“Finally I decided to dispel the preconceived idea of what a documentary had to be by presenting the life of a great artist in a way that showed how he transcended his own personal problems and weaknesses in creating great art.”

-Ken Russell, from Gene D. Phillip’s Ken Russell, p.42

            Ken Russell’s Mahler does not present itself like a typical biography.  Rather than show the subject in a factual, sympathetic light, Mahler tells the story of the Austrian composer Gustav Mahler through symbol-laden flashbacks and dreams.  Russell’s use of baroque visual style evokes mood and ambiance to relate Mahler’s tale.  Rather than focus on actual events, Russell highlights challenges that Mahler had to face throughout his life: constant anti-Semitism, his tumultuous relationship with his wife, and his fear of death.

            As a true auteur, Russell leaves a distinctive mark on each film that he makes.  His use of shocking visuals, his tendency to favor fantasy over fact, and his emphasis on blatant symbolism can be found in all of his major films.  In Tommy, the film adaptation of the Who’s rock opera, he highlights Tommy as a Christ-like figure, enforced by his use of zooms, bold primary colors, repeated religious motifs and costumes.  The Music Lovers is a portrait of Tchaikovsky as a man unable to realize his potential as an artist because of his struggle with homosexuality, and makes points through images and emotions. As an artist, Russell creates unique statements about his subjects, often at the expense of fact.  But as “Russell is convinced that no biographical film can ever capture the authentic essence of an artist’s life or work,” he ends up presenting the life of a famous artist from the point of view of himself as an artist (Phillips 47).  For instance, imagine a portrait of Rembrandt done by Picasso: a representation of an artist that pays homage to the man and his work, but at the same time is given a distinctly different flavor, Picasso’s own vision.   The opening quote is therefore applicable to Russell himself, a director who must overcome the limitations of budget, the studios, censors, source material, and his actors, in order to create great art.  Russell’s presentation of Mahler, despite its low budget, transcends the limitations of the traditional biopic by presenting the subject in a unique, personal way.  The most important scenes in the film are not based on exact historical events.  They are fantasies, amalgamations of moods and themes, set up by Russell in order to show Mahler the artist as a man who, despite the odds, made great music.

            The opening sequence, which includes all shots until the conversation on the train, sets the mood for the rest of the film.  The film opens with a shot of Mahler’s hut, set atop a seemingly peaceful lake.  Without cinematographic notice, the hut bursts into flames, and the once calm music hits a crescendo, “signifying the fire of creative inspiration that rages within him and bursts forth in his music, and which has engulfed his wife’s less grandiose musical capacities” (Phillips 124).  Immediately, Russell establishes the film as a forum in which things can and will happen spontaneously.  The fire is obviously symbolic, in this case taking on both a destructive and creative role.  Russell asserts that Mahler’s music will consume him and his family, which is supported by the next image, which shows Mahler’s two children surrounded by flames.  Next, the setting shifts to a rocky shore, where Mahler’s face appears as a large stone statue, with a selection from the first movement of his third symphony accompanying.  A woman, who the audience learns to be Alma Mahler, is then seen struggling to remove herself from a cocoon.  Alma moves towards the statue of Gustav’s face and begins to kiss it, signifying her love for him, despite his immobility: we soon learn that Gustav is in ill health, and depends on Alma to take care of him.  In the dialog that follows this scene, Gustav confesses that he thought that she was “struggling to be born.”  The idea of Gustav, a larger-than-life artistic personality, overshadowing Alma’s life and silencing her, is addressed in the next fantasy sequence, from Alma’s point of view.  The film opens with images that have nothing to do with the main narrative, but when considered retrospectively, not only sets the tone of the film, but also introduce some common themes that will run throughout the film.  Despite the conflicts that are established, Gustav’s artistic talent, his music, is celebrated. 

