What can one say about Brigadoon? It is a Hollywood musical which has vociferous admirerers, but I've always found it too twee for its own good. It is big and bloated, and full of blarney. Yes, it's set in Scotland and blarney comes from Ireland, but it's the only word that fits this melange of myth and crass stupidity.
Brigadoon is a village which comes to life for only one day a century. The rest of the time the village and its people disappear, to dream their silent dreams. On its latest one day of the century, the village has the misfortune to be found by two wandering Americans, Tommy (Gene Kelly) and his drunkard companion, Jeff (Van Johnson).
Now comes a spoiler. Don't read on, or you'll risk finding out too much (or just enough) about this dog of a movie.
Tommy falls in love with the beautiful village girl Fiona (Cyd Charisse). But he must return to New York, to his empty life and even emptier fiancee. And that is where the film should have ended. But instead, we find that the New York life now is too much for Tommy, and he returns to Scotland. Miraculously, the village returns again, awakened by the power of love. And he again finds his Fiona. The end.
The score is by Lerner and Loewe, who gave us the sensational musicals My Fair Lady and Gigi, and although this musical's score doesn't reach that level, it's fine enough.
The problem is that in this movie Gene Kelly takes himself seriously. Very, very seriously, as was his unfortunate wont. Gene Kelly was a great actor until given his head. Given too much leeway, he was determined to prove that his hoofing was great art.
Fred Astaire achieved just that with no effort at all - he proved it with his ineffable grace and charm. Gene, who was at his best in For Me and My Gal and Three Little Words, should have followed Fred's example and not tried quite so hard.
Van Johnson is crude and boorish. Cyd Charisse is as beautiful and stylish as ever, and is quite wasted in this empty, very boring musical. It's not one of Hollywood's greatest moments!
This is a shocking transfer. It is widescreen only, without the benefit of anamorphic enhancement. The image is unduly grainy, with muddy colour and low resolution.
It looks in fact as if a poor VHS dub from a worn print has been copied to DVD. It's not good enough nowadays, when we see how brilliant DVD transfers of films of this vintage can be. Many of the best releases have come from this same company, making it astonishing that it allowed its own standards to drop so sharply for this release. The image is in NTSC format, which means that people with receivers that can deal only with PAL can be spared this travesty of a transfer.
The sound is a little better than the appalling image; it's a workmanlike two-channel stereo which is decent enough in delivering us clear dialogue and generally clear musical numbers.
But companies such as 20th Century Fox have shown us just how brilliant soundtracks of the great Hollywoood musicals can sound when properly refurbished and reformatted in 5.1, as witness their Carousel (Region 4) and Oklahoma! (Region 1) releases. Sadly there has been no effort put into this release.