 List Price: $24.99 
Amazon.com: From its stunning opening sequence, featuring Georgina Hale (who plays the wife of Gustav Mahler in this Ken Russell film) isolated in full mummy wrap and writhing with erotic yearning to the lush strains of her husband's music, Mahler distinguishes itself as the most poetic and archetypal of Russell's great-composer works. A kind of cinematic response to Luchino Visconti's 1971 adaptation of Death in Venice, in which Dirk Bogarde plays a Mahler-esque composer in search of beauty in the plague-filled city, Mahler stars Robert Powell as the great Jewish romantic from 19th-century Vienna, drafting enormous symphonic works in the midst of rising anti-Semitism. Converting to Christianity as a means of survival, Mahler carries on with his work but experiences an erosion of his health and sense of identity. Meanwhile, his self-effacing spouse represses her own creative drives to keep the resident genius afloat, plugging every leak and receding all but invisible into the woodwork. While the film is the least ostentatious of Russell's movies about music, it is hardly conventional, a mix of lyrical tableaux and comic fantasy that adds up to a stirring, dreamlike experience. --Tom Keogh Customer Reviews: Rating: 
Date: 2008-01-05
This is not a movie about Mahler but a performance of his 7th Symphony
Please ignore all other reviews of this VHS to date (Jan 8, 2008). The reviews I've read must be of a different product. This is not a movie about Mahler, but a filming of a performance of his symphony no. 7 as conducted by Leonard Bernstein and performed by the Vienna Philharmonic (Wiener Philharmoniker). All 5 movements. I own most of this series on VHS. If you are a fan of Mahler and of Bernstein as I am, I think you will really enjoy this. I'm not sure if this has been put out on DVD, but the filming of the orchestra is very musical. Rating:
Date: 2007-10-26
Gustav Mahler's Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen
This review is of the concert, as seen on the cover of the tape, with Leonard Bernstein conducting the Wiener Philharmoniker, with a young Thomas Hampson in such excellent form. His Kindertotenlieder alone will break your heart. This is the Thomas Hampson that got me addicted, buying all his recordings and following his concerts and operas. Be warned, it could happen to you. Rating:
Date: 2006-02-12
Bizarre, But Beautiful
Bizarre but Beautiful , June 19, 2005
Okay, this film does appear very strange at times, as it shows Austrian composer Gustav Mahler smashing a Star of David, taking a sword to symbolically kill a dragon (the old traditional German masters), and eating pork washed down with a mug of milk to show his renunciation of his Jewish roots, just to get ahead on the music scene.
If you can't stand an anachronistic Cosima Wagner goose-stepping back and forth to determine if Mahler is worthy to conduct in Vienna, then you should'nt watch this film.
But you'll be missing something valuable. Ken Russell captures Mahler the genius, who was both arrogant, and yet uncertain.
Many of Mahler's most beautiful themes are used throughout the film and always at appropriate places. It was in this way that the film captures Mahler's genius for taking what he hears in the natural world and tranforming it into his symphonies. Especially poignant was an English version of a song from Kindertotenlieder, which accompanies a nightmarish fleeing of Mahler's daughters through the forest during a storm.
A portion of a symphony which includes the sound of a rattle, is led into by Alma trying to quiet the Mahler children, shaking a rattle. Likewise one of the frightening "what the animals of the night tell me" phantom monsters of the Third Symphony, appears to young Gustav as a white horse terrifying him in as a very literal "night mare."
As one who believes Mahler was the greatest of the Romantic composers, and perhaps also a sort of musical philosopher or even theologian, I find more to enjoy in Ken Russell's Mahler each time I watch it. It's a little bizarre at times, but also very beautiful.
Two more quick comments: Robert Powell, the actor who plays Mahler, looks astonishingly like the composer.
The "bad transfer" which other reviewers have remarked about, has obviously been corrected, as current copies are perfect.
Rating:
Date: 2005-06-20
Bizarre but Beautiful
Okay, this film does appear very strange at times, as it shows Austrian composer Gustav Mahler smashing a Star of David, taking a sword to symbolically kill a dragon (the old traditional German masters), and eating pork washed down with a mug of milk to show his renunciation of his Jewish roots, just to get ahead on the music scene.
If you can't stand an anachronistic Cosima Wagner goose-stepping back and forth to determine if Mahler is worthy to conduct in Vienna, then you should'nt watch this film.
But you'll be missing something valuable. Ken Russell captures Mahler the genius, who was both arrogant, and yet uncertain.
Many of Mahler's most beautiful themes are used throughout the film and always at appropriate places. It was in this way that the film captures Mahler's genius for taking what he hears in the natural world and tranforming it into his symphonies. Especially poignant was an English version of a song from Kindertotenlieder, which accompanies a nightmarish fleeing of Mahler's daughters through the forest during a storm.
A portion of a symphony which includes the sound of a rattle, is led into by Alma trying to quiet the Mahler children, shaking a rattle. Likewise one of the frightening "what the animals of the night tell me" phantom monsters of the Third Symphony, appears to young Gustav as a white horse terrifying him in as a very literal "night mare."
As one who believes Mahler was the greatest of the Romantic composers, and perhaps also a sort of musical philosopher or even theologian, I find more to enjoy in Ken Russell's Mahler each time I watch it. It's a little bizarre at times, but also very beautiful.
Two more quick comments: Robert Powell, the actor who plays Mahler, looks astonishingly like the composer.
The "bad transfer" which other reviewers have remarked about, has obviously been corrected, as current copies are perfect. Rating: 
Date: 2005-03-19
Mahler, Ken Russell's movie
I think Russell's production is pure trash! What a waste of money! I love Mahler but seeing that movie left a bad taste in my mouth about Mahler. After viewing it I immediately consigned it to the trash can |
