Mahler [Blu-ray Import - Japan]

All this talk about death and less of the essential dichotomies in life! Perhaps if people really opened their eyes to the world, as Gustav Mahler did, they'd be more forgiving, slightly more "complex," less brooding, less fixated on themes. Think of it! You don't sit down to compose a Symphony about death - well, scratch that, Prokofiev, Shostakovitch, Schumann notwithstanding. Anyway, unless one is morbid or overly attentive to popular trends there are so many other aspects to classical music: age versus experience, male and female, nature and nurture, form and function, creation versus maintenance; you can add your own extremities. I don't dwell on Mahler's perplexity about the end. What he gave us was in many respects the whole big operatic plot rolled into one.It is very difficult to depict a life like this cinematically without serious faults: missing pieces, or overdone inclusions - like, the hot chick busting out of a cocoon. I liked the movie. Sure and it's weird in parts and tedious in others. That’s entertainment! What kind of person though, seriously, is either so sensitive or so masochistic, that he would hang with such a conniving, untrustworthy woman, who can say? I mean I get the whole muse thing, but the female perspective doesn’t fare well in this movie. If it’s any consolation, history does not remember Alma Mahler as anything but an unfaithful spouse. And for a genius who changed the world with sound? We're forced to accept the critic's idea of "the best." TRUE: much of Mahler's work borrows from German poetry - Bethge, Goethe, Klopstock. The film omits some of his most memorable work - the final Movement of "Resurrection," for example. You could write an entire film for the Song of the Earth. Mahler himself wrote the last words of the Song of the Earth. (and I think the last bars, "ewig ... ewig" have made me realize, as a scientist, that dying has no effect on eternity.) And not one scene of him conducting! The 8th - the “Symphony of a Thousand” - when it premiered in Philly, called for an ARMY of musicians, three choirs, and a general's presence to pull it off. Now come on, how long would it take YOU to get ready for that? And the tempo, and rehearsals, and worrying about a monumental disaster, the critics, the pre-occupation must have been outrageous, one of the biggest events of his life. Purists would wonder why they set that one song from Kindertotenlieder to English rather than German, and why Russell made so much of it. Mahler's music sounds "quintessentially Jewish" in parts (that is my opinion, as if schtetl sounds could typify a people, religion, and practice) (eg., "Titan"). His folk Expression was popular in turn of the century Europe; the formalists did not want Bohemian Jewish notes ringing through the air. It was childlike and appealing until it was “non-Viennese,” and eventually “not to be listened to.” It sounded "degenerate" to authorities, like the Nazis later found Koskoshka's (and Klee's) drawings. What it takes for a culture to step up and accomplish: the power to convert to Roman Catholicism as an expedience. What it takes to resolve brass and woodwinds in melodies, completely new. What does a Mahler “revival” mean?Memory and sound live forever, no matter how they come to us.

