Vincent Minnelli: Brigadoon

Another charming and criticism-proof musical from Vincent Minnelli. To find faults in this film is to not get the film at the most fundamental level. I thought it was less successful artistically than the two other musicals by Minnelli that I saw recently. The dances aren't as elegantly choreographed and also not as expressive or witty as in The Bandwagon (the "dancing in the dark" sequence or the "girl hunt ballet") and the songs never quite make you feel bursting into singing yourself as the songs in Meet Me in St Louis do (I am still humming "the trolley song" two weeks after I saw it).


Wikipedia tells me that Brigadoon was originally a German fairy tale but apparently so that the post-war audiences wouldn't be offended the guys who wrote the stage musical based on the story changed the setting to Scotland. It made sense because in popular culture at least Scotland has this image of being a very idyllic, rustic place where people speak in strange accents and use very curious sounding words and phrases. Two tourists (played by Gene Kelly and Van Johnson as his wisecracking buddy) from New York City no less, go on a hunting expedition to Scotland and get lost. While wandering through the forest on the highlands they come across the village Brigadoon which is not on the map. As they later learn the village comes to life only once in hundred years and only for one day. Things happen, as they do in fairy tales, very quickly (love at first sight etc). Gene Kelly falls in love with a pretty Scottish lass played by the beautiful Cyd Chariss (who died a few months back). But at the end of the day our hero can't quite make up his mind to live in Brigadoon forever and returns to the dreary New York City with its dull, phony, noisy and materialistic life. But as everybody knows the power of true love can never be underestimated even when it comes to miracles so the film ends on a happy surprise note.

I don't think there can be any argument that the isolationist fantasy presented in the film is deeply reactionary. People in Brigadoon believe in the superiority of their own ways of life and they don't want anything to do with the outside world and they are happy and smug about their isolation. When one of them wants to escape he is condemned not just because it will spell the doom for everyone but because he is not able to see possibility of happiness in Brigadoon's culture and beliefs. The other part of the story - that one has to suspend rational judgments and be willing to believe in miracles doesn't trouble me because it can be interpreted metaphorically and this is exactly what makes great fairy tales so resonant, even "poetic" in their effect, if not in their execution or storytelling. I also loved the New York City sequence. It very succintly and powerfully showed how empty such lives really are (though I would say that for me life in Brigadoon would be a little dreary too).

The songs are quite good here as well though not the same as Meet Me in St Louis. I loved the "Waiting for my dearie" song in which Cyd Charisse sings about how she would rather remain an old maid than get married to someone who is not her true love. One feels like resisting such unbridled display of naivete, romanticism and hope but can't help getting swayed by the overall effect. Two other songs "Go Home with Bonnie Jean" and "Heather on the Hill" are also quite good and later also has some good romantic dancing. The Scotland of course is not the real Scotland but created on the sets. I doubt if the real Scotland looks like the one presented here but that again is missing the point of the film. In most of the scenes the background does retain the illusion of depth which is all that is needed. Parts of it are more like a ride in theme park but like most fairy tales it does have a core of truth beneath all the glitterings of its artificial surface.