Invitation to the Dance (1934) Review - Puffy Shirts and Angry Conducting

Is this 1934 German biopic worth your time tonight? Only if you have a deep love for obscure musical history and do not mind squinting through some very scratchy archival footage. 🎻

If you hate slow, theatrical dramas where men in giant collars argue about opera, you will absolutely despise this one.

The movie is all about Carl Maria von Weber, a compsoer who is tired of everyone in Germany fawning over Italian opera. He wants to make German opera a thing, which apparently was a huge scandal back in the 19th century.

Ernst Rotmund plays Weber with this constant, slightly constipated look of artistic fury. There is this one scene where he is conducting and his hands are flying around so fast he looks like he's trying to swat an invisible wasp. 🐝

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Invitation to the Dance (1934) through its definitive frames.

I swear, the extras in the opera house audience look completely bored out of their minds. One guy in the front row is clearly just staring at the ceiling waiting for his paycheck.

It's funny because the movie tries so hard to make classical music feel like a high-stakes action sport. They talk about melodies like they are weapons of war.

If you've seen other early sound dramas like The Shadow of the East, you know how stiff these early 30s films can get. Invitation to the Dance suffers from that same stagey stiffness where people stand in a semi-circle to deliver their lines.

The sound design is... well, it is from 1934. The soprano high notes sound a bit like a tea kettle whistling in the next room, but it kinda adds to the antique charm.

Cinematic perspective: Exploring the visual vocabulary of Invitation to the Dance (1934) through its definitive frames.

The screenplay by Hans Martin Cremer has some weird pacing. We spend like ten minutes watching people sign documents, and then suddenly Weber is super famous.

I did love the costumes though. Everyone is wearing these massive cravats that look like they're choking them.

Also, Nora Hofmann has a couple of scenes where she just stares into the distance for what feels like an eternity. It is supposed to be dramatic, but I honestly thought the tape had paused.

A Few Things I Noticed:

• The conductor's baton looks suspiciously like a giant knitting needle.
• There is a dog in one scene that clearly wants to escape the set. 🐕
• The Italian rivals are played with such cartoonish villainy you expect them to start twirling their mustaches.

It is not a masterpiece, and it definitely won't replace your favorite musical dramas. But for a lazy Sunday afternoon, it is a weirdly cozy watch if you like classical music history.