Film auteur Ken Russell made at least six biographical movies about celebrated composers, three of which enjoyed commercial release in the United States: "The Music Lovers," about Tchaikovsky; "Mahler," about its titular subject; and "Lisztomania," really about Wagner as much as it was about Liszt. Unseen in commercial release in North America (and unseen by me) are studies of Frederick Delius, Sir Arnold Bax, and Bela Bartók. Known for his extravagance - and, let us be honest, his vulgarity - Russell nevertheless believes passionately in these projects and endows his composer-artists with an especially powerful aura. (At one point, in the late 1960s, Russell apparently tried to help in the promotion of Lyrita's release of symphonies by Bax, although his plan was eventually scuttled by Lyrita's management.) The Tchaikovsky, Liszt, and Mahler films are all studies in the link between neurosis and creativity and portray the artist not merely as a social outcast, unfit really for society, but as a martyr to his own talent, which inevitably consumes him. "Mahler" (1974), as fantastic as portions of it might be, maintains the closest marriage with reality. Robert Powell (famously Jesus in Zeffirelli's film of that name) as Mahler represents perfect casting. For one thing, he looks the part. British beauty Georgina Hale (where is she twenty-five years later?) is alternately innocent and whorish as Alma Schindler, who, twenty years younger, became Mahler's wife only to betray him, as Mahler perhaps betrayed her, too. There is enough neurosis in their story to go around. Russell gives us not so much a straight narrative as a series of vignettes in flashback from Mahler's point of view as he returns by train to Vienna for the last time in 1911, the year of his death. Using Bernard Haitink's recordings of the Mahler symphonies (with the Concertgebouw Orchestra), Russell illustrates the music in the visual fantasies or episodes that make up the film. Examples? To the apocalyptic "organ chord" from the First Movement of the Tenth Symphony, we see Mahler's lakeside hut at Maiernegg burst into flames; then a cocooned female figure gradually emerges from her chrysalis in a weird ballet. To the death-march on "Frère Jacques" from the First Symphony, with its interruptions by an oompah-ing klezmer band, we see Mahler watching his own funeral and interment helplessly, his coffin carried by black-uniformed SS men while Alma, in matching SS miniskirt and jackboots, does a lewd dance on the grave. In a crucifixion scene accompanied by bleeding chunks from Wagner's "Ring," Cosima Wagner, the Mistress of Bayreuth,gives him a pass for being circumcised, then compels him to eat pork, thus licensing him to conduct the most Teutonic of Teutonic music. (This follows the announcement of the composer's conversion to Catholicism - as I said, nothing is too vulgar for Russell.) For the "Veni, Creator Spiritus" from the Eighth Symphony, Russell gives us a cinematic suite of Gustave Doré engravings based on Dante's "Paradiso." And so it goes. At one point, a reporter claiming to be "Ernst Krenek" bursts into Mahler's Pullman compartment. (The real Ernst Krenek would have been about three years old at the time.) What holds the sequence together is the music in combination with Powell's remarkable performance. He even convinces when he undertakes the thankless job of conducting an unseen (and of course nonexistent) orchestra for the camera. (We all do it, but none of us wants to be photographed while doing it.) While room remains for as less surreal treatment of Mahler, Russell's, despite its eccentricity, is still a worthy attempt. Aficionados of Mahler will especially want to have it. I recommend it with the cautions implicit in what has gone before.

Having held off buying this for years, since it was unclear if it was Region B or All Regions, and the initial cost for the import was prohibitively expensive, I am very pleased with this purchase. The disc is clearly marked as Region A on the actual disc itself.The movie's visuals are sharp, clear, and better color separation than the videotape versions could ever hope to be. The sound is clear, and the music comes through beautifully.The menu screen is in both Japanese and English, and the original language soundtrack (English) is the default. The Japanese subtitles are easily turned off.The only downside is that the extra features are few, and also in Japanese. The chronology of Mahler's life is in Japanese, and the other supplemental text is also Japanese. The trailer is included and is, to put it mildly, very odd. Whomever put the trailer together in 1974 had some peculiar ideas as to what a trailer should be in order to entice movie-goers to come and see the film.Since I figure most people buying this are already fans of both Gustav Mahler and/or Ken Russell, I won't review the film itself. Just be forewarned that this is the full version of the film, with none of the cuts some earlier releases had. Two sequences in particular are potentially offensive. Bearing in mind that this is a Ken Russell film, with very over-the-top outlandish visuals in allegorical scenes, most viewers should be able to stomach them. If not, there's always fast-forward.If you're fan of Mahler or Ken Russell, then this release is well worth the price.

