User Reviews

Ken Russell's composer biographies hit their apex with his stylized take on Tchaikovsky in "The Music Lovers." Three years later, Russell began his descent with "Mahler." Structured as a series of flashbacks, it may be hard to follow for anyone unfamiliar with the events and chronology of Mahler's life. The conversion sequence sets a new standard for poor taste, even for Russell. Robert Powell gives a fine performance, aided by a close resemblance to the real deal. Georgina Hale failed to make an impression in her appearance in Russell's "The Boy Friend," and is tentative, at best, here in a leading role as wife Alma. Antonia Ellis, another alumna of "The Boy Friend" is game for anything Russell throws at her. Even with a taste for the Russell treatment, "Mahler" may be a little hard to swallow.

Mahler has sometimes been cited as the finest of Russell's composer bio-pics, an informal series which began with several impressive works made for television at the beginning of the 1960s. As such it falls between the relative restraint of the black-and-white photographed Gordon Jacob (1959) and the uninspired late Mystery Of Dr Martinu (1993), another TV special that more or less finished the run. Elgar: Fantasy Of A Composer On A Bicycle (2002), a revisiting of Russell's celebrated early work (Elgar), seemed like a creative codicil. Like The Music Lovers (1970), which preceded it, and Lisztomania (1975), which followed, Mahler was made for the big screen. The larger budgets involved allowed Russell the narrative luxuries of greater length and a move to colour; but also to indulge a penchant for flamboyant fantasy, kitsch and nudity.

The film takes place mostly as a series of flashbacks, experienced by the ailing composer as he travels to take up a last appointment in Vienna, accompanied by his wife Alma (Georgina Hale). Portraying the composer is Robert Powell who, showing a close resemblance to the subject, arguably does a far more sympathetic job than Richard Chamberlain (Russell's Tchaikovsky) or Roger Daltrey (Liszt). His memories prompted by his imminent mortality, as well as Alma's libidinous interest in a handsome soldier also on the train, Mahler dwells on several key episodes of his life, such as his early musical education, his conversion to Catholicism and a humiliating job interview for the Vienna Opera. Thus while the fatigue wracked composer's train journey is experienced as reality, his feverish recollection of a creative past is often hallucinatory and surreal - moments at which Russell's colourful staging of events is foremost.

Just how one takes the resultant mix of high culture and low camp is a matter of personal taste. "Why is everyone so literal these days?" complains Russell's disillusioned composer at one point. It is worth bearing this view in mind, as well as Mahler's later opinion that it is sometimes necessary to "see with the eyes of children... and hear with the ears of children." Literal or not, Mahler is definitely not for children, including as it does Nazis, naked cavorting, and some cod nightmare imagery in one characteristically overheated package. For this viewer, seeing the film again for the first time since the original release, the result is the same: I was entertained, if ultimately unmoved, by a work which may show the audience the way Russell sees his Mahler - but is far less convincing as to how *Mahler* saw his world. At the end of the day Russell's more extravagant stagings become a distraction rather than a revelation, the composer's creative neuroses coarsened by the director's very personal, baroque vision.

This 'problem' with Mahler is the same as with several of Russell's more ambitious films. The director's heavy handed use of not-especially-shocking imagery - in fact one doubts now whether, in most cases, it ever really was very alarming, more just in bad taste - usually done quickly and on a budget, drives home matters with a sledgehammer. On those occasions where Russell's approach has proved most successful, such as in The Devils (1971), disturbing imagery coincides most closely with the subject (religious hysteria and the inquisition) a reinforcement that benefits further from first-rate art direction (by Derek Jarman). In Mahler, to take a glaring example, the intrusion of black-uniformed Nazis into the composer's nightmare of premature burial - a sequence that culminates in a semi-nude Alma squatting over his death mask, is both crass and irrelevant. Similar doubts attend the conversion to Catholicism film within a film, featuring some laboured silent comedy - Powell as Mahler even does a Stan Laurel 'cry' at one point - including setups which perhaps inspired Tim the Enchanter's appearance in Monty Python And The Holy Grail, in cinemas a year later. The parodic intrusion of the Third Reich into a film about a composer might have made sense if the subject had been the notably anti-Semitic and pompous Wagner. Supporting an account of the insecure, frequently humiliated, Jewish, Mahler, its heavy handed and inappropriate nature is ultimately toe curling.

