Carmen (Blu-ray)

Geraldine Farrar stars as a beautiful gypsy who uses her irresistible charms to seduce a faithful military guard (Wallace Reid) so that a band of smugglers can penetrate his stronghold. More closely patterned on Prosper Merimee's text than Bizet's opera, DeMille's CARMEN liberates the romantic fableof passion and betrayal from the confines of a single stage, spreading it across the Spanish countryside (as rendered on the story cliffs of northern California) with the visual finesse that characterizes the director's early influential work.