Ken Russell's Mahler from 1974.  With two flops he needed a commercial success, so returned to classical composers.  The film is about  sacrifice and creativity- Mahler has to sacrifice his religion and convert to Christianity, Alma his wife sacrifices her musical career.  A train journey provides a rite of passage, starting with a dream sequence which is Russell at his best and most visual- "music always told stories to Mahler" (Peter Franklin, The  Life of Mahler chapter 3).

Waking Mahler says to Alma "You were part of a dream" / "A pebble I suppose" / No, you were a living creature struggling to be born" / "At last you've noticed".  Early indication of Alma's state of mind.

As the train journey continues Mahler remembers episodes from his life, and on the train itself he confronts jubilant crowds (success), the gutter press (sensationalism), his wife's lovers (infidelity), and the doctor (mortality).

A beautiful film mixing true emotion, the death of Mahler's children, with dancing Nazis.

 

The memories of Mahler's childhood are bring out the brutality of Mahler's father, with the adult tormented by his childhood trauma.  The episode is good but could be shortened, with the Jewish scenes a bit too kosher.

Mahler has to convert from Judaism to Christianity to keep working.  The scene from his childhood learning to swim presages the later baptism of Christianity.

People

Robert Powell plays Mahler and Georgina Hale his overshadowed wife Alma who literally buries her creativity.  Her performance is possibly the best she has done.

Oliver Reed appears in a cameo role as the railway guard- in the book Hellraiser author Robert Sellers states Reed was given three bottles of Dom Perignon for the role.

Dana Gillespie the singer (she recorded Bowie's Andy Warhol before Bowie did) plays Mahler's mistress, and she wrote the composition Alma's Song used in the film though she is miming to Carol Mudie,

Photography is by Dick Bush.
 

Best Image

The hut by the lake bursting into flames which starts the film.  Mahler's idyll has ended.

One of Mahler's actual huts (which has been renovated)- "a small wood structure he had built for the summer of 1894".  It is on the shore of the Attersee in Austria (photo and description from Peter Franklin's The Life of Mahler, chapter 4, 1997).

I asked Ken about the hut burnt in the film, and it was specially built for Ken.

Coppola pays homage in the opening of Apocalypse Now! (images from the DVD of the film).

Best Scene

Alma Mahler walking down the stairs in a black veil like the shadow of death.
 

Themes

Ken Russell includes a homage to Death in Venice.  At times Powell also seems to be influenced by Dirk Bogarde with the similarities going beyond the direct homage.

The domestic sequences of Mahler as a child are similar to those in Savage Messiah.

There is a long train ride. Various nuns.  A crucifixion with Nazis etc. Russell kitsch at its best.
The scenery is around Russell's former home in the lakes.
Mahler makes fun of Tchaikovsky's piano concerto just as in The Music Lovers.

Films

Other films released in the same year include The Godfather 2 (sublime), Pasolini's Arabian Nights, Polanski's Chinatown and Brian de Palma's cult Phantom of the Paradise.