If film as an entertainment medium ever had to defend its existence in some sort of trial, I’d gladly serve as defense attorney if only to present Gene Kelly’s choreography as Exhibit A. Few visions in cinema history have offered as much pure joy as Kelly’s alternately graceful and exuberant dance steps; the fact that film can preserve those steps for posterity is reason enough to cherish its existence. When Gene Kelly dances, you remember what the pure magic of the movies is all about.
Brigadoon is not the finest piece of work Kelly ever did. It’s not even Kelly’s finest work with director Vincente Minelli (that would be An American in Paris), nor is it Minelli’s finest work with a Lerner and Loewe musical (that would be Gigi). Brigadoon is a simple, appealing musical fantasy with that special Kelly touch. Kelly plays a New Yorker named Tommy Albright, on a hunting vacation in Scotland with his hard-drinking pal Jeff ( Van Johnson). When the pair gets lost, they stumble into a village called Brigadoon that seems to have been trapped in time. And in fact, it has: an enchantment causes the town to appear on the face of the earth only once every century for a single day. This presents a problem when Tommy falls for a local girl named Fiona ( Cyd Charisse), raising the prospect of the ultimate long-distance romance.
As a basic story, it’s pretty simple stuff – a love story seasoned with Johnson’s effective comic relief and a sub-plot about a disenchanted Brigadooner (Hugh Laing) who threatens the spell with a desire to leave the town. The tunes are pleasant Lerner and Loewe stuff, highlighted by “Almost Like Being in Love” and “The Heather on the Hill,” but nothing here is of the showstopper variety. As MGM musicals of the era go, this one is generally just … well, nice.
But when Kelly and his feet take centre stage, Brigadoon offers genuine enchantment. Whether gliding through Technicolor meadows with Charisse or bounding solo in romantic intoxication, Kelly in motion is poetry. His dance sequences also provide a remarkable cinematic shorthand. In a conventional narrative, it can seem silly when two people swoon for each other after ten minutes together. When those ten minutes are spent in a Gene Kelly ballet, the emotion proves contagious. Musical romance in a Gene Kelly film isn’t just more fun to watch; it actually feels more authentically romantic.
Minelli does occasionally get in Kelly’s way, editing a sequence such that it loses its flow. Brigadoon isn’t the smoothest of narratives, tacking on a late New York-set sequence that really could have used a pre-Scotland bookend. There’s nothing groundbreaking or spectacular about Brigadoon, but there is plenty of the force of nature that is Gene Kelly. And when you’re talking about a man who makes you happy that movies exist, that’s more than enough.
