Carmen, Baby

Carmen, Baby is a 1967 erotic drama film produced and directed by Radley Metzger, based on the 1845 novella Carmen by Prosper Mérimée.

Premise
A liberated woman tempts a local police officer into a romantic entanglement with tragic consequences.

Reception
Carmen, Baby, according to one reviewer, was the beginning of Metzger's successful style in his later films: that is, adapting "a literary classic in a gorgeous European locale with high polish and a goodly helping of sophisticated sex and seduction." Film critic Jesse Vogel noted that the film is an example of Metzger's signature style, "cool, classy, distant, with a distinctively European sensibility". According to Gary Morris of Bright Lights Film Journal, Carmen was "well played" by Uta Levka; lighting and camerawork by Hans Jura was "first-rate". The New York Times wrote that the film had "a rather classy look" and that the performers were "attractive" and the setting "beautiful".

Legal issues
In the case of Rabe v. Washington, 405 U.S. 313 (1972), the Supreme Court of the United States decided that the manager of a drive-in movie theater could not be charged with obscenity for showing the film which was not wholly determined to be obscene, but only parts were, holding that the citizens of Washington State had no notice under the Sixth Amendment that the place where a film was shown was an element of the offense.

Popular culture
Wally Lamb mentioned the bottle dance scene from Carmen, Baby in his 2016 book I'll Take You There.