Despite being made right after An American in Paris and Singin' in the Rain, Invitation to the Dance was not a successful venture for the great Gene Kelly. It was a departure in that it was an anthology film with three separate stories, all told entirely through the medium of dance. The studio did not have faith in the result, so it was shelved from 1952 to 1956.
This soundtrack LP contains the original music for two of the three segments - "Circus" and "Ring Around the Rosy." The third section, was set to music adapted from Rimsky-Korsakov's
Scheherazade. This part, which matches Kelly with cartoon characters, may be more familiar than the other parts of the movie because it has been anthologized.
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| Gene Kelly as sad clown |
The first story in the trilogy is "Circus," a laugh-clown-laugh story with Gene as the broken-hearted and ultimately tragic figure. So the film started on a dour story - and an overly familiar one, at that. The music, however, is excellent. It came from the contemporary French eclectic Jacques Ibert, best known for
Escales, recorded in the 50s by both Munch and Ormandy, with their respective ensembles. Here the good performance is by the Royal Philharmonic and John Hollingsworth.
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| With Tamara Toumanova in "Ring Around the Rosy" |
Accomplished as it may be, that music is eclipsed by the wonderfully varied score for "Ring Around the Rosy" from composer-pianist-conductor André Previn, then still a Hollywood wunderkind. (He was 23 when the film was shot and 27 when it came out.) You will hear echoes of Britten, Khachaturian (!) and Gershwin, Kenton-style stentorian jazz, blues piano, salon music, mood music and much more. "Ring Around the Rosy" is a
La Ronde-inspired journey that follows a bracelet as it passes from one person to another, with Previn switching styles at least as often as the bauble changes owners. The score is brilliantly played by the M-G-M Studio Orchestra with Previn himself at the piano.
The sound is better for Previn's contributions than Ibert's, but fine in both cases.
