Mahler (film)
Mahler is a British feature film directed by Ken Russell . It deals with the life of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler .
action
In 1911, Gustav Mahler, who had a heart condition, traveled back to his hometown Vienna with his wife Alma from his previous place of work in New York. During the train journey, flashbacks of his life are told.
While Alma wants to ask the conductor for help because her husband does not like the train compartment, the first flashback tells of private life and his way of working in the couple's lake hut at their vacation spot. While at work he asks Alma to calm down and compose.
A second flashback tells of Gustav's childhood: his strict, choleric father Bernhard makes high demands on his young son in order to get a scholarship. The family has great expectations that one day Gustav will become a great concert pianist. Gustav would rather compose than play the piano, but his inclinations are suppressed by his strict piano teacher, so that Gustav begins to skip piano lessons at some point and prefers to go swimming.
On the train, Mahler is suddenly confronted with Max, Alma's lover. A woman traveling on the train who would like to make her train compartment available to the Mahler couple for exchange comes into the compartment and directs the conversation to the subject of death; a flashback tells how Mahler's two little daughters ask him questions about death and God. When Mahler later reproaches his wife about their affair, he collapses. During his faint, he dreams of his own funeral.
The next flashback tells of Mahler's efforts to become director of the Vienna Court Opera . But Mahler's affiliation to the Jewish faith soon turns out to be an attitude problem. At the same time, he has to witness the mental collapse of his friend Hugo Wolf because nobody recognizes his talent.
After Mahler talks to Alma about the continuation of the relationship, the next flashback tells of the financial and professional worries of Gustav and his siblings Otto and Josefine. In order to get the post at the court opera, Mahler decides to convert to Catholicism . The joy of the new job is clouded by Otto's suicide.
While the doctor looks after Mahler after Mahler's fainting spell, in the next flashback Alma reproaches him for why he has just composed something as negative as the Kindertotenlieder .
After Mahler's examination, the doctor raises the question of what the meaning of life and suffering is. While the train is at the station, Mahler enjoys the expressions of affection from the people on the platform. When Alma expresses her dissatisfaction that Mahler has treated her like a better housekeeper all along, he replies that he expressed his love for her through music. The two make up; Max is left behind.
When Doctor Roth wants to inform the Mahlers that Gustav's inflammation of the heart has returned and that Gustav has a maximum of two weeks to live, Gustav says about himself and Alma: "We two will live forever!"
Awards
In 1974 Ken Russell won a Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes International Film Festival ; he also got a Golden Palm nomination.
In 1975 Georgina Hale won the BAFTA Award for best newcomer. In the same year, Ken Russell won a Writers' Guild of Great Britain for Best Screenplay.
Reviews
“The film reveals the relationship between biography and musical inspiration, but is overloaded with bombastic and banal cultural kitsch. The intended parody of Catholicism, Wagnerianism and Nazism is sometimes tasteless. "
“After films about Strauss, Debussy, Tchaikovsky and Liszt, Russell made his most bizarre and most beautiful musician film, as baroque, anarchic and barbaric as ever, but even more disrespectful and crazy. And more serious: the correspondence between music and optical imagination is sovereign and refined, one “sees” Mahler's compositions; the cinematic form, for all its eccentricity, is flawless. [...] After 'Mahler' you hear music and watch films differently. "
“The British director has already used Richard Strauss and Claude Debussy on television and Peter Tchaikovsky in the cinema as a pretext for his turbulent, baroque and always slightly exaggerated musician's films. 'Mahler' tops them all: his life and his music as a carpet of associations for the explosive fantasy of a film fool, for gaudy images and glaring spectacles, for very private, symbol-overloaded visions [...]: with Russell, his exuberant optical vocabulary and his All of this has a lot to do with the rather bourgeois notion of gifted artistry, but very little to do with Mahler. "
literature
- Jens Malte Fischer : "Contains strong violence and sex". Ken Russell's Gustav Mahler film (UK 1974). In: Christopher Balme, Fabienne Liptay, Miriam Drewes (eds.): The artist's passion. Creativity and Crisis in Film. Edition Text + Critique, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-86916-089-4 , pp. 160–176 ( online ; PDF; 151 kB).
- Arno Rußegger: A question of style. About Ken Russell's film “Mahler” (1974). In: Friedbert Aspetsberger, Erich Wolfgang Partsch (Ed.): Mahler Talks. StudienVerlag, Innsbruck etc. 2002, ISBN 3-7065-1799-X , pp. 32–65.
Web links
- Mahler in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mahler. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .
- ↑ Film tips . In: Die Zeit , No. 14/1977
- ↑ Wolf Donner : The avant-garde is aging . In: Die Zeit , No. 22/1974