Brigadoon (1954) (NTSC)

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General		Extras
Category	Musical	None
Rating
Year Of Production	1954
Running Time	108:03
RSDL / Flipper	No/No	Cast & Crew
Start Up	Programme
Region Coding	1,4	Directed By	Vincente Minnelli
Studio Distributor	Turner Warner Home Video	Starring	ene Kelly Van Johnson Cyd Charisse
Case	Amaray-Transparent-Secure Clip
RPI	$31.95	Music	Frederick Loewe

Video (NTSC)		Audio
Pan & Scan/Full Frame	None	English Dolby Digital 2.0 (192Kb/s)
Widescreen Aspect Ratio	2.35:1
16x9 Enhancement
Video Format	480i (NTSC)
Original Aspect Ratio	2.55:1	Miscellaneous
Jacket Pictures	No
Subtitles	English French Spanish English for the Hearing Impaired French for the Hearing Impaired Spanish for the Hearing Impaired	Smoking	No
		Annoying Product Placement	No
		Action In or After Credits	No

    Based on a 1947 Broadway Hit, Brigadoon is the tale of a small Scottish village that time forgot.

    While on holiday in Scotland, two Americans, Tommy Albright (Gene Kelly) and Jeff Douglas (Van Johnson), stumble upon the small village of Brigadoon when hunting. Brigadoon is a quaint village that rarely has visitors and whose inhabitants behave and dress a little oddly. Despite this, Tommy quickly takes a liking to one of the female residents, Fiona Campbell (Cyd Charisse), and proceeds to follow her around like a love-sick puppy.

    Tommy and Jeff soon discover that all is not as it seems. They overhear the townspeople talking about the "miracle". With a little more investigation, their suspicions grow. Finally, Fiona agrees to take Tommy and Jeff to visit a town elder, Mr Lundie (Barry Jones). Mr Lundie explains that the miracle occurs every night. When the village goes to sleep it vanishes and sleeps for 100 years. The villagers are thereby unaffected by the wicked goings on of the world around them and are able to retain their innocence. However, if one of the residents of Brigadoon leaves the immediate village area, the miracle will end and Brigadoon will disappear forever.

    This poses an awkward situation for Tommy. He has fallen in love with Fiona but can't take her with him back to America, and he does not want to stay in a backward medieval village.

    Months later, Tommy and Jeff make a return visit to Scotland to see if they can find Brigadoon. They return to the precise location of the village, but as expected it is nowhere to be seen. Tommy is desperate - he cannot live without Fiona. At that moment, another "miracle" occurs - the village materialises. Mr Lundie appears and announces that he was awoken from his sleep because of Tommy's love for Fiona. An overjoyed Tommy enters the village to find Fiona and stay with her forever, whilst a bewildered Jeff watches Brigadoon slowly fade away.

Video

    The video transfer of Brigadoon is extremely poor. A VHS tape would only get this bad after many years of constant use.

    The DVD is presented in an aspect ratio of 2.35:1, is not 16x9 enhanced, and is NTSC formatted. The DVD jacket claims this to be the original aspect ratio, but upon further investigation the original ratio was discovered to be 2.55:1.

    As mentioned above, the transfer quality of this DVD is not good . There is constant low level noise and grain throughout the movie. It rarely, if at all, improves but often get worse. The sharpness of the transfer is only adequate, but at times this is difficult to judge through the grain. The shadow detail of the transfer is also poor. Rarely are actors or objects able to be seen clearly through the darkness.

    The colour modulations are one of the more annoying features of the transfer. During most of the movie, Tommy (Gene Kelly) is wearing a dark green shirt. Sometimes the shirt is green, sometimes black and then back to dark green. The colour modulations are numerous but the major occurrences are at 43:31, 55:40, 64:39, 93:50, and also at just about every scene change.

    There were no major MPEG artefacts or film-to-video artefacts to be seen. However, there were numerous film artefacts present. Once again they are too numerous to list completely. The major instances are at 11:07, 11:22, 14:50, 18:09, 29:43, 33:28, 34:21, 44:52, 49:56, and 50:35. Reel change marks are also present periodically throughout the entire movie.

    As this is a single layered DVD, no layer change is present.

Video Ratings Summary

Sharpness
Shadow Detail
Colour
Grain/Pixelization
Film-To-Video Artefacts
Film Artefacts
Overall

Audio

    The audio transfer of this DVD is barely acceptable.

    There is only one audio track to be found on the Brigadoon DVD, Dolby Digital 2.0 stereo (192kbps).

    The dialogue quality of the transfer was good. The speech was clear and easily understood at all times, even from those actors with Scottish accents.

    There were no audio sync issues with the transfer.

    Being an adaptation of a Broadway play by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe there are several musical numbers. Sometimes for no reason at all, an actor can just start singing. For the most part, the songs are well performed and complement the story.

    As the audio track is only stereo encoded, there was no use of the surround channels or the subwoofer. A 5.1 track would have been appreciated.

Audio Ratings Summary

Dialogue
Audio Sync
Clicks/Pops/Dropouts
Surround Channel Use
Subwoofer
Overall

    There are no extras of any type to be found on this DVD.

Menu

    The menu system is static and silent.

    The Region 4 and Region 1 versions of this DVD appear to be identically specified.

    Brigadoon is one of the classic Hollywood Musical love stories. It has a decent if whimsical story, credible acting and entertaining songs if you like Broadway tunes from the 40s and 50s. However, the DVD has been given a substandard video transfer with only acceptable audio and no extras.

Video
Audio
Extras
Plot
Overall