Fortunately, and even with all these shortcomings, Russell's film is rarely boring. Buoyed up with of large chunks of music, Mahler's sequence of colourful events moves along easily enough. Shot mostly on location in Russell's beloved Lake District, a lot of the film makes a fair pass of recreating Austria in the first decade of the last century. The most affecting moments for this viewer remain the quieter ones - Mahler alone in his summer house, conducting one of his great orchestral canvases in his head, or the quiet interlude with the doctor who confesses to being tone deaf and, ironically, is someone the composer feels he can trust most easily. Russell's recreation of Mahler's childhood is also interesting, as the young composer meets a puckish man in the woods (Ronald Pickup) who offers his timely advice that "The man who doesn't live in nature can't write a true note of music." This sequence is one of the few times that performances are allowed to grow for, squeezed between Russell's set pieces and Mahler's mammoth orchestrations, actors sometimes appear hard pressed to make an impression with quieter moments of dialogue. Perhaps Powell and Hale come off best as a couple towards the end of the film, as the composer delicately explains her role in his inspiration. It's a sensitive moment, bringing a note of intimacy often lacking elsewhere. In short this is a Mahler which is deeply flawed, if rarely dull, which at least is to Russell's credit and persistence as a maverick film maker.

Like Tchaicovksy before him composer Gustav Mahler gets cuffed about in grand fashion in this bio on his life by Ken Russell. Russell as usual pulls no punches while landing some low blows in this brilliantly sardonic take on the composer conductor's life and career.

Gustav Mahler ( Robert Powell ) ill but unaware he' ll be dead within a year rides exhausted aboard a train across the Eurpeon landscape with his wife whose looking to get off at the next stop with a lover. In the depths of despair he reflects upon his past; a brutal father, a brothers suicide, a death of a child infidelity , religious conversion to attain status as well as the immediate problem of holding onto his wife.

Such downward spiral tragedy is prime Bergman territory but in the hands of Infant Terrible Russell it is a wild, irreverent , dark humored ride down the tracks accompanied by the composers magnificent writings both skillfully and comically matched to imagery and situation. Cosima Wagner as a Brunhilde Nazi, the impoverished siblings as the Marx Brothers, the sacrilegious conversion rite intermixed with scenes of pastoral beauty that inspired him unfold at a rapid and provocative tempo.

Powell is a dead ringer for the composer and he does a commendable job of conveying his ego, cynicism and vulnerability huddled in his exclusive passenger car. It is Russell's jaundice and vivid interpretation though that will leave the viewer mesmerized or revolted. With Ken's films there is no in between.

Mahler is an interesting case. Whereas Ken Russell's films are either just over the top (his theatrical films), or maybe even too subtle (his television work), Mahler is both. Its closest companion may be always the simple but exquisite Song of Summer, but there is that usual kitsch and excess you can find without a magnifier from Lisztomania and other Russell classics.

What I'm trying to say is that if you find Russell's television work too tame, and The Devils and Tommy are just too much, Mahler might be your film. It's not Russell's best, but in this film he found a balance which is rare to him. It may be a slow and long film, but in the end game is wonderfully rich and profound in explaining the essence of artistry and creativity. And much like Michael Powell did to ballet dance in The Red Shoes, Russell doesn't just explain his subject matter in Mahler: he brings it alive. It's like the romantic Gustav Mahler himself made this film.

And, of course, there is the music! Much recommended to everybody.

Yes, you had to have developed an appetite for Ken Russell's visions. Mahler works beautifully for me. I happen to like Mahler's music and historically, Russell, captures the juice of this man's genius.

Russell moves behind the music, into the skin of Mahler, his wife, Alma, and the tragic circumstances that surround them.

Mahler would have smiled when experiencing Russell's image of him. Thomas Mann's book, Death in Venice, is about Mahler, and Russell includes the railroad station scene, with the young boy and the business man, courting a bit, and then the camera, goes to Mahler, who understands whats going on here, and smiles, in amusement. Clever touch for Russell, but is most likely lost on the general audience. Not to say Mahler liked little boys, but his sexual orientation was ambiguous, at best.

Alma was like that, and the officer, whom she was having an affair, was most likely that way? Mahler went to see Freud over this affair in reality. Russell always takes us inside the psychological drama and visualizes, the inner Hell, Mahler feared regarding his wife and his coming death.

Alma had affairs after Mahler's death, and was a star f...ER, and had marriages and affairs with Europe's most brilliant geniuses, for real. She loved bright men, but loved herself, the most, I think? Later Erich Wolfgang Korngold, wrote a violin concerto for her, in Hollywood.

The film's tracking of the creative process regarding the music, is most likely right on, though the little composing hut, was not on the lake shore, but on a hill top, overlooking the lake.

Over all the film is historically correct, and emotionally, shows it as it most likely was for them as a famous couple. Alma did harbor jealousy, and stopped composing her music. Of late a CD has been released of her music and her music is acceptable, but pales compared to her husband's giant compositions.