Maverick British director Ken Russell made his name in the 60s at the BBC where he made several very good biopics of famous composers such as Delius, Debussy, Elgar and Richard Strauss. He continued in the same vein with full length features like The Music Lovers (Tchaikovsky) and Lizstomania (Liszt and Wagner). His most successful venture (as Russell himself averred) was undoubtedly Mahler (1974) in which for once his flamboyant visual excess is perfectly married with the opulent post-romanticism of his subject.Gustav Mahler was an Austrian composer who was more famous as a conductor when he was alive, his music suffering half a century of neglect before the 1960s Mahler boom exploded courtesy of Leonard Bernstein's CBS recordings of the complete symphonies and song cycles. This was quickly followed by Luchino Visconti's Thomas Mann adaptation, Death in Venice (1971) in which the writer Gustav von Aschenbach is replaced by the composer and the film is consequently swamped with Mahler's music (particularly the adagietto from the fifth symphony). Russell's cheeky little biopic is a direct reply to Visconti's stuffy pretension in that Mahler's life is depicted in a series of fanciful and extremely funny flashbacks which play on different themes that wound through his life and seek to interpret the music itself.The film is structured around Mahler (Robert Powell) journeying by train back to Vienna with his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) and the flashbacks show us his childhood where we encounter his violent inn keeper father (Lee Montague) who beats him up to the sound of the brass band of a nearby military barracks, and his escape into the surrounding woods to discover the sounds of nature. Military marches and the sounds of Mother nature permeate all of Mahler's music. We see his early married life with Alma as she rushes about the countryside silencing everything so that her husband can compose at his lakeside retreat, a device which underlines Mahler's use of bird song, church bells, folk melodies and dance, especially the Austrian landler. Then there is his suppression of Alma's talent as a composer herself, a theme which figures large in their later marital troubles - Russell's script is largely based on Alma's very biased biography of her husband. Mahler imagines his own funeral with Alma (a notorious adulteress playing to her equally flawed adulterer husband) doing a striptease on his coffin while her various lovers look on. We see the loss of his child and other members of his family and the insanity of his friend Hugo Wolf (David Collings) - the cost of being afflicted with an artistic gift. In fact fear of death (fate itself) overshadows the film as it does all of his music, especially his fear of the mighty 9. Beethoven, Bruckner and Schubert all died after completing 9 symphonies and Mahler tried to cheat fate by titling his ninth 'Das Lied von der Erde', but of course died after his official ninth, leaving his tenth incomplete.Most startlingly of all we see Mahler's conversion from Jew to Catholic in a bid to get around arch anti-Semite Cosima Wagner to get the position as chief of the Vienna State Opera. Cosima (Antonia Ellis) is depicted as a goose-stepping Nazi dominatrix who forces Mahler to forge a sword, slay the dragon (a pig of course), eat pork and jump through a hoop of fire - all done, naturally enough, to Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries with awful made up English lyrics to match. Cosima Wagner didn't actually have anything to do with Mahler's appointment to the Vienna State Opera, but the facts that Mahler converted to Catholicism to get the post, that Cosima was an even more vicious anti-Semite than her celebrated husband and that it was an anti-Semitic smear campaign in the Viennese press which eventually forced Mahler out of the job, are all true enough. Russell here remains true to the spirit rather than the letter.It goes without saying that the film is very brash and irreverent, but it's surprising how close Russell actually takes us to the nature of the music and how much from Mahler's life is illuminated by the very OTT romantic treatment. The performances are all admirable as is the use of the splendid Lake District locations that stand in for the Austrian countryside. The film was made on a tiny budget, but it never really shows - showpieces like the lakeside hut bursting into flames to the explosion of atonality at the center of the adagio of the tenth symphony, and the concluding outburst of the Alma theme from the first movement of the tragic sixth symphony as the couple alight from their train, really make sense.It's surprising how much of the music is included in the film. Only the eighth symphony is ignored, an omission that's surprising as the 1909 Munich premiere was the crowning triumph of Mahler's whole composing career. It's even more surprising that Russell doesn't make anything of the affair Alma had with the architect Walter Gropius during the rehearsals for this particular event. The low budget also presumably precluded a depiction of Mahler's American years when he conducted the New York Philharmonic and the Metropolitan Opera, leading to conflict with Arturo Toscanini no less.All in all though, the film is great fun - a wonderful introduction to Mahler for those new to his music, and a surprisingly insightful compendium of information for those who think they know their Mahler well. The DVD is good, though the aspect ratio is 4:3, not wide screen. I'm assuming that was how the film was initially released, but I'm not sure. The picture is very clear and the soundtrack superb, Mahler's music (Bernard Haitink conducting the Concertgebouworkest, Amsterdam) sounding truly wonderful. At this price, Ken's personal favorite is worth picking up by anyone with an interest in classical music and British cinema. Too many of Russell's later films are so dire that it's refreshing to be reminded that once upon a time he really was one of our brightest and best talents. Mahler may very well be his finest achievement.

