Mark Griffin by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: General, Film & Video, Performing Arts, Motion Picture Producers and Directors, Minnelli; Vincente, Entertainment & Performing Arts, United States, Motion Picture Producers and Directors - United States, Biography & Autobiography, Individual Director, Biography
ISBN: 9780786720996
Publisher: Da Capo Press
Published: 2010-03-09T06:00:00+00:00

Minnelli would later praise Lerner’s fantasy as “ingenious” and the score as “melodic and haunting.” However, according to Gene Kelly, Vincente was never in love with Brigadoon, and this seems to be borne out in the claustrophobic, airless feeling that permeates parts of the film. Occasionally, the musical manages to free itself from its soundstage shackles and soars. “The Heather on the Hill” is a glorious sequence, which succeeds because of the gracefulness of Kelly and Charisse and the inspired arrangements of Conrad Salinger.

At first glance, Brigadoon appears to contain all of the makings of a Minnelli classic: It’s a musical in which a restless soul traverses the pathways between an unsatisfying everyday existence and a far more enchanting dream world. Yet, a frustrated Minnelli, a “curiously remote” Kelly, and the drudgery of repeating every shot a second time in the name of CinemaScope added up to a 108-minute disappointment for some observers. “I told him I thought it kind of sucked and particularly a lot of Vincente’s work,” Stone Widney says of a postscreening autopsy he conducted with Alan Jay Lerner. “It had lovely touches in various places but clumsy staging, though Alan didn’t want to hear that and I think he was probably kind of in denial about that. As long as the show gets on and it has big stars and it makes money, I think Alan felt that it was a success.”7

Fifty years after its initial release, Brigadoon is dismissed by some, championed by others. “I think Brigadoon is an underrated film,” says film and dance scholar Beth Genne:For one thing, I think that they were quite successful in transferring it to film. Some of the compositions are really beautiful, like the opening scene where the village comes back to life. . . . But I think there’s a prejudice against it because when [the stage show] first appeared, the sophisticated New York critics said—as they did with Oklahoma!—that it was corny. There was also this feeling that Brigadoon was “twee,” which means something that goes beyond cute. Like when you go to “Mrs. So and So’s Kozy Komfort Inn” and she’s got too many ribbons on everything and a few too many scented candles. . . . After awhile, you just can’t handle it. It’s overdone. I don’t think Brigadoon is overdone but it’s maybe just a little bit twee. But even so, there are some marvelous things in it.8

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