She'll break your heart and ruin your life — and you'll thank her for it.
Carmen is a French-Italian musical drama film directed by Christian-Jaque and starring Viviane Romance, Jean Marais, and Lucien Coëdel. It is a version of the famous opera. It was filmed in two versions, French and Italian, with the same screen cast but some different crew, and with Italian voices dubbed in on the Italian version, which have been munged together at IMDb. A third version, with English dubbed under the direction of British actor Noel Howlett, was made subsequently using one of the two (French or Italian) originals for the visual source.
Acting
Viviane Romance owns every frame as Carmen
Production
Twin-version production chaos, peak 1940s ambition
Director
Christian-Jaque
Viviane Romance
Carmen
Jean Marais
Don José
Lucien Coëdel
Garcia
Julien Bertheau
Lucas, le matador
Jean Brochard
Lillas-Pastia
Georges Tourreil
Dancaire
Adriano Rimoldi
Marquez, le lieutenant des Dragons / Marquez, il tenente dei Dragoni
Elli Parvo
Pamela
Marguerite Moreno
La gitane / La zingara
Bernard Blier
Remendado
Anna Arena
La dame dame dans la diligence
André Bervil
Un moine
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
This was shot twice simultaneously in French and Italian, then a third English dub — three films for the price of one operatic obsession.
Christian-Jaque was known for beautiful women in tragic stories; this cemented his reputation for making suffering look gorgeous.
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