Harlem Blues

by Rebecca Thomas
Thu, 10 Jan 2008 at 9:32 PM

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Before "Love Jones" (1997), the late 1990s urban romance that made reciting your notebook of weepy verse at spoken word nights a must-do, there was "Carmen Jones" (1954), perhaps among the first major motion pictures to capture black love onscreen. Director Otto Preminger's take on Bizet's opera "Carmen" was retooled and relocated to 1950s Harlem. The action begins on a Southern military base, where Joe, played by a young and strapping Harry Belafonte, falls hard for Carmen, the feisty young woman he is charged with guarding. Once firmly under her spell, Joe goes AWOL, accompanying Carmen back to her old stomping grounds on 125th Street. It's obvious things can't possibly turn out well — as Joe kills the sergeant sent to return Joe to his military post. Meanwhile, Carmen, played with pluck by Dorothy Dandridge, can barely keep her attention on Joe, what with all the dapper uptown suitors who have come calling. More than 50 years after Mr. Preminger shook Hollywood by presenting a feature film with an all-black cast, the movie still rings a radical note — not to mention the movie's great campiness. The Academy Award-winning Halle Berry, who has, in a sense, become her generation's Dandridge (both share a biracial lineage, Cleveland roots, and love lives that bear the mark of the mythic "tragic mulatto") has not led a romantic drama/comedy in which she is cast alongside a black leading man, since 1992's "Boomerang" with Eddie Murphy. Dandridge was nominated for the best actress Oscar for her role in the film, and famously dated the flick's hot-tempered director. On Friday, Film Forum screens this gem as part of its Otto Preminger retrospective. 209 W. Houston St., between Sixth and Seventh avenues, 212-727-8110, $10.50 general, $5.50 for seniors weekdays before 5 p.m., $5.50 children.

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