Regarded solely as a contribution to international relations, the effect of "Carmen" is considerable. And Italian-made film with French dialogue and English captions, the over-all result is admirably suited for a showing at Flushing Meadows and the well-worn story should be only a slight drawback. But disregarding its cosmopolitan nature and chalking up the well-ballyhooed sex angle to an over-zealous press agent, there remains little to click any castanets over. Though the New York Times blushingly called it "as lusty a picture as you could wish," Les Brown had a better term a few years ago. Down at the Old South right now, "Bizet Has His Day."

Bordering on Spain--as well as on the sombre the picture canters through the traditional Prosper Merimee story at a moderate pace and good style. Those who go for the music will be disappointed, for the operation selections are poorly played and largely omitted, but those who go for other things (such as Viviane Romance) will not be downcast. Playing the title role, the smolders through almost every scene and in places performs very well (or very badly, depending on your moral inclinations.) Her emotional abandon and her variety of facial expressions make the captions largely unnecessary, and the translation are quite idiomatic, but at the times when captions were essential for unscrambling French blasphemy or innuendo, they were succinctly reduced to "! ! !" Expressive, but not very lucid.

The action sequences in "Carmen" are well done and the continuity--usually hampered when a foreign picture is cut for export--is good. Minor sketches of a fortune-telling gypsy and a one-eyed bandit are among the picture's high-spots, but the high-spots are few. The bitter revenge that motivated Merimee's unhappy soldier, and his fatal attachment for Carmen, are hinted at here but never realistically portrayed, and thus to main thread of the plot is expressed more by subtle implication than by forceful story-telling. But judging from the advertisements, subtle implications are what the public wants, and whether Boston likes it or not, that is what they get. Freely translated, "Carmen" is full of "! ! !" and not much else.