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To me, this movie is perfection.

Memorable, crazy movie

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I adore Brigadoon.Won't quibble about the authenticity of the story, the sets, or the choreography. However inauthentic the movie may be, it WORKS. For me, it works better than any of MGM's other classics.The production is beautiful. The sets (however artificial) are beautiful. Kelly's choreography is beautiful. Cyd Charisse is BEAUTIFUL (honestly, my favorite woman in any musical, ever--masterful dance if I've ever seen it)."Heather on the Hill" is a highlight of musical cinema, period. Lovely song, spectacular dancing and choreography.The ending, however preposterous, still ranks among my favorites.

"Brigadoon" may be old hat to the cynical folks who don't believe in leprechauns, men wearing skirts and jumping over swords or the luck of the Irish or Scottish or anything about the Highlands. Down on MacConnachy Square, however, they do believe, and they've converted me. For every 100 years that this town sleeps, I'd long to find it, my own Shangri-La, wherever and whatever country it may be in.Lerner and Lowe had a couple of Broadway flops when they struck gold with this musical fantasy, and when MGM filmed it in Cinemascope in 1954, they couldn't have done it better. Yes, the scenery is obviously backdrops and plastic shrubbery planted everywhere to make it appear as the Scottish countryside. Yes, the story is slightly corny, but when the charm is so overwhelming, I'll take corn any day.Americans Gene Kelly and Van Johnson discover the mystical town of Brigadoon when they are lost in the highlands on a hunting trip, but like the visitors to Shangri-La in "Lost Horizon", they have mixed reactions to it. Kelly falls in love with it, most particularly the young Cyd Charisse, the dancing beauty he finds it difficult to be willing to be apart from. Through Charisse and the town elders, he learns the truth about the story as a wedding approaches for two of the townsfolk, but one of the brooding residents is determined to curse the village because of his love for the bride who chose another. Then, the Americans return to noisy Manhattan where voices from Brigadoon echo in Kelly's ears. He longs to find something that has disappeared into the mist and won't reappear for another 199 years, 11 months, 22 days, etc.We all long for a place in this world where we can settle into serenity and Brigadoon is for Gene Kelly that place. He dances to the "Heather on the Hill" and croons "Almost Like Being in Love" as if he has just discovered that he really is alive. Then, he joins in the festive dance with the groom to be (the energetic "I'll Go Home With Bonnie Jean") that even briefly has the cynical Johnson transfixed. But we each reach for our own destiny, and Johnson isn't interested in the far away world of Brigadoon.Colorfully made for the eyes, and a treat for the ears as well, "Brigadoon" is a sweet legend that shows if you love someone so very much, you can never really loose them. It's a sweet sentiment that you can't help but believing as this fantasy unfolds. Faithful to the Broadway vehicle, it only cut out a few musical numbers (most notably the comical "My Mother's Wedding Day") yet retained its focus on athletic choreography as part of the narrative of telling the story. Forget that there's a huge obvious line down the middle of the Scottish sky (where the backdrop was glued together) and just enjoy it for everything it is.

Some parts were slow. Things just seemed to drag on and on.Van Johnson didn't have much of a story, or much to do. He was being chased by one of the local man-hungry females, and he was mightily offended.Of course, Gene Kelly had the romantic lead part. Dancing with Cyd Charisse in the Heather on the Hill segment, collecting heather for the wedding, was just too smarmy IMO. They were getting too sensually/sexually close for having just met. I realize all the village single women were starved for affection, but this was a bit much. Fiona Campbell was just too pretty not to have tons of the local single men chasing her, BTW.The wedding dance was lovely, with the bride and groom leading off. Hugh Laing as the ticked off ex-suitor of Bonnie Jean was way too smoldering, with a hell-bent strange behavior and so self-destructive. That he jumped into the big dance scene and started almost manhandling Jean was weird, yet I was almost cheering him on to sweep her away out of there. I did feel sorry for Harry Beaton, and wish I could have seen more dancing from the great Hugh Laing.Gene Kelly's pants were way too tight. Ugh.

The bottom line in a review is, did you enjoy the movie? The next question is why, or why not? For me, the movie is OK, but not great. Why? The music is as good as it gets, the acting is good, the story line tugs at your heartstrings. Yet it generally falls a bit flat. This is the same puzzle that Bosley Crowther confronted in his New York Times review of 1954. He had two complaints: several of the key songs from the Broadway production were cut, and the dancing was too mechanistic:-- "But the dancing and the performance—well, we're afraid that it is in here that the life and the smoothness of the original have been perceptibly lost—which is odd, because the personable Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse have the lead dancing roles. Even so, their several individual numbers are done too slickly, too mechanistically. What should be wistful and lyric smack strongly of trickery and style. And the several ensemble dances—with the exception of the wild and fierce "The Chase," wherein the Scots pursue a fugitive from their village—seem as calculated as Rockette parades.It might be noted that Mr. Kelly has taken credit for the choreography. On the stage, it was by Agnes De Mille." --Re-examining "The Heather on the Hill" dance routine, I have to agree. It is a long ballet number that seems to be saying, "We've got good taste." If there had been a separate choreographer, rather than the lead dancer, it might have been easier for the director to identify and correct the weaknesses. Brigadoon, which opened in 1947, is one of the early modern musicals. Oklahoma! in 1943 is generally credited as being the first modern musical, which fully integrated song and dance with the story, without resorting to gimmicks like making one or more of the roles a singer/dancer, such as in Showboat or the Fred Astaire movies. Actually, you could make a case for "The Wizard of Oz" as being the first. The problem confronting these musicals is how do you retain some credibility when people start singing and dancing? With Rodgers and Hammerstein, they worked hard to make the dance numbers fit the characters and locale, so in Oklahoma! we have cowboy-style dancing. With How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, we get whimsical officer worker dance routines. In Brigadoon, we do get Scottish dance routines, and it is unlikely that one or two numbers, like Heather on the Hill, would deflate the whole show. But we see a problem that would sink Hello, Dolly!, which Gene Kelly would both direct and choreograph: There is too much emphasis on technique. Hiring a separate choreographer would have helped, but the studio was in a cost-cutting mode.Filming it entirely in a studio didn't help, given that Scotland was like one of the characters in the story. Wikipedia says the weather in Scotland was too unpredictable, but they had found a spot in California that could have been a stand-in. I think the realism of filming outside would have helped make this fantasy work. Omitting four songs may also have hurt character development. More depth to the story might have helped bring the village of Brigadoon alive for the viewer.Ultimately, I do not know why Brigadoon is a bit disappointing. But it is worth watching. And when you do, you need to make an extra effort to shelve disbelief because this is a fairy tale. The strength of the story is wanting to escape from the rat race of the modern world, something many have felt for a long time. But the problems in the world are not just due to society, but to troubled individuals, and there is no full escape. In this regard, Brigadoon anticipates The Village, though it is certainly not as central to the plot.One element of the story is believable. I would move to Brigadoon in a heartbeat to be with Cyd Charisse!Spoiler alert:On Tuesday the village of Brigadoon gets bulldozed to make way for a hyper-space bypass and factory outlet shopping mall.Idea: Brigadoon is ripe for a remake with the missing numbers restored. It would look fantastic shot on location, or at least some CGI. It would seem George Clooney would be a natural for Tommy Albright, Tom Hanks could play Jeff, and Catherine Zeta-Jones would be a dynamite Fiona. Until you try to imagine them singing and dancing across the heather. Are there any leading men in Hollywood that can sing and dance? Well, there's always ballet dancers.