Exoticalot People are voting emotionally.

Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

Onlinewsma Absolutely Brilliant!

Nicole I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

JasparLamarCrabb Frequently referred to as the most straightforward of Ken Russell's biopics of great composers, MAHLER is nevertheless full of shocking images, awful characters and plenty of grotesque theatrics. In other words, it's never boring. And while it may be tame compared to the prior Tchaikovsky biography THE MUSIC LOVERS and the later LISZTOMAINIA, Russell pulls few punches with this expose of the great Austrian composer. As a train carries Mahler and his neglected wife Alma home, Russell's film unfolds with various vignettes of their life together as well as some hideous recollections from Mahler's childhood. Robert Powell has the title role and while he's excellent, he's not really called on to carry the film himself. As Alma, Georgina Hale is astounding and every inch Powell's match. They make up a great love/hate (mostly hate) relationship. Events from Mahler's life are told with all of Russell's usual debauchery, including a very freaky (and highly anachronistic) run-in with Richard Wagner's loony wife Cosima. It's a real highlight in a film full of bizarre scenes. Look VERY fast for an Oliver Reed cameo.

najania Gustav Mahler slips in and out of fantasy and memory on a train ride with his wife Alma on their way to Vienna. (I liked the segments on his childhood best.) Roger Powell as the protagonist bears a certain resemblance but hardly as close as some reviewers would have their readers believe. Despite spirited performances by Georgina Hale (as Alma) and Powell, this reviewer found the conversations between the famous pair on art, life, and love neither particularly deep nor riveting. This had a good side: it made the interludes of Russellian excess less distractions than diversions.Nevertheless, though portrayal of Cosima Wagner as a bumping and grinding proto-Nazi might have been hilarious in the 50s, by the 70s it was banal. I felt sorry for Powell having to appear in the same scene. The sight of the newly Catholicized Mahler dining on hog's head is disgusting enough (for some reason I was even more put off by the way he avidly washed it down with milk chugged from a pitcher, blithely breaking the injunction against mixture of meat and dairy, of course). But for me the worst transgression was less blatant, and came when Russell had what looked like an oom-pah hofbrau band, but a marching one, play a passage from the third movement of the first symphony, apparently oblivious to its lilting klezmer echoes. Now that's what I call offensive.Incredibly to me, some reviewers see this flick as Russell's best, a place I would give to "Gothic", in which the mix of fantasy, excess, and reality (history) jells to perfection. A six mainly because I have a soft spot for the subject matter.

FloatingOpera7 I disagree with viewers who have claimed that this movie is over-the-top and excessive, as some other Ken Russell movies. It is true that the British director cultivated shock, gore and excessive cinematography that often resembled heavy LSD hallucinations or a Bosch paintings. But he felt he was only ahead of his time in the late 60's and throughout the 70's. Prime examples of this are his Tommy, Lisztomania and The Devils. But "Mahler" is actually his most tame and restrained. I found the film genuinely moving and haunting. It's slow-paced, quite talky and very very musical in nature. Robert Powell stars as the anguished composer Gustav Mahler, Georgina Hale as his wife Alma and Antonia Ellis as the dark and seductive Cosima Wagner. The film is partially historic partially psychological and partially dream-like. It is true that Mahler, who was born Jewish, converted to Catholicism simply for the sake of landing a prestigious job as conductor of the Vienna State Opera. His relationship with Cosima Wagner, Richard Wagner's widowed wife, did in fact have something detrimental about it. In the film, it's hinted they are lovers and that Cosima has managed to isolate him from his wife and children. With the music of Mahler and Wagner in the soundtrack, and fine performances by the lead stars, this is indeed Ken Russell's most psychological works of drama. Essentially, it's about the downfall of a man who has compromised his ethics and sacrificed his religion for the sake of money and fame.Robert Powell, Antonia Ellis and Georgina Hale carry most of the movie. Alma, who was largely considered a big name in feminist history and a brilliant woman in her own right, felt eclipsed by the genius of Mahler. Their marriage was never happy and ended in divorce. Cosima Wagner was notoriously Anti-Semitic, in fact, it is said she was far more so than her husband Richard Wagner. Antonia Ellis does do a very over-the-top performance, at one point in a dream sequence even dressing up as a Nazi dominatrix in the quite hilarious silent film parody in which Mahler is converted into Catholicism. There is even a funny song to the strains of Wagner's Ride of The Valkyries. This and the Death Fantasy in which Mahler imagines he is being buried alive and Alma is dancing over his grave and carrying out numerous affairs are the only Russell elements that fall into excess. But most of the film is quite haunting and lovely to look at. Highly recommended as a Russell film to watch without judgment of his other works.

enthusiast Definitely a good film about the composer; it portrays him better than "Bride of the Wind" did (that movie showed only the older Mahler as he was not the central feature). Alma is portrayed more realistically in this movie. Much has been made about the conversion to Christianity and though this segment of the film is quite controversial in the U.S. it should be noted that in the German speaking areas of Europe at that time Christianity was not nearly as benevolent towards people of the Jewish faith as it is in the U.S. (or Lithuania) today. Realize that Lithuania is a Catholic country and we lost our Jews in the Great Patriotic War due to the Germans coming through here so we know. Russell was trying to show that Mahler had to take a heck of a leap, psychologically, to go from being a Jew to becoming a Christian.Enough of politics. This film has much more of his music than "Bride of the Wind" and that is certainly enjoyable. VHS does not give adequate quality of sound reproduction for the music so I highly recommend DVD with good stereo speakers for viewing this film. His work was incredible and he was definitely the greatest German composer after Beethoven. One item of note: Most of this film seems to take place at Mahler's summer residence- where he composed most of his music. Yet, during most of the year(s) he was in Vienna conducting. Was Mahler unfaithful to Alma in Vienna? Well, when you consider the conductor of any great philharmonic was then as popular to women as hard rock singers are now; Let's just say that he was probably not as unfaithful to Alma as he could have been.