Mahler

Dir: Ken Russell

1974

****

1974’s Mahler is a biographical film based on the life of Austro-Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler directed by Ken Russell. The infamous director was inspired to make his film about composer Gustav Mahler after greatly disliking 1971’s Death in Venice starring Dirk Bogarde. In a segment of his autobiography, Russell said that he thought that the other "so-called Mahler film", Death in Venice, was rubbish. "People think it's about Mahler, all because his music is part of the soundtrack! The director, Luchino Visconti, never said it was about him, though." So he mocked the film in his movie in a rather satirical moment when Mahler looks out of the train and sees his dying lookalike. This is a biography that only Ken Russell could make. That said, there is a balance that is quite unique to Russell’s work, whose television work was usually quite tame but whose feature films were generally quite elaborate. Mahler is somewhere in-between, with its tender moments of reflection and surreal moments of mania. After a spectacular prelude, the sort of thing you’d expect from a Ken Russell movie, the film slows as we see Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) confronting their failing marriage while waiting for the train they are sitting in to leave its station. Mahler’s life story is then recounted in a series of flashbacks, both realistic and expressionist, taking one through the composer's childhood, his brother's suicide, his experience with antisemitism, his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, his marital problems, and the death of his young daughter. The film also contains a surreal fantasy sequence involving the anti-Semitic Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis), widow of Richard Wagner, whose objections to his taking control of the Court Opera were supposedly removed by his conversion to Catholicism. In the process, the film explores Mahler's music and its relationship to his life but more than it simply following the key moments in his life, Russell uses his usual flair to explore the wonderfully rich and profound essence of artistry and creativity and it can manifest from all sorts of experiences. The key to the film is that it doesn't attempt to simply explain Mahler, instead it brings his story alive through his music. Russell, an artist himself, understood that the only way you can possibly get to know an artist – a composer in this case – is through their art, Mahler’s music. The film plays out like one of Mahler’s pieces. The film won the Technical Grand Prize at the 1974 Cannes Film Festival but it lost money at the box office, which is something of an injustice really. I would argue that it is Ken Russell's most psychological works of drama. It is certainly about art and creativity but it is also about the downfall of a man who has compromised his ethics and sacrificed his religion for the sake of money and fame. I do believe you will have had to develop an appetite for Ken Russell's visions but I would argue there is something very universal about his film, compared to his others at least. All Russell’s other films are very much his visions but Mahler is different, it is about the composer before the director. However, you either love Ken Russell's films or you don’t, Mahler is no different in that respect and only Ken Russell would have thought about dressing Cosima Wagner as a Nazi dominatrix but when you think about it it isn’t all about the shock and sensation with Russell, she was incredibly antisemitic and after her husband died she bedded only the rich and famous. Again, this is an artist exploring another artists…artistry. Robert Powell is, and probably always will be, remembered best for playing Jesus in Franco Zeffirelli and Anthony Burgess’ 1977 mini-series Jesus of Nazareth, or as Dave Briggs alongside Jasper Carrot in The Detectives for those of us of a certain age, but I would argue that his role as Gustav Mahler is his career best performance. Powell, along with Antonia Ellis and Georgina Hale (who play Cosima Wagner and Alma Mahler respectively) are a trio to be reckoned with and the film would be poorer without them. Antonia Ellis’s over-the-top performance as a Nazi dominatrix in silent film parody is classic, and I struggle to think who else could have played Mahler as we see him being buried alive while Alma dances over his grave while enjoying numerous affairs. I have to say though, I probably loved David Collings’ portrayal of Hugo Wolf the most as his performance is every bit as mad as you’d hoped it would be. It’s 51% Ken Russell and 49% Gustav Mahler, you probably have to like both men’s art to truly love it but I personally can’t see what’s not to like.