bkoganbing Invitation To The Dance took three years to make and it was a labor of love for Gene Kelly. Too bad for him that the public didn't take to it. But it was a film aimed at a highly specialized audience, those lovers of the ballet and other forms of dance.Around the time that Kelly was winning plaudits for Singing In The Rain he pitched the idea to the MGM studio heads and having just starring in a film that many claim as the greatest musical ever made, he was in a position of considerable leverage. To cheapen costs MGM shot it over in the United Kingdom and this does explain Kelly's appearance in a pair of British films, Crest Of The Wave and The Devil Makes Three while putting together his dance film.All this is according to the Citadel Film series book on Gene Kelly's films and then because the third and the best sequence was to be done with animated figures like Kelly's famous dance number with Jerry Mouse in Anchors Aweigh, MGM wanted to use Hanna&Barbera their crack cartoonists. Which meant him coming back to the USA to shoot that sequence. All in all it wasn't until 1956 that Invitation To The Dance finally made it before audiences.The story I found most astounding was Andre Previn who was brought in to score the second sequence about a piece of jewelry making the rounds. MGM didn't like the original score, but the sequence had already been shot. So Previn had to score a ballet which had already been shot with another man's music. No small feat indeed and more production delays.All this for what was really a film that should have had limited art house release. But MGM didn't do art house type films and they wanted their money back some how. The three sequences all have Kelly in them, MGM would have it no other way. The first casts Kelly as a Pagliacci type clown in a circus dance drama. The second is as I described before. The third has Kelly as a sailor who gets a magic lamp and a genie appears. It is the best of them.I'm sure Gene Kelly was disappointed in the lack of applause from a mass audience for Invitation To The Dance. It's a good film, but definitely for a special audience.

Robert J. Maxwell I've never seen another movie quite like this classic of kitsch. Gene Kelly was behind the whole project. He was riding high at the time and MGM more or less gave him his head, but they demurred when it seemed to them that Kelly was working on some kind of Wagnerian Gesamtkunstwerk -- too highbrow for audiences.The Moguls were half right. It's somewhat too highbrow and somewhat too lowbrow. It comes out something like "Dance For The Millions" or "A Dummy's Introduction To Dance." It has nothing to do with the talent on display. It was never Kelly's intention to appear in all of the sequences. That was only as the studio's insistence. Kelly used the best available performers. In the first of the three stories -- Circus, Ring Around the Rosy, and Sinbad the Sailor -- Kelly wisely leaves the ballet sequences to Igor Youskevitch and Claire Sombert, while he limits himself mostly to mime. You know, though, Youskevitch makes those leaps look harder than they are. I studied dance myself in college and found I had an undiscovered talent -- a gift almost -- for doing jetees and then falling flat on the floor, even without the battement. Big show off, Youskevitch.The second sequence is a familiar story of an object being passed from one lover to another until it is returned to the original owner. Fun is made of the adolescent craze for a crooner who resembles Frank Sinatra in the 40s, only is voice is that of a trombone. Had Kelly tried anything daring with Tamara Toumenova, he would have been out of his league. He came to dance from athletics and sports like hockey, not from ballroom or ballet. But Kelly had courage. Some of his cast could do both acrobatics and ballet, like Tommy Rall, who plays the sharpie.The third is the most elaborate sequence, a sort of Arabian nights tale with music adapted from Rimsky-Korsakov. Kelly acquires one of those annoying little boys as a genie. Then he gets an animated fairy princess, the animation being built by the cartoonists around the real figure of Carol Haney, a fine dancer whose heft I would have preferred. I wonder how this sequence, which gets a little silly, would have gone over had the technology of, say, "Avatar" been available at the time.The chief problem here, as with some otherwise good musicals, is that the book is pedestrian. A complex and multi-faceted story with some comic interludes can be successful, as "An American In Paris" was. Better yet, make it essentially a comedy with a little edge and lots of jokes and funny moments -- "Singin' In The Rain" or "The Bandwagon." None of these three sequences has a narrative that draws us in. We are wowed by the art direction, the set dressing, the wardrobe, the flashy music, the sight of people yakking in accelerated motion, the vision of Kelly doing a threesome with Arab guards or floating in slow motion through a cloud of rubescent leaves.Too bad it's not more successful. Being a good dancer is terribly hard work. You need to start at a very early age, practice all your life, and have the coordination of a middleweight boxer. (Ask Ron Reagan, Jr.) So you put your heart and soul into it -- then you have to find a job. You might as well adopt Michael Jordan as a role model.

didi-5 In what must have been a daring move in the 1950s, Gene Kelly created a film which was pure dance - three sequences (Circus, Ring Around The Rosy, Sinbad the Sailor).Although not a great grosser in its day, time has been kind to this film and although it is not that well known, this film should be as it has a large amount of charm.The first section, Circus, is a story about a clown and his unrequited love for the leading lady. A common love triangle presented in ballet, this is bittersweet and watchable.In Ring Around The Rosy, a bracelet is lost and found and there is a charming duet to watch ... while Sinbad the Sailor includes a mix of real life and animation in the story of the sailor and the genie.As good as any of Kelly's other work, this should be seen a lot more than it is.

harry-76 This is the result of many years of effort on the part of Gene Kelly to create an all-dance film. Since he was a major-studio rather than an indie production child, Kelly convinced his home studio, MGM, to finally take on the project.The final results, unfortunately, are mixed. The movie is simply average, with long stretches of off-timed and miscalculated action and uninspired choreography. Were Kelly to have collaborated in the writing, choreographing and direction departments, rather than taking everything on himself, things might have gone better.The project was simply too great a task for Kelly; with other imput he might have made a film with greater perspective and flair. The story in "Circus" is only fair, and there's more pantomime than dancing for Kelly as Pierrot. Unfortantely, Jacques Ibert's music doesn't help either. "Ring Around the Rosy" suffers from disjointed continuity, with awkward bridges and motivations. Too, the fine Tamara Toumanova as the Streetwalker provides a clash of styles when paired with Kelly as the Marine. Physically, their types don't match well, try as they will. Nor was this Andre Previn's finest compositional hour.Finally, Roger Eden's adaptation of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's score for "Sinbad the Sailor" makes for the most effective music in the film. Kelly at last gets to display his distinctive dancing manner, and does some impressive work (at age 44) in the interesting cartoon sequences. It's not Kelly at his best, though, and "Inviation to the Dance" remains an interesting curio, earnest on effort and short on realization. Both dance fans in general and Kelly fans in particular will value this video in their collectiona.