Mahler (1974)

Interesting facts

Mahler is a 1974 British biographical film based on the life of Austro-Bohemian composer Gustav Mahler. It was written and directed by Ken Russell for Goodtimes Enterprises, and starred Robert Powell as Gustav Mahler and Georgina Hale as Alma Mahler. The film was entered into the 1974 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the Technical Grand Prize.

Production

Russell had long been an admirer of Mahler's music. He said he based the film on "the rondo form in music where you present the theme and follow it with variations, then return to the theme and so on. My theme was the composer's last train journey before he died. During the journey we flash back to incidents in his life, the variations on the theme as it were. They vary from passion to comedy.

David Puttnam's company Goodtimes planned to make a series of six films about composers, all to be directed by Ken Russell. Subjects were to include Franz Liszt, George Gershwin, Ralph Vaughan Williams and Richard Wagner; they decided to do Mahler first. The National Film Finance Corporation removed its support prior to filming meaning Puttnam had to slash the budget from £400,000 to £180,000.

Some outdoor sections of the film were made in Borrowdale, in the English Lake District.

The film included a parody of Luchino Visconti's film Death in Venice, which Russell disliked. "Dirk [Bogarde] gave the worst performance of his life in Death in Venice", said Russell. "His characterization had nothing to do with Mahler. Mahler was never decaying, never sorry for himself, never given to dreaming of the past. The whole thing was a bit cheeky on Visconti's part and very lazy. He played the very same Mahler theme in every scene."

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