Carmen: From Silent Film to MTV (Critical Studies 24) (Critical Studies)

Since Prosper Mérimée and Georges Bizet (with his librettists Meilhac and Halévy) brought the figure of the Spanish Carmen to prominence in the nineteenth century an astonishing eighty or so film versions of the story have been made. This collection of essays gathers together a unique body of scholarly critique focused on that Carmen narrative in film. It covers the phenomenon from a number of aspects: cultural studies, gender studies, studies in race and representation, musicology, film history, and the history of performance. The essays take us from the days of silent film to twenty-first century hip-hop style, showing, through a variety of theoretical and historical perspectives that, despite social and cultural transformations—particularly in terms of gender, sexuality and race—remarkably little has changed in terms of basic human desires and anxieties, at least as they are represented in this body of films. The conception of Carmen's independent sexuality as a source of danger both to men (and occasionally women) and to respectable society has been a constant. Nor has sexual and ethnic otherness lost its appeal. On the other hand, the corpus of Carmen films is more than a simple recycling of stereotypes and each engages newly with the social and cultural issues of their time. Since Prosper Merimee and Georges Bizet (with his librettists Meilhac and Halevy) brought the figure of the Spanish Carmen to prominence in the nineteenth century an astonishing eighty or so film versions of the story have been made. This collection of essays gathers together a unique body of scholarly critique focused on that Carmen narrative in film. It covers the phenomenon from a number of aspects: cultural studies, gender studies, studies in race and representation, musicology, film history, and the history of performance. The essays take us from the days of silent film to twenty-first century hip-hop style, showing, through a variety of theoretical and historical perspectives that, despite social and cultural transformations-particularly in terms of gender, sexuality and race-remarkably little has changed in terms of basic human desires and anxieties, at least as they are represented in this body of films. The conception of Carmen's independent sexuality as a source of danger both to men (and occasionally women) and to respectable society has been a constant. Nor has sexual and ethnic otherness lost its appeal. On the other hand, the corpus of Carmen films is more than a simple recycling of stereotypes and each engages newly with the social and cultural issues of their time.--Amazon.com Introduction / Ann Davies -- Space, Time And Gender In The Film D'art Carmen Of 1910 / Nicholas Till -- Geraldine Farrar And Cecil B. Demille: The Effect Of Opera On Film And Film On Opera In 1915 / Gilliam B. Anderson -- Carmen And Early Cinema: The Case Of Jacques Feyder (1926) / Winifred Woodhull -- Shadow And Substance: Reiniger's Carmen Cuts Her Own Capers / Harriet Margolis -- A Carmenesque Dietrich In The Devil Is A Woman: Erotic Scenarios, Modern Desires And Cultural Differences Between The Usa And Spain / Hilaria Loyo -- Rehispanicizing Carmen: Cultural Reappropriations In Spanish Cinema / José F. Colmeiro -- Putting The Blame On Carmen: The Rita Hayworth Version / Peter William Evans -- Screen Politics: Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones / Nelly Furman -- The Dissonant Refrains Of Jean-luc Godard's Prénom Carmen / Amy Herzog -- Carlos Saura's Carmen: Hybridity And The Inescapable Cliché / André Lema-hincapié -- Cinematic Carmen And The 'oeil Noir' / Jeremy Tambling -- The Turbulet Movement Of Forms: Rosi's Postmodern Carmen / Mary P. Wood -- Carmen As Perennial Fusion: From Habanera To Hip-hop / Susan Mcclary. Edited By Chris Perriam And Ann Davies. Includes Bibliographical References And Index. The Film d'Art Carmen of 1910 was one of a number of films in which the Film d'Art company sought to give cultural status to the new medium of film through the high-art connotations of opera, effecting a natural transference of the melodramatic stage-style of opera to the newly evolving dramatic language of silent film.