Movie Details

Title

Mahler

Overview

The film begins on a train journey with Gustav Mahler (Robert Powell) and his wife Alma (Georgina Hale) confronting their failing marriage. The story is then recounted in a series of flashbacks (some of which are surrealistic and nightmarish), taking one through Mahler's childhood, his brother's suicide, his experience with anti-semitism, his conversion from Judaism to Catholicism, his marital problems, and the death of his young daughter. The film also contains a surreal fantasy sequence involving the anti-Semitic Cosima Wagner (Antonia Ellis), widow of Richard Wagner, whose objections to his taking control of the Court Opera were supposedly removed by his conversion to Catholicism. In the process, the film explores Mahler's music and its relationship to his life.

Runtime

1 h 55 min

Release Date

4 April 1974

Actors

Robert Powell, Georgina Hale, Lee Montague, Miriam Karlin, Rosalie Crutchley, Richard Morant, Angela Down, Ronald Pickup, Peter Eyre, Dana Gillespie, David Collings, Kenneth Colley, Antonia Ellis, Oliver Reed, Andrew Faulds

Certification

PG

Genres

Drama, Music

IMDb