Product Details

• Actors: Carol Haney, Gene Kelly
• Format: Color, NTSC
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Number of tapes: 1
• Studio: MGM
• VHS Release Date: February 24, 1995
• Run Time: 93 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• ASIN: 6301969421
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #185,945 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Invitation to the Dance was Gene Kelly's great experiment at turning MGM's famous ballet sequences into a feature film. Kelly directed and choreographed three half-hour segments, all without dialogue or songs. "Circus," with music by Jacques Ibert, is almost traditional Romantic ballet, as Igor Youskevitch and Claire Sanders play the lovers in an old European stage troupe and Kelly, almost unrecognizable in clown-face makeup, suffers from unrequited love. "Ring Around the Rosy" jumps to 20th-century America, as Andre Previn's jazzy score provides the backdrop for an anniversary bracelet that passes through the hands of numerous people and finally back to the owner. Kelly plays the title role in the most famous sequence, the Arabian Nights-type tale "Sinbad the Sailor," set to a loose arrangement of Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. Incongruously appearing in a U.S. Navy outfit à la On the Town, Kelly explores a live-action Arabian marketplace, discovers a lamp and a genie, then travels to a cartoon palace, where he charms a dragon, dances with a princess, and spars with a couple of swordsmen. Invitation to the Dance is not all dance--much of the action is conveyed through pantomime--and a lot of it does not feature Kelly himself. Even though the film is not quite as entertaining as it could have been, the dancers are consistently good, and Kelly always provides something interesting to watch. --David Horiuchi

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Imaginative and unusual, November 9, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Invitation to the Dance [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Kelly doesn't dance here as much as you might expect, but it was written, directed and choreographed by him, and is quite imaginative. He was a gifted choreographer as well as dancer. This also gave him a chance to create sexier dance numbers than you will find in the average musical. And there's a funny take off on Sinatra.

The tragic clown sequence touched me more than I expected it to.There's a beautiful dance between the lovers. Ring around the Rosy was more sophisticated and wry, with livelier dancing. Each place the "ring" goes is a little story, and that's fun to watch, though it did take me two viewings for it to really open up. Both sequences owe something to silent film and to mime. The animated sequence at the end is a wonderful flight of fancy and stands up pretty well against modern computer generated stuff. It's not as technically flawless, but still pretty sophisticated, considering it's almost 50 years old. If you have children, the Sinbad sequence is guaranteed to entertain them, and adults, too.

23 of 26 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not what I expected, but good just the same, March 4, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Invitation to the Dance [VHS] (VHS Tape)

I'm torn between giving this five stars or four stars. I'm settling on five because it's Gene Kelly and because I just love him. I also think five stars is fair because this film is fifty years old. Some of the stuff that he does as director might seem fairly pedestrian to us but we have to remember that when he was doing it it was pretty much brand new. What an innovator! The film itself consists of three thirty minute minifilms; the stories are all told through dance, music, and mime with no spoken words. The first one was the least enjoyable of the three, IMO. It's mostly ballet and while Gene does do some dancing, you don't get to enjoy him the way you do in other films. For one thing, he's almost unrecognizable under all that white face paint; I typically don't care for costumes and masks and such. I'm also not a big fan of mime and this segment relies on it more than any of the others.

The second segment was both funny and sad as it follows the path of an anniversary bracelet from one owner to the next. The best parts to this segment involve the crooner whose "singing" just slays the ladies. Gene was really having fun when he directed this scene. I also enjoyed the part with the pianist and the hat check girl who turns out to be quite a dancer with quite a pair of gams. You have to be very patient to get to Gene in this one; he doesn't appear until nearly the end but it is worth the wait. He does a very ... dance with a woman who literally lights his fire. His dancing is ..., but he really lets the female shine; she clearly has the lead here. (Throughout this entire film it is clear that Gene was content to let others have lots of screen time.)

The last segment is easily the most enjoyable. Is it any wonder that Gene has the most screen time in this one and does the most dancing? He plays a sailor who finds a magic lamp with a little boy genie inside of it. The two of them literally step into the pages of a fairy tale and encounter animated dancing dragons, harem girls, and swashbuckling villains. Gene dances with all of them at one point or another, and it's really rather neat to see the way he and the cartoons are perfect mirrors of each other - how he carries out their steps and they carry out his and vice versa. It's filled with whimsy and though it's fifty years old it manages to seem rather fresh. I especially enjoy the candy-coated flight of fancy when he and one of the harem girls frolic through flowery meadows. The entire film is lovely to look at and it's got Gene Kelly. Who could ask for anything more?

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars WHERE IS THE DVD ??? !!!!!, September 7, 2007

By 

Robert M. Bonnett "bobbinthehouse" (towson, md.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Invitation to the Dance [VHS] (VHS Tape)

Once again we are forgotten !!! By us I mean all of the people that love musicals from this era. How many of these great MGM films are not getting the treatment they deserve? Why do we have to beg over and over again for Warner to get with the times and re-master this and so many other musicals on DVD? For Gods sake its 2007 guys!!!! Nobody has VHS anymore!!!