Though not as original in conception as Joseph Losey's Don Giovanni, which was also produced by Daniel Toscan du Plantier and conducted by Lorin Maazel, this wonderfully performed and staged version of Bizet's masterpiece is one of the great opera movies, the work of the distinguished Italian realist Francesco Rosi, director of Salvatore Giuliano and Three Brothers. Using the spoken dialogue of the original stage production, it is shot entirely on Andalucian locations with a magnificent central trio: the alluring, powerfully confident Julia Migenes, a sort of dark-haired Gypsy Streisand, as Carmen; Plácido Domingo, a painfully vulnerable (if perhaps slightly too old) Don José; and Ruggero Raimondo (Losey's Don Giovanni) as a wiry, proud Escamillo, who has the pained eyes of a man long used to facing death in the afternoon. Knowing that the ultimate emotional and psychological force comes from the music and singing, Rosi has created a convincing geographical and social framework for the action, and his cinematographer, Pasqualino de Santis, captures the sense of the hot, dusty, disturbingly amoral south. It's accompanied by two documentaries on the film's making.