I would have liked for Russell to include Richard Strauss's music, and their personal friendship. Both composers often talked about their troubles with their music and their wives. Strauss and Mahler are often similar in their musical genius, and understood each other's vision musically. It would have been nice to have the two together more in this film's history.

You have to have a taste for Mahler and Russell, to really get the humor and the brilliance that lies just beneath of surface. At least, Mahler, did not turn out to be another TOMMY...ha Bravo to Ken Russell and I am so glad he came along in my life time. Cast was perfect as well.

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.

Despite the drop dead gorgeous cinematography and the patented Ken Russell campy, crazy dream sequences (one of which features Antonia Ellis as Cosima Wagner resembling a demented Kyrsten Sinema) this film feels, especially when compared to better artistic biopics from its director, like "Women In Love" and "Music Lovers", to be a bit on the stilted side, like, say, a really, good BBC production. Maybe the problem is that ol Gustav M, aside from his music, didn't have all that interesting a life. And it's not like we get a lot of the music either! It probably would have been better had Russell re-thought the project and made it about Alma instead, whose life makes Isidora D's look PG rated. But that would have required this most misogynistic of directors to make a pretty radical personality adjustment. Give it a B minus.

Though more reserved than Ken Russell's usual work, this film still has much to recommend it. The music, of course, is superb, and the acting is restrained. Fans of Russell's outrageousness will find a few choice sequences (especially the one where Mahler converts to Catholicism to placate Cosima Wagner), but if you've got a friend whom you want to introduce to Ken Russell's usual style of lunacy, this would by the one to start with before graduating to "The Music Lovers" or "Gothic".

The life of Gustav Mahler could potentially be turned into a brilliant film if the right combination of great actors and a good screenplay is achieved. As for Ken Russell's "Mahler" film, it is a close call, but ultimately it gets thumbs down. Robert Powell does a good job playing the protagonist, but everyone one else in the film is average or mediocre. But the main weakness of "Mahler" is the screenplay. The narrative is disorganized and jumps all over the place. First we see Mahler at the end of his life, then we see him as a child, then we see him at the end of his life again, then we see him as the young and ambitious composer willing to do anything to get ahead in the music world, then switch back to his meeting with a doctor in Paris, then to a cottage where Mahler tells his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) that she should abandon composing music, etc., etc. Disoriented? Don't worry. You are not alone.

But worse than the scattered presentation is the undercurrent of silliness running through the movie. If you are going to do a movie about Mahler, then present your subject matter in an intelligent and serious way. But Russell does not do that. He has this tendency of getting carried away. At best, Russell's over the top filmmaking could generate incredible laughter. But if the joke does not work, then the result is incredibly embarrassing. Having Gustav Mahler fantasize about his wife Alma as a cocoon is not only strange, but also absurd. If Russell was trying to make a joke out of this sequence, then the joke did not work. Another scene has Alma Mahler playing a topless stripper for several Nazis, one of whom is her lover. I guess no one told Ken Russell that the Nazi party did not exist in 1911. But perhaps the most ridiculous scenes, where Russell goes way overboard, involve Gustav Mahler's conversion to Catholicism. First Gustav lowers his trousers to Emperor Franz Joseph after the latter asked him to do so. This scene was inserted to bring up the composer's Jewish identity. Then Gustav Mahler has this fantasy encounter with Cosima Wagner who is dressed -- get this! -- as a dominatrix with a swastika on her leather pants. Was this scene necessary? Apparently, Gustav has to become Cosima's sex slave to convert to Catholicism and get a job at the Vienna Opera House. When watching this scene, I could not help but think that Russell was portraying not Mahler's fantasies, but his own, and that his inspiration came not from the early 20th century, but the sleaziest strip clubs and dominatrix clubs of London.

The result is a film that has some interesting scenes, but is otherwise dragged down by silly fantasies. This film is filled from beginning to end with Mahler's compositions, and yet we are given no insight into his genius or his humanity. Mahler was probably one of the finest composers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. But Russell makes Mahler the subject of a freak show, in which the protagonist is put on display and humiliated. Perhaps the director is trying to make a joke or maybe he is trying to tweak the noses of professional film directors who take their craft seriously. Maybe Russell is even making fun of Mahler and his obsession with conformity. Whatever Russell is trying to do, "Mahler" plays like a joke in poor taste.

