Mahler (film)

After a spectacular prelude, the film begins on a train journey with Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) confronting their failing marriage. The story is then recounted in a series of flashbacks (some of which are surrealistic and nightmarish), taking one through Mahler'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.

The music score of the movie consists of recordings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink.

Russell had long been an admirer of Mahler's music. He said he based the film on "the rondo form in music where you present the theme and follow it with variations, then return to the theme and so on. My theme was the composer's last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life, the variations on the theme as it were. They vary from passion to comedy. Like the scherzos from his symphonies some of the scenes are pretty grotesque, too."[5]

David Puttnam's company Goodtimes planned to make a series of six films about composers, all to be directed by Ken Russell. Subjects were to include Franz Liszt, George Gershwin and Vaughan Williams; they decided to do Mahler first. The National Film Finance Corporation removed its support prior to filming meaning Puttnam had to slash the budget from £400,000 to £180,000.[6] Russell says the film had German backers who also pulled out before filming, forcing the movie to be shot in England not Germany. Russell says Puttnam had no creative input into the film in contrast with their next collaboration, Lisztomania.[3]

Some outdoor sections of the film were made in Borrowdale, in the English Lake District.

The film included a parody of Death in Venice which Russell disliked. "Dirk [Bogarde] gave the worst performance of his life in Death in Venice", said Russell. "His characterization had nothing to do with Mahler. Mahler was never decaying, never sorry for himself, never given to dreaming of the past. The whole thing was a bit cheeky on Visconti's part and very lazy. He played the very same Mahler theme in every scene."[7]

According to one account, by 1985 the film had recorded a net loss of £14,000.[1] However Sandy Lieberson of Goodtimes said "the film sold everywhere and made a tidy profit."[8] Russell also said the film made a profit but claimed in 1991 he had never seen any of his share.[9]

Russell only ended up making one more film with Puttnam, Lisztomania. It was meant to be followed by a film about Wagner but that was not made.[10]

• Russell, Ken (1991). Altered States. Bantam.
• Yule, Andrew (1989). Fast fade : David Puttnam, Columbia Pictures, and the battle for Hollywood. Delacorte Press.

• Mahler at IMDb
• Mahler at the TCM Movie Database
• Trauma as Memory in Ken Russell's Mahler, by Eftychia Papanikolaou; chapter in After Mahler's Death edited by Gerold W. Gruber, Morten Solvik and Jan Vičar, 72–89. Olomouc, Czech Republic: Palacký University, 2013.