Brigadoon

As I watched the film in class, I mentally went over my top 100 list and wondered why Brigadoon isn’t on it. 

There are no songs that I don’t like. In fact, I really like every one of them—a lot. 

I’m a big fan of the three leads and they are well cast here. 

Is it the pastoral setting and the unfolding of a day that keeps it from standing out? It’s as if the mists had obscured my memory and when I rediscover how wonderful it is, the mists will roll in again after I leave. 

The movie is so low key and of another time, that the beginning narration sounds like a reading of an old book. The action happening onscreen might as well have happened long ago. 

We’ve been talking in class about how an audience walks away from reality to sit in a theatre and how a musical takes that a step further by having the characters walk away from their reality to a higher realm. It can happen through dream, memory or wish and is wrapped up in song. 

Brigadoon itself is that dream and does a fine job of taking the audience there. It’s time to reassess my list before the wonder of it all dissipates.

Gigi

I’ve spent much of my life not liking Gigi. To be more precise, I was disgusted by the men’s attitudes and infuriated with the women’s behavior. In the Most Hated Musicals Thread, I wrote, “With her grandmother and aunt's help up the steps, Gigi laid herself on the altar of second class citizenship. She had the chance to be formidable, but blew it.” I kind of resented her for caving and had similar reactions to the endings of Taming of the Shrew, Two Gentlemen of Verona and Annie Get Your Gun. Where’s the conviction? Where are the strong women role models? After watching the film again last week, I softened my feelings towards the grandmother. I hadn’t noticed how she had tried to inform Gigi about what she was getting herself into. A weak attempt maybe, but for someone who knew no other life pursuit, the grandmother did make an effort. Besides my overwhelming distaste for Gigi’s reversal decision, I found the story and music to be, for the most part, a bore.  There was little forward movement and the songs, though luckily shorter than song renditions in Kiss Me Kate, were uninteresting or worse, creepy.

Enter Dual Focus Narrative. My textbook for the semester is Rick Altman’s The American Film Musical, a wordy treatise on the theory of genre analysis. With the Dual Focus concept, he managed to turn on a light bulb over my head and walk me through a movie that I thought I had seen and understood, and said, “Forget everything you think you know and look at this from a different standpoint.” I’d become comfortable with the protagonist driven story and expected to follow along as plot points begat plot points. Sometimes I complained about the predictability, but I still liked the linear style.

The idea of parallelism as a “different principle of organization” was something I hadn’t really considered before, but I was intrigued, and by the end of the chapter Altman had sold me on the concept. Vincente Minnelli wasn’t wandering around haphazardly, fitting in songs willy-nilly. The scenes were very precisely choreographed to mirror Gaston and Gigi’s experiences and the montage scenes took on elevated meaning as they illustrated their similar predicaments. With the male/female, wealthy/beautiful, child/adult dichotomies all explored, the film turned into a much more interesting piece. I had dismissed it because of my convictions, but I had missed out because of my ignorance.

Dual Focus Narrative opens up a whole new way of looking at a film as psychology, sociology, history and ethics come into play while two characters slowly make their way to reconciliation. Even though I still don't like Gigi, I'm now aware that there is more to it than I had given it credit for.

Some Came Running

Some Came Running is a raw and gritty story wrapped up in rose colored cellophane and placed carefully on a soft embroidered pillow. 

I wonder if Vincente Minnelli intended to create something different, but just couldn’t help himself and added beautiful lighting and character sympathy. Was the studio aware of the audiences’ sensibilities of the time and wanted to appeal to a broader viewership? Or, perhaps the decade of retrospective carried a weight of deference? Whatever the reason, it was a movie at odds with itself, with an undercurrent not fully explored.  Like a fog, the back stories were obscured with only the occasional wind gust of clarity by way of a pointed comment of a barbed comeback.  But then the fog would roll back in and nothing more was known.

Many of the characters were shrouded in a fog as well; the fog of numbness brought about by drink, work, societal expectations and buried feelings. As Dave Hirsch put down the bottle and remembered his love of words and his ability to love another, he too had a gust of clarity; which overwhelmed the object of his love, Gwen French. I never did see her clearly, since she remained close to the vest. Shirley MacLaine’s a wonder and played the only character that was crystal clear. Minnie’s openness and naiveté were perfectly portrayed with no barriers to her feelings or her actions.