Ken Russell has attempted to bring his Freudian interpretations of several composers to the screen - Liszt, Tchaikovsky and Mahler. The latter is by any standard the most extreme. Melvyn Bragg wrote the screenplay for the 1971 movie 'The Music Lovers' about Tchaikovsky and his struggles with his homosexuality. Strangely enough the story deals with various forms of madness. Russell wrote the script for 'Mahler' (1974) which in itself is totally bizarre - or is it ART?As usual with Russell, he uses Freudian symbolism through the film and employs absurd, comical scenes that pay tribute to the silent era of Chaplin and Harold Lloyd slapstick. Some scenes are quite striking - as when Mahler (Robert Powell) is pictured striding about his summer house conducting a section of Mahler's First Symphony with an imaginary orchestra. Although the story in part is about Mahler's fragmenting marriage with Alma, the farcical scenes of his 'conversion' to Catholicism and the demented Nazi inspired portrayal of the goose-stepping Cosima Wagner are not only distasteful but asinine.If you are looking for a biopic about Mahler give this a wide berth. The only reason I gave this artful mess three stars is due to the music, played conducted by the great Bernard Haitink and the Concertgebouw Orchestra.

I first saw this film not long after it came out some forty years ago. I've wanted to get a copy for some time and so was delighted to see it available on DVD from Amazon.It is important to realise that this is a Ken Russell film and not a docudrama. And so license is taken with some of the historical information for dramatic purposes. But his does not detract from the overall effect.The film takes as it's basis a rail journey by Mahler to Vienna (his last?) with his wife Alma. This punctuates a series of flashbacks and dream sequences that provide insights into the man and, more particularly, his music.The music is not all Mahler's. There is a sexually explicit extract from Wagner's Tristan und Isolde and also a parody using the Ride of the Walkyries on Mahler's (pragmatic?) conversion to Roman Catholicism.Another central theme is the failing relationship between Gustav and Alma and the emergence of Max Gropius on the scene. Aspects of this, particularly Alma's composing aspirations (actually appreciated by Gustav when it was too late), are not handled all that well.But overall, as an attempt to provide some insights into Mahler's wonderful music, the film is worth watching.

Ken Russell is, without doubt, a great film-maker but, known for his shocking images and accused of an obsessive interest in sexuality and the church, he is not for the faint-hearted. A "Marmite" director, he has a great eye and a way of telling stories which are educational and memorable in their visual sensationalism. Deeply interested in the arts, he directed films on Liszt, Tchaikovsky, Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, and DH Lawrence's "Women in Love" to name but a few in a prolific career which started in television."Mahler" is one of his best but one which breaks the mould in some ways, being less shocking and obsessive. Visually breath-taking and musically splendid (as any film true to Mahler will be) he sets the scene for creation of some of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries' greatest music.His star, Robert Powell, looks very much like Mahler and encapsulates the artist struggling to balance his very public day-to-day duties as a conductor and musical director with his isolated love of and desire to compose in his two lake-side sheds overlooked by dramatic mountains.A beautiful film I thoroughly recommend.For those interested in Mahler, I recommend other DVDs:Michael Tilson Thomas's "Keeping Score - Mahler"Leonard Bernstein's "Little Drummer Boy"and Stephen Johnson's book "Mahler, his life and Works" plus two study CDs.

良かったです。