Invitation to the Dance (1956) on Netflix
Three stories told in dance and mime. A clown loves a performer who loves an aerialist, a bracelet passes from hand to hand, and a sailor buys a lantern holding a genie.
- Netflix3.2/5
- IMDb6.4/101,153 votes
- Rotten TomatoesNot available
Trailer
Plot summary
No one speaks; the three stories are performed entirely in dance and mime. The first is a love triangle in a mythical land of the past: a clown loves a circus performer, who loves an aerialist. The second ties its romances together with a gold bracelet that a husband gives his flirtatious wife, who passes it to an artist at a party. The third takes place in a Middle Eastern casbah, where a sailor is sold a magic lantern, and rubbing it produces a childlike genie.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Invitation to the Dance (1956)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Gene Kelly did not want to appear in any of the three segments of Invitation to the Dance, saying he wanted to show the world that other people danced besides himself and Fred Astaire, but the studio forced him to appear in the film himself.
- Invitation to the Dance was planned with four segments; a 28-minute third story titled "Dance Me a Song," in which popular songs were interpreted through dance, was filmed but later cut.
- The original score for the "Ring Around the Rosy" segment, by British composer John Addison, was judged unsuitable, and Andre Previn was brought in to fit new music onto the already-finished choreography.
- Invitation to the Dance earned $200,000 in the U.S. and Canada and $415,000 in other markets, but its $2,523,000 loss made it MGM's biggest flop of the year.
- It was the first film Gene Kelly directed on his own, after he had co-directed three earlier films with Stanley Donen.
- Shooting on the "Sinbad" sequence ran into 1953, which gave Invitation to the Dance MGM's second longest shooting schedule at the time.
