Carmen Jones is Otto Preminger’s daring, audacious, one-of-a-kind film musical, a Black opera based on Oscar Hammerstein’s Broadway version of the Bizet classic set in the American South during wartime. In this sultry tale of burning passion and doomed romance, the electrifying Dorothy Dandridge (who became the first person of color to receive a Best Actress Oscar nomination) stars as Carmen Jones, the restless and ultimately destructive siren who toils as an employee at a parachute factory, though she yearns to live “the good life.” Harry Belafonte plays Joe, a young, straight-arrow military officer on a Southern military base during WWII. Joe is set to attend flight school and marry his hometown sweetheart, the virginal Cindy Lou (Olga James), when fate has him cross paths with the tempestuous Carmen, sending him down the road to ruin as he is swept up in Carmen’s carnal anarchy and her all-consuming desire to escape her unhappy life.