Brigadoon

My retrospective of Gene Kelly films ends with 1954's Brigadoon, not that Gene Kelly's career ended then. He went on to make many more films, but the kind of musical that was his bailiwick was no longer, and much of his work ahead was for television and just being Gene Kelly.

Film musicals themselves changed, too. For Kelly, he was really in the right place at the right time, as the joyous, frothy MGM musicals of the '40s and early '50s would soon give way to the lumbering, road show musicals that would dominate the scene for the next two decades. Taking the cue from Broadway musicals, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and the one adapted here, film musicals were now epic and magnificent in scope. Some of them would be very good, but something was also lost.

Brigadoon, adapted from the musical by Lerner and Loewe, is a pretty but ultimately empty exercise. Two American tourists, Kelly and Van Johnson, are hunting in the Scottish Highlands when they stumble across a village not on the map. It is full of Tartan and kilt-wearing villagers, and the place looks like it is Scottish by way of Disneyland. Kelly becomes enchanted by the place, especially by Fiona (Cyd Charisse). He would like to stay, but is told that the village only appears once every 100 years, after a minister asked for a miracle that would keep his home from changing with the times.

As it happens, the film was shot on a sound stage, so the misty scenery is Hollywood magic (the producers did look at filming on location, but the weather was not friendly to their desires). Shot in Cinemascope, it is lovely, but there's something missing in the film. I've never seen the stage version, but it feels like everyone is going through the motions here. Johnson, as the acerbic, cynical friend, has all the best lines, while Kelly and Charisse's romance seems limp and uninspired.

The show is famous for at least one song, "Almost Like Being in Love," and has several songs with a Scottish flavor. If you like Riverdance or things like that, this may be to your liking.