Carmen
Cast & Crew
Raoul A. Walsh
Theda Bara
Einar Linden
Carl Harbaugh
James A. Marcus
Elsie Macleod
Film Details
Technical Specs
Synopsis
Don Jose, a young Spanish soldier, visits his aged mother and his sweetheart Michaela in his small village. Later in Córdoba he meets Carmen, an alluring tobacco stripper, who ignores other soldiers' calls as she tries to interest Don Jose. After Don Jose arrests Carmen for slashing another woman in the tobacco factory, she kisses him and gets him to allow her to escape. Don Jose is court-martialed and imprisoned, after which he kills Captain Morales in a duel provoked when Morales catches him embracing Carmen. After Carmen helps Don Jose escape to the Andalusian mountains, he joins her gypsy friends and becomes an outlaw murderer, while their love affair flourishes. She grows restless, however, and goes to Seville where she deserts Don Jose for the famous toreador Escamillo. Don Jose returns home to be with his mother as she dies. He escapes from officers twice and returns to Seville. During a bullfight, Don Jose stabs Carmen, who the previous evening had her death foretold. After she dies smiling at Escamillo, Don Jose madly rides his horse over a cliff.
Director
Raoul A. Walsh
Cast
Theda Bara
Einar Linden
Carl Harbaugh
James A. Marcus
Elsie Macleod
Fay Tunis
E. De Varny
Joseph P. Green
Crew
Film Details
Technical Specs
Quotes
Trivia
Notes
An opera by Georges Bizet was based on the same source. The film had its premiere on October 31, 1915 at the Academy of Music in New York City. According to the 1918 MPSD, scenarist Isabel M. Johnston worked on this film in some capacity. The film was printed and colored by the Standard Filmprint Corp. Spanish artist Edward Velasquez was brought from Seville to supervise the technical and architectural details of the sets for the Spanish cities built for the film. Colonel Antonio Bravo of the Spanish army drilled the actors playing dragoons. According to a news item, a band of real gypsies and an Andalusian bull from Madrid appeared in the film. Raoul Walsh, in his autobiography, wrote that the bull came from Teaneck, NJ, that newsreel footage of bullfights was used, that the actor playing the toreador was trained by a real matador named Valverde, and that he got the idea to make the film after he read about the planned DeMille film of Carmen, which Walsh hoped his film could beat to the theaters. Although both films were released on November 1, 1915, both also had earlier premieres. According to a modern source, Marie de Beneditto and Lillian Hathaway were also in the film. Raoul Walsh directed a 1927 film, also produced by the Fox Film Corp., entitled Loves of Carmen, starring Dolores del Rio. (See AFI Catalog of Feature Films, 1921-30; F2.3270.) Information concerning other films taken from or inspired by the story and opera of Carmen is included in the notes to the 1915 film version of Carmen produced by the Jesse L. Lasky Feature Play Co. (See above.)
