lizarabengoa (Glenn Ford) meets the promiscuous gypsy Carmen (Rita Hayworth), he is bewitched by her beauty in the beginning of his downfall. Don José becomes his lover disobeying superior orders and when his colonel surprises him with Carmen, he accidentally kills him becoming an outlaw. His doomed love leads Don José and Carmen to a tragic end.

"Carmen", a.k.a. "The Loves of Carmen", is a melodramatic love story based on the novel "Carmen" and a remake of Raoul Walsh´s 1927 version directed by Charles Vidor and with the top-notch beauty of Rita Hayworth to give credibility to the plot. The unhappy ending is predictable even for those that watch "Carmen" for the first time. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "Os Amores de Carmen" ("The Loves of Carmen")

Ah, too bad they don't make like these anymore! Beautiful, much-missed (by me!) old Technicolor helps to create both romantic, pristine 19th century Spain which never was and romantic, enchanting beauty of Carmen. She is gorgeous, entertaining and artificial with red hair (shouldn't it be dark?), red flowers and black mantilla. There is also sometimes delicious 1940's dialogue (by Helen Deutsch who also wrote great 1955 Cinderella movie Glass slipper). Carmen is a gypsy version of Scarlett O'Hara, rotten apple with no compassion to anyone - and she really likes to spit! - although it is easy to sympathize her desire not to give her heart to any of the supposedly innocent but actually brain-between-legs admirers around her. They offer shallow, "pure" love while being sex-obsessed, abusive boors: general hits his servant, Carmen's charms make every man to follow her like dog in heat, Carmen tells that wife-beating is rampant in village... Don't get me me wrong, Carmen needed good tongue-lashing, but good and evil are really blurring in this extremely well-made (thanks to virtues of old studio system!) melodrama.

There are times when RITA HAYWORTH, with her flashing eyes, heady mane of tresses and way with castanets and Spanish dances, amply fills the role of Carmen in THE LOVES OF CARMEN. She captures the flirtatious moods and stormy temperament without any trouble at all, and yet somehow every ravishing close-up reminds us that she has just been all glammed up by the make-up artist, every brush on her lips and hair and brows just given the royal Hollywood glamor treatment. Her glamor is so distracting that it renders her Carmen unrealistic, even though she certainly has the temperament to go with the part.

GLENN FORD is somber, stalwart and rugged enough as Don Jose but it doesn't seem like ideal casting. He looks uncomfortable in much of the early footage and only comes to life when he has killed a man and must spend the rest of the film on flight as a bandit and desperado in the rugged mountains. His performance strengthens and his love/hate relationship with Carmen is, for the most part, quite believable.

But some pseudo-Spanish music in the background score with a hint of Bizet would have been a wise approach to scoring the film. And giving Rita more than a couple of fiery dances would have been a smarter idea. As it is, her dancing moments are when she most completely captures the spirit of Carmen.

It's entertaining, in a lumbering sort of way--not exactly the most well paced version of the story. Hayworth is gorgeous to look at with a peaches and cream complexion that fairly glows in Technicolor, but all of her close-ups remind us that she is The Love Goddess being given the high gloss glamor treatment by the studio that made her a star.

But, reservations aside, for fans of Hayworth and Ford, this is a must see.