1956 - INVITATION TO THE DANCE, Gene Kelly's ambitious dance film.

This film was released in 1956 but had been kicking around the studio since 1952 when it was filmed, MGM simply did not know what to do with it.  Gene Kelly was nothing if not ambitious when he persuaded MGM to let him make a dance film with essentially no conventional story and no dialog, only dancing.  Kelly had been influenced by Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes and probably their production of Tales Of Hoffman which was essentially a dance film with no dialog as well.  Kelly had been inserting extended dance sequences into Singing in the Rain and An American in Paris however he was taking on a lot with Invitation to the Dance. He was the director, choreographer and one of the lead dancers.

Filmed in England, Kelly attracted performers Tamara Toumanova, Igor Youskevitch, Diana Adams and Claire Sombert all ballet dancers who let's face it weren't going to draw a mainstream movie audience into the theater.  Also these dancers had to adapt to Kelly's athletic dance style which wasn't ballet.  Probably Darryl F. Zanuck at rival 20th Century Fox Studios said it best, "10 minutes of dance in a film is a hell of a long time for an audience to sit through." This film was 90 minutes long.

 

The film failed at the box office and with the critics who felt Kelly had overreached.  However I believe that a major reason for it's lack of success was that the musical genre Kelly had been a part of during the peak years at MGM had finally come to an end.  Audiences were just no longer interested in seeing film musicals.

 

The film is made up of three distinct set pieces, however the only one that is entertaining is Kelly's dance with animated cartoons courtesy of Hanna Barbara.  Even this sequence goes on to long.  There is a copy of the film complete on YouTube if you are interested, but probably 10 or 20 minutes of viewing this thing is enough.

The running time is  93 minutes.