            Alma’s first fantasy in the film has her imagining herself as her husband’s shadow.  She is dressed in his clothes and follows in his footsteps, but her face is veiled.  This sequence directly relates to the central conflict in their relationship as a married couple, Alma’s relative unimportance when compared to her husband.  This scene is connected closely with Gustav’s earlier fantasy: “The music in this instance comes again from the first movement of the Third Symphony, recalling Alma’s struggle for an existence of her own outside of her famous husband” (Hanke 226-227).  Gustav proceeds to greet masses of his fans who have gathered in the lobby the concert hall, at which time Alma begins to trail behind.  She is separate from the rest of Gustav’s fans, a fact that is asserted by Russell’s putting her at the bottom of the stairs, and further enforced by his sudden, violent zoom, which brings all of the focus of the scene to her.  This fantasy is an excellent illustration of Russell’s use of obvious symbolism to prove a point.  As it is safe to say that no event like this ever happened during either of their lifetimes, the scene is not important so much for what actually happens, but for the moods invoked, the feeling that there is a rift separating Alma and Gustav, and that this conflict will manifest itself in the main narrative.  At the end of this sequence, we know that Alma is feeling somber, as her chance of a separate personal life has been engulfed by Gustav’s genius.  No one takes notice of her aspirations at artistic success, and people only consider her in terms of her status as Gustav’s wife.  From here until their moment of reconciliation, Alma will give her husband the cold shoulder, an idea established in a fantasy sequence, but becoming manifest in the main narrative as another personal problem that hindered Mahler’s composing.

            As a sick man, Mahler seems to have the topic of death on his mind often.  In a long string of scenes that is partly grounded in the main narrative and partly grounded in a surrealistic dream, Russell establishes Mahler as a man who fears death, both as something that will end his musical career and as a time when his wife will cease loving him.  Earlier in the film, Gustav had complained about the loudness of their train compartment.  A woman and her entourage of servants arrive just as he is having second thoughts about moving.  The character has important implications, “who within the metaphorical dimensions of the film [she] serves as an avatar of death” (Gomez 186).   She is presented as a non-Western curiosity, dressed in garb that is a combination of modern European and African voodoo.  When she refers to Mahler’s music as “in tune with death,” the camera immediately turns to Gustav in a close up, with all sound, diegetic and non-diegetic, ceasing.  Mahler, his face already looking ghastly, seems to turn a shade paler, and his expression instantly changes.  This denotes the importance of the moment, a time when Gustav has to face up to his music as a depressing force and to the fact that he is nearly on his deathbed.  Without saying it, Russell establishes Mahler as a man who is afraid of death, an idea that will be fully realized with the next fantasy sequence.   Mahler’s fear of death, coupled with his curiosity, serves as a springboard for his musical exploits, and is therefore deemed important by Russell.

            Soon Gustav has a heart attack and a bizarre visual assault begins: it is with this sequence that Russell presents his most shocking images, thereby reinforcing the idea that Mahler feared death above all else.  The mourning sounds of a trumpet begin this dream, played by Max (“a character symbolizing all of Alma’s extramarital admirers, real or imagined,”) decked out in S.S. regalia (Hanke 234).  The anachronism is almost laughable at first, but it plays an important part in the thematic purpose of this fantasy.  The three main conflicts that pervaded Mahler’s life, according to Russell, are anti-Semitism, his relationship with Alma, and his fear of death.  All three are addressed here, bringing together all the things that hinder or alter Mahler artistically.  Mahler is put into a coffin alive, and his funeral march is being orchestrated by S.S. officers, lead by his wife.  At one point, Alma jumps atop the coffin and does a tantalizing form of the can-can.  This pleases her admirers (who love her for who she is, not for her relationship with Gustav) and horrifies Gustav, who sees this as her betraying their love and starting afresh after his death.  The still-living Gustav is brought to be cremated, an event which Russell presents as a ritualistic procession.  The shot immediately preceding the cremation has Gustav in the centre of a symmetrical line populated by the S.S. soldiers.  When his coffin is placed on the ramp, Alma begins to mechanically initiate her husband’s death.  That Gustav is systematically killed in an “oven” is another nod to the constant tone of anti-Semitism, which Russell insists followed Mahler his whole life.  Even after he burns, his eyes remain, so that he can witness what comes next.  Alma begins a ritualistic dance with her S.S. admirers, in a room that is full of various portraits of her husband, themselves unique artistic renderings of the personality of Gustav Mahler, pieces of painting that mirror the function of the film.  The defining moment comes during “her mock love-making with the gramophone […] a foretelling of her later confession that she felt Mahler loved his music more than her.” (Hanke 238-239)  Gustav presupposes that Alma will begin to flaunt herself and deride him once he dies, something that is not apparent at the end of the film, but is grounded in historical fact: after Gustav’s death, Alma would marry Walter Gropius (the founder of the Bauhaus school of architecture) and Franz Werfel (a Czech-born poet) amongst others (Gomez 186).  The scene is powerful, especially if one takes into account its context: a psychologically trying nightmare that occurs just as a man could possibly die, containing everything that her fears most, all presented fantastically and uncensored.  That Gustav has to witness the S.S. officers grope his naked wife, while she chides him and his music, is the ultimate in helplessness.  Additionally, since the film had not hinted previously at displaying such nudity and coarse sexuality, it comes as a surprise.  The images are indeed shocking, to the audience for their presentation and to Gustav for their implications. The fantasy doesn’t exactly chronicle real events, but it ties together many of the films elements, espousing Russell’s goals as a biographer, all through shocking visuals. 

