by Hal Erickson
synopsis
Though it retains the basic plotline and the famous Bizet score, this Argentine film is actually a parody of the immortal opera Carmen. Nini Marshall plays a dressmaker who dreams that she's Carmen after suffering a blow on the head. While everyone around her plays straight, Marshall lays waste to the opera's intensely dramatic structure, performing the sort of broad double-takes and pratfalls that one might expect of Martha Raye. Adding to the fun is an extended takeoff of the recent Tyrone Power movie vehicle Blood and Sand. Carmen was made in response to the recent (and successful) Cantinflas parody of The Three Musketeers.
