Brigadoon, post the first: darker than it looks (#SFWApro)

One of last week’s time-travel movies was BRIGADOON (1954) but I thought I’d save it to discuss in conjunction with this AV Club post (which I’ll do in part two)

Based on the hit Broadway musical, the opening has American hunters Gene Kelly and cynical buddy Van Johnson, while hunting in Scotland, stumble across Brigadoon, a village that isn’t on the map (given this is a fantasy, the opening map reading scene made me think of Blair Witch Project). Everything in the village seems to be two centuries out of date, not that Kelly cares once he meets pretty Fiona (Cyd Charisse). Though he is puzzled why she’s so terrified of going very far from the village …

Eventually the guys learn the story. Two centuries earlier, the village parson, troubled by the influx of “witches”—actually, as one villager explains, just people bearing modern, ungodly ideas—into the neighborhood, prayed to have his village safe from such corrupting thoughts. His wish was granted: now the village only materializes one day in every century, so the outside world passes it by (for them it’s like a single night had passed).  A minor quibble of mine is that as this is only the second day, it’s surprising how fast they’ve all accepted it.

Fortunately, Kelly learns, it’s possible for an outsider to stay in Brigadoon. Unfortunately the reverse is not true: if any of the villagers leave, Brigadoon vanishes forever. One young man, bitter at losing the woman he loves to another, decides to put an end to it all by leaving. Van Johnson accidentally shoots him but subsequently convinces Kelly that moving to a magical village is batshit crazy. They return to New York, leaving Brigadoon to vanish. A few weeks later, a desperate Kelly returns to the village … and it reappears, magically, so that he and Fiona can be together (they did foreshadow this so it’s not a cheat).

The movie isn’t up to the stage show (cutting the raucous “My Mother’s Wedding Day” number was a crime) but it’s still a charmer (I was definitely in the mood for a glossy MGM musical when I watched it). However, I can’t deny it has a very dark side too. I sympathize with Tommy, the man who can’t have the woman he loves, can’t leave for Edinburgh (he has aspirations for education) but must stay in town, forever. I have more sympathy when his father grumbles after Tommy’s death how much shame he feels at the boy’s “ingratitude” for the parson’s gift. Which Tommy, of course, never asked for. None of them did, though nobody else apparently has a problem.

And that’s an underlying flaw for me, the assumption the parson did a good thing in saving the village from modernity. That being pure and traditional and free of all the horrors of modern life is a blessing, with no downside, and that lots of modern people would love to live somewhere like that (which in fairness is quite possibly true). The point is driven home with scenes near the end (added for the movie) set in a New York bar, showing the shallowness and hollowness of modern life, in contrast with the hearty happiness of Brigadoon (it is, I should add, a very well done scene).

The end result? I like the musical, but I don’t love it the way I do Singin’ in the Rain or Grease. Which leads into my next post …