Carmen (1909)

This picturesque narrative of Spain, from the magic pen of the brilliant writer, Posper Merimee, and set to music by the immortal Bizet, is the subject now presented in film d'art form. Madame Lepanto as Carmen, typifies the description of the Spanish girl. Don Jose Navarro, a Basque, and a Christian of the ancient type, had enlisted in the cavalry regiment of Almanza and was on duty at the tobacco factory in Seville where four or five hundred girls were employed in rolling cigars. As the bell rings for the girls to return to their work the young men watch them as they pass. One, a handsome, merry-looking girl, the beauty of the place and known to all as "La Carmencita," struts by the line of admiring men. Don Jose being a quiet sort of fellow, is not much attracted at first by the saucy-looking beauty, who, not accustomed to being ignored, asked Navarro to give her the chain he is fashioning out of some brass wire. Navarro replied that he could not, as he was making it for a certain purpose, whereupon she took the flower from her month and struck him in the face with it, much to the amusement of all the others. As Carmen passed on. Navarro, when no one was looking, stooped and picked up the flower and put it in his pocket. Two or three hours after this incident a porter rushed into the guard house saying that one of the factory girls had been murdered. With several of his comrades Don Jose hurried to the factory, where he beheld a wounded woman lying on the floor and recognized Carmen in the grasp of five or six of her companions. When the wounded girl beheld the soldiers, she accused Carmen, who stood with a defiant expression on her face. Don Jose's duty was plain: he must arrest the girl. So taking her gently by the arm (she being a woman) he bound her hands behind her and placed her under arrest. The wily gypsy asked her for her mantilla and then started off with Don Jose. On the way she turned and asked him in a childlike tone where he was taking her, Don Jose, determined to do his duty, answered that he was taking her to prison. Upon which she begged and pleaded with him to have mercy. Soon, therefore, when they come to a narrow lane, with one throat of her tiny hand she gives Don Jose a push, and he obligingly falls back and his prisoner hopping over his prostrate body regains her liberty. Navarro is compelled to return to the guard house without succeeding in locating her, and consequently is reduced to the ranks and imprisoned for a month. While he is in prison his keeper comes to him one day with a loaf of bread, which he said was sent him by his cousin. Navarro knows very well that he has no cousin in Seville and immediately suspects that Carmen is responsible for the loaf of bread. As he attempts to cut it his knife strikes something hard and he finds that a small English file has been placed in the dough before it was baked. He also finds two pastries with which Carmen evidently intended him to purchase a civilian's coat, and also a note from Carmen telling him to meet her at Lillas Pastia's. Thanks to the gypsy girl's thoughtfulness, Navarro escapes and finds his love waiting for him at the old gypsy eating house. Well, the end of it all is that Carmen has decided to persuade Navarro to join a band of smugglers. At first he would not listen to it, but finally out of love for the girl he consented. For his devotion, however, the fickle beauty repays him by flirting with other admirers, thus making Don Jose most unhappy. She had at this time become acquainted with a very handsome and skillful picador named Lucas. One day one of his comrades told him that he saw Carmen in a shop with Lucas and Navarro became inflamed and questioned the girl, who confessed her love for the picador, at the same time tearing off her finger a ring Don Jose had given her. The latter, unable any longer to control his rage, strikes her a deadly blow with his knife and then remains with arm uplifted as if turned to stone as he gazes down on the huddled up little figure of the woman he had so passionately loved.