Mahler *** (1973, Robert Powell, Georgina Hale, Richard Morant, Lee Montague, Miriam Karlin) – Classic Movie Review 5,444

Ken Russell’s 1973 film biopic of the composer Mahler is one of his typically extravagant movies. Robert Powell is impressive as a Gustav Mahler obsessed with love and career. Georgina Hale won the 1975 BAFTA Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer.

Writer-director Ken Russell’s 1973 film biopic of the composer Mahler is a typically extravagant movie from him. Russell won the Technical Grand Prize at the Cannes Film Festival in 1974.

Robert Powell is impressive as a Gustav Mahler obsessed with love and career, and Georgina Hale is remarkable too as his wife Alma. Hale won the 1975 BAFTA Film Award for Most Promising Newcomer to Leading Film Roles, although she made her film debut in the historical drama Eagle in a Cage (1971).

The movie annoyed a lot of people, particularly with its bizarre, anachronistic Third Reich juxtapositions, but still it looks like it is to be judged as one of Russell’s successes.

It is filmed with undeniable zest, visual flair (it is shot by Dick Bush), a clear point of view, a sharp sense of the ridiculous and a great love of the music. Russell tells his story in a series of flashbacks as the Mahlers discuss their failing marriage on a train ride.

Oliver Reed, star of Russell’s The Devils, has a walk-on as the station master.

Also in the cast are Richard Morant, Lee Montague as Bernhard Mahler, Rosalie Crutchley as Marie Mahler, Benny Lee, Antonia Ellis as Cosima Wagner, Miriam Karlin as Aunt Rosa, Angela Down, David Collings, Ronald Pickup, Ken Colley, Dana Gillespie, Elaine Delmar, Peter Eyre as Otto Mahler, George Coulouris, and Andrew Faulds.

Recordings by the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink provide the score.

Russell recalled: ‘My theme was the composer’s last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life. They vary from passion to comedy. Some of the scenes are pretty grotesque.’

The National Film Finance Corporation and German backers pulled out before filming, so producer David Puttnam had to slash the budget from £400,000 to £180,000 and shoot in England instead of Germany.

The film includes a parody of Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film Death in Venice, which Russell disliked. He said: ‘Dirk Bogarde gave the worst performance of his life. His characterisation had nothing to do with Mahler. Mahler was never decaying, never sorry for himself, never given to dreaming of the past. It was cheeky on Visconti’s part and very lazy. He played the very same Mahler theme in every scene.’

David Puttnam’s company Goodtimes planned six Ken Russell films about composers, including Mahler, Franz Liszt, George Gershwin, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Richard Wagner, but only Mahler and Lisztomania (1975) were made.

Sandy Lieberson of Goodtimes said: ‘The film sold everywhere and made a tidy profit.’ But Russell claimed in 1991 he had never seen any of his share of the profit.

Russell also directed The Music Lovers (1970), the story of poor Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, and Lisztomania (1975), with composer and pianist Franz Liszt (1811-86) as a Cockney rock star.

Georgina Hale also appeared in Russell’s The Devils (1971), The Boy Friend (1971), Lisztomania (1975), and Valentino (1977), and in Russell’s bizarre 1995 TV movie Treasure Island, in which she plays the young Jim Hawkins’s flirtatious bingo-calling Mum.

Georgina Hale (4 August 1943 – 4 January 2024) received a Laurence Olivier Award nomination for her performance in the original London stage production of Steaming, but even so she was overlooked for Joseph Losey’s 1985 film version Steaming.

Her other films include Butley (1974), Sweeney 2 (1978), The World is Full of Married Men (1979), McVicar (1980), The Watcher in the Woods (1980), Castaway (1986), Preaching to the Perverted (1997), Mrs Palfrey at the Claremont (2005), and Cockneys vs Zombies (2011).

She enjoyed a long and successful film, TV and stage career, but remains best known for her roles in the films of Ken Russell, especially Mahler. Russell said she was ‘an actress of such sensitivity that she can make the hair rise on your arms’.

Robert Powell (born 1 June 1944) is best known for the title roles in Mahler (1974) and Jesus of Nazareth (1977), and as secret agent Richard Hannay in The Thirty Nine Steps (1978).

© Derek Winnert 2017 Classic Movie Review 5,444

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