FULL CARMEN Silent Movie France 1926 Raquel Meller, Fred Louis Lerch, Gaston Modot
Information on the Performance
- Work Title: Carmen
- Composer: Ernesto Halffter
- Libretto: Jacques Feyder Prosper Mérimée
- Venue & Opera Company: Studio France
- Recorded: 1926
- Type: Movie
- Singers: Raquel Meller, Fred Louis Lerch and Gaston Modot
- Conductor:
- Orchestra:
- Stage Director: Jacques Feyder, Lazare Meerson, Luis Buñuel
- Costume Designer:
Information about the Recording
- Format: Unknown
- Quality Video: 3 Audio:3
- Subtitles: nosubs
- Video Recording from: YouTube FULL VIDEO
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE
Carmen is a film adaptation of the novel of the same name by Prosper Mérimée , which Jacques Feyder made as a silent film in 1926 with Raquel Meller , Fred Louis Lerch and Gaston Modot in the leading roles for Les Films Albatros . He wrote the script himself based on the literary original from 1845. Luis Buñuel , who leans towards surrealism and was also an assistant director alongside Charles Spaak , plays a small role as a smuggler.
Plot
Don José, a young soldier, caught up in passion for the gypsy Carmen, leaves everything behind and first becomes a deserter and then a smuggler just to be close to her. In order to have the woman all to himself, he kills her lover Garcia. But Carmen, a free woman, is not loyal to him and leaves him for Lukas, a bullfighter, which drives José crazy and commits murder.
“Carmen knows neither the past nor the future, but lives exclusively in the here and now. Love means nothing to her, it’s just a fleeting whim. Their main characteristic is precisely the changeability that Don José detests most.” (Ulf Kjell Gür)
Background
Carmen was a production by the company Les Films Albatros, founded in 1919 by Russian exiles , around the producer Alexandre Kamenka and his production assistant Charles Barrois. It was released by Les Films Armor . Lazare Meerson created the stage design. Maurice Desfassiaux and Paul Parguel were responsible for the photography . The editing was done by Jacques Feyder, assisted by Henriette Caire . The costumes were designed by Vasily Shuchayev and Jeanne Lanvin . The title role was played by Spanish actress and singer Raquel Meller
The illustration music was written by the Spanish-Mexican composer and conductor Ernesto Halffter Escriche . A student of Manuel de Falla and Maurice Ravel , he avoided the leitmotif characterization of individual figures in favor of an atmosphere in impressionistic colors.
Carmen was first performed in Paris on November 5, 1926. In Germany the film was given the title “The White Gypsy Woman” and was announced as “a drama in 5 acts from the life of the Spanish bullfighters, with Raquel Meller in the title role” .
Carmen also ran across Europe in Denmark, Finland, Greece, Spain, Portugal and Poland. Overseas, the film was also shown in the United States and Brazil.
Quoted from Wikipedia