Stars: Harry Belafonte, Dorothy Dandridge, Olga James, Pearl Bailey, Diahann Carroll

Director: Otto Preminger

Summary: Contemporary version of the opera by Georges Bizet with the characters changing from nineteenth century Spaniards to World War II Afro-Americans in a Southern military base. Carmen Jones is desired by many of the men but she is after Joe. However, he is engaged to Cindy Lou...

Screen version of the musical "Carmen Jones," which adapted Bizet's opera "Carmen" for an all-black cast. Army soldier Joe (Harry Belafonte) falls in love with Carmen (Dorothy Dandridge in an Oscar nominated role), a beautiful and seductive factory worker. When he kills his sergeant during a fight, the ill-fated lovers flee to escape the police. But Carmen's faithlessness and selfishness eventually surface, and she rejects Joe for another man. But he can't let her go, and his obsessive love ultimately leads to tragedy.

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Bombastic, pretentious and narcissistic, Led Zeppelin's The Song Remains the Sameis also one of the best concert films of the 1970s, capturing the greatest rock band of the decade in full flight at Madison Square Gardens in 1973. The notorious "fantasy sequences" punctuate the musical action but don't, fortunately, interrupt it. Playing true to their self-indulgent rock &roll personas, each band member has his own segment, as does legendary larger-than-life manager Peter Grant. Only John Bonham's is reasonably down-to-earth: during his mammoth drum solo ("Moby Dick") he is seen driving his custom car, his Harley chopper, and a drag racer at Santa Pod, as well as inspecting bulls and doing a bit of building work. Well, what else would a working-class lad from Birmingham do with his millions? Elsewhere, John Paul Jones is a demented Phantom of the Opera with an unfeasibly large organ ("No Quarter"); Robert Plant is a quasi-Arthurian knight errant rescuing a suitable rock-chick damsel in distress ("The Song Remains the Same/Rain Song"); while Aleister Crowley acolyte Jimmy Page goes in for sorcery and mysticism as he encounters the wizard from the cover of Led Zep IV ("Dazed &Confused"). But the real magic is the onstage footage: Page wields his Gibson Les Paul as if he is indeed enchanted (the violin bow becomes his magician's wand in "Dazed &Confused"), while Plant preens and prowls his way around the stage, the very image of the rock idol; and quite how Jones and Bonham managed to be such a behemoth of a rhythm section is still a mystery. For all its many faults, this remains an essential document of an era when rock dinosaurs still walked the earth.

On the DVD: No extra features to speak of at all, which is extremely disappointing given the wealth of archive material concerning the band and this movie that must be available. The picture and sound are respectable without being exceptional. --Mark Walker

Aspect Ratio:	2.35 Wide Screen
Main Language:	English
Region:	Region 2
Special Features:	Theatrical Trailer, Otto Preminger Dorothy Dandridge Harry Belafonte Saul Bass Biographies
Year:	1954
Release Date:	March 29, 2004
Runtime:	105 minutes
Certification:
Catalogue Number:	B F I V D 611
Keywords:	Music, Jones, Films, Carmen, Wide, Screen, Shows, Performing, Musicals, Arts
Genre:	Music/Performing Arts