Posts tagged Gene Kelly
VMI: Village Mostly Invisible, an investigation of Brigadoon

A LONG TIME AGO IN THE 1954 MGM MUSICAL BRIGADOON:

  • New York City gents Gene Kelly and Van Johnson are lost in the Scottish Highlands! They want to shoot some birds, but instead stumble upon a village that’s not on the map… Brigadoon!

  • Everyone’s dancing around the town and preparing for a wedding that evening; meanwhile, sister of the bride Cyd Charisse gets to fall in love with Gene Kelly on the heathery hillsides.

  • But something’s weird, and it’s not just the fake Scottish accents, the very tight tartan trousers, the two-dimensional mountains and all the day-drinking: it’s that the village is under an enchantment whereby it only appears on one day every hundred years, and it will disappear forever if anyone tries to leave.

  • Then someone tries to leave!

  • Then Gene Kelly and Van Johnson have to leave before the village goes sleepy-byes for another hundred years. But Gene left his heart behind...

  • Lucky for him, there’s a special wake-up-Brigadoon-early clause buried deep in the small print of the enchantment, because of course there is.

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