Whatever you may think about Mahler's music, which rose controvery from the start, this is another of Ken Russell's eloquent aces of musical films, not quite rising to the level of Tchaikovsky three years earlier, but still visually a masterpiece, where every scene and image is of supreme aesthetic beauty. The film was written by Russell himself, and he concentrates the plot to Mahler's final journey home by train to Vienna with his wife, going back by flashbacks to his earlier life with all its worst traumas, including his brother's suicide and his daughter's death. The perhaps most interesting sequence is his visit to the asylum to seek out his colleague Hugo Wolf, excellently played by David Collings, and his conversations with him, all lost mentally in an alien imperial character but as such even the more reasonable. The problems with his marriage with Alma is also thoroughly ventilated, and on this one railway journey, Ken Russell actually succeeds in comprising Mahler's entire life. His music is presented only in fragments, there is a ridiculous episode with Wagner's music interfering and disturbing, and Robert Powell is just perfect as Mahler, while the main credit of the film is the marvellous camera work and imagery.

Interesting movie, generally dealing with accurate historical facts, but in a dreamy, psychological manner. However, it looks a bit rushed and almost lacking the grandeur, the fury and the sarcasm which were also characteristic to Mahler the man, the composer and the conductor. The Monty Python scene with Cosima Wagner as a Nazi Domina is a blasphemy, totally out of the blue, ridiculous and not based on anything real. Of course she was a fierce anti-Semite, but did she really have so much influence? Perhaps it's a metaphor, but then it should not have been treated in circus style, as its ground themes were not light matter. One more thing: although a very good actor, Robert Powell looked in several scenes more like Harold Lloyd than like Mahler. LE: Now it striked me: Hugh Grant might be a more appropriate Mahler, at least looks-wise.

If you like Mahler's music and have read something about his life, then this film is unlikely to meet your expectations.

I found it to be an awkward collection of badly stitched together, largely badly acted parodies, improbable events and dialogues. The actor playing Mahler does make a brave effort, even though the script would have him looking extremely young and healthy even when dying, and behaving rudely much of the time. But for the rest... Alma Mahler looks wanton and superficial, and physically not at all like Alma Mahler. Mahler's father looks just embarrassing, with many other characters being a collection of freaks. Give this a good coating of 1970s dubious experimental ideas and listen to the shrill recording on the DVD, and you are done.

Ken Russell made several films for the BBC on artists and musicians like Fredrick Delius, the composer, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the painter and poet, and one of the founders of the Pre Raphaelite movement. The Rossetti film features the late Oliver Reed in an engrossing performance. This Mahler film is quite good. I feared watching it because I thought Ken Russell would make a circus of Mahler's tempestuous life, but it's a fairly controlled foray, except for the aforementioned sequence with Wagner's widow, BUT she was well acquainted with Hitler, and she never met a Nazi she didn't like, so the scene with her was founded on fact.

Robert Powell, and the lovely Georgina Hale, give beautiful performances. I looked in their credits and see THEY ARE BARELY WORKING TODAY. Maybe their own choice or a preference of stage work. I can't believe they would pass up today's movie money. They have not appeared as far as I can see in any major movie project for years. I don't get it. Russell, if he worked with the editor fitting the music to the film, shows a real feeling for the music. Even today Mahler's music is a specially acquired taste, and if much of it sounds bizzaire today, think what it sounded like to listners in 1906. A special kudo must go to David Collings as the insane composer Hugo Wolf. An acting gem. Also no current acting credits. David where are you? We need guys like you, Robert Powell, and Georgina Hale.

Mahler is the highlight of Ken Russells career. Renowned for his visual flair, Mahler achieves an elegant beauty and emotional depth not found in many of his feature films, while avoiding, mostly, his indulgent excesses.

By far his best composer biography (miles ahead of The Music Lovers or Lisztomania which both sink in their over the top depravity) Mahler is especially remarkable for the performance of the relatively unknown actress Georgina Hale - even though she won a BAFTA for this very role. Top marks to both director and actress.

As with so many of Ken Russell's films, this work probes, again, the nature of artistic genius, the mores of artists during the last 150 years and, especially, the proximity of this form of genius to psycho-pathology. During this period-- 1968 to 1980-- the period of Russell's greatest popularity, infamy and exposure coincided with a formative period of my life. He was ' a god of my adolescence.' By this I mean to say that my critical 'objectivity' is somewhat blurred when it comes to assessing the films of this period. For I, too am a music lover.

Great movie for the independant film lovers. Who fans can see Robert Powell of Tommy actually talk. I love how director Russell uses flashbacks to tell a story, though Ken Russell's casting director stinks at choosing children to match the adults; in Tommy, the boy has straight brown hair, dark brown eyes, while adult Tommy has curly blonde hair and azure blue eyes. The same pattern persists in Mahler, the child has straight hair, Robert Powell has a head of the most curly hair, anyhow, a good movie. thanks

Ken Russell can go either way for me, but Mahler I find absolutely fascinating and one of his better films. There are a couple of touches that are perhaps excessively weird and hard to swallow or completely believe like Cosima Wagner as a dominatrix and Mahler biting into a pig snout. Even with those touches though, Mahler is actually in a way one of Russell's more restrained efforts and all the better for it. The film is beautifully shot, the period lovingly evoked and the locations stunning to look at. The music is phenomenal, and is utilised very well here. The effective being that of Kindertotenlieder in the wonderful sequence where Alma is searching for her children. Russell directs with a restrained but unmistakable style and the film is finely scripted by him even if it is purposefully talky. The story unfolds slowly, but is continually riveting. Robert Powell not only bears some semblance to Mahler but also gives a performance of great depth and subtlety. Georgina Hale gives him excellent support as Alma, and it was interesting to see a portrayal of Hugo Wolf, played ably here by David Collings. Overall, a fascinating film whether you're a classical music fan, a newcomer to the style or not, though it is one of those movies that I don't see everybody being totally enamoured with. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Robert Powell plays Gustav Mahler, Georgina Hale plays Alma Mahler (when she wasn't Alma Gropius, Alma Werfel or fooling around with some other Viennese) and England plays Austria in this visually stunning movie by Ken Russell.

I'm not generally fond of Russell's movies, but this one is intended as a fantasia in which Mahler's music is used for balletic pieces, often using a lot of Nazi symbolism. It's the sort of over-the-top visuals that Russell often used (along with a lot of homoerotic imagery) that usually makes me simply roll my eyes. Here it actually works, and works brilliantly. The story-telling around it is not as compelling; Russell's idea of biography is not mine. However, that isn't really the point of this film.

This film, though good in parts and with a fascinating performance by Robert Powell, is too stylised and idiosyncratic to be looked on as a true representation of Mahler's life and works. Rather it should be seen as an essay on Ken Russell's view of his inner struggles, and particularly his conversion to Catholicism. Too much of the dialogue and camera-work is stilted, and it has the look of a film on a budget, using locations in the lake district and Derbyshire (Chatsworth House) to represent Austria. This last comment may seem nit-picking, but using well known locations that many know are not where they are supposed to be can be distracting. Georgina Hale didn't really convince as Alma for me, a strong, stunning and seductive woman that Hale can't quite portray.

Given the fascination of Mahler (and a ready made soundtrack of stunning music!) its perhaps time filmmakers had another go at portraying his life, works and tragic death. The perfect actor for the lead role - Robert Powell (who can forget that silhouette of Powell's face on the train, looking exactly like famous photos of Mahler himself?) - is perhaps too old now, though he could portray him in his later years. It would be one of those bio-pics of people I had always been intrigued to see on film (others include Alexander the Great, Howard Hughes, Hitler - all who have been portrayed recently).

This movie, while beautifully shot, grows completely out of control as is moves along. The once over of Gustav Mahler by Ken Russell falls into the trap that all the other Russell films do--over excess. The shot of Mahler biting into a pig snout is one of the most disgusting and offensive images I have ever seen.

"Mahler" shows the surrealist brilliance of Russell, proving he can make a "normal" movie & an insane one simultaneously. More akin to an actual biopic than other Russell composer bios, we see how Mahler's obsessions affected his work & his marriage; Alma's arc is devastating. Still, the fever-dream absurdity is prevalent; in this film especially, he leans into the Lebowski-esque humor in these segments, which while emotionally confusing at times, it's also wonderfully entertaining & undeniably intentional.

If you are in the camp of liking Ken Russell, you are going to love this movie. If you like Mahler's compositions and think you're going to get a straightforward biopic (more on this later), you're in the wrong place.

This film is beautifully shot, the acting is over the top in many cases, the imagery will at times be disturbing, the metaphors will run deep, like all Russell's movies.

I just heard of Georgina Hale's passing in January of this year (2024) so was drawn to watch this film again because she was fantastic. I know she won a BAFTA for it, but she should have been given more recognition outside of the UK for this role.

I want to return to the term "straightforward biopic" now. By that I mean the cookie cutter, sanitized tripe that moviegoers normally eat up like Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocket Man, A Beautiful Mind, etc., that take real people who had very interesting lives and then manipulate, fabricate, and distort to give us our feels but no substance. You're better off just watching a documentary in most cases.

If you're going to do a biopic, I say go all in like Ken Russell does. While you may get his version of the story, at least you're going to be in for a beautiful and wild ride that will also make you think.