            Perhaps the sequence that best ties together the symbols and moods of the film, and a sequence that best typifies Russell’s emphasis on visual presentation, is the mini-film that details Gustav’s conversion from Judaism to Christianity.  Russell himself converted to Catholicism earlier in his life, so this sequence can be considered near and dear to him: “In Russell’s theology, the base of our troubles is not so much original sin as an almost insurmountable distaste for reality” (Suttor 208).  What begins is a sequence that is a mockumentary of sorts, a chronicle of Mahler’s conversion solely as a means to please Cosima Wagner and gain commercial fame.  Ultimately it was necessary to establish Mahler as a truly successful musician, but Russell presents it in terms that enforce the idea that he is selling out.  An inter-title denotes the beginning of the mini-film.  Gustav is dressed in stereotypically Jewish garb, and approaches Cosima in her Christian/Nazi shrine.  Mahler must then undergo a string of outrageous tasks in order to gain favor.  Everything is steeped in metaphor, as “Russell seeks to synthesize the trappings of Norse myth, images from Fritz Lang’s Siegfried, Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ and Nazi symbolism to delineate his own reaction as an artist to what he believes was Mahler’s self-betrayal for financial reward and social prestige.” (Gomez 187)  In order to dutifully present the idea of Gustav’s selling out for financial gain, Russell must take his penchant for literal symbolism to extremes.  Everything is exaggerated, from the actions to the costumes, and the very fact that the sequence is given its own structure increases its importance.  The mood conveyed from the cartoony, clearly fictional acting is one of criticism: unlike most other biographical films, Russell shows that he is not afraid to criticize, even deride his subject.  Russell successfully puts Mahler’s religious conversion in the general stream of the film, a sequence presented in a surprising, over-blown manner.  The visuals, which contain anachronistic mis-en-scene elements and lots of symbolic imagery, fit into the mold of the rest of the film, and because they are both taken to extremes, delineate the sequence as one of utmost importance.  Ultimately, Mahler’s conversion was integral to the development of his music.

            As illustrated by the above portions of the film, Ken Russell tells the story of Gustav Mahler from his point of view, compromising fact in light of making things more personal.  The flights of fantasy allow Russell to present ideas and feelings in an unrestrained manner, moods which in turn permeate the character’s actions in the main narrative.  Russell is not as sympathetic as the typical biographer, but his final assessment is overwhelmingly positive: Gustav Mahler’s music is always celebrated, permeating the ups and downs of the film, presented in a revered manner.    We see Mahler as Russell wants us to see him, meaning that despite all of his character flaws and problems, he is ultimately a man who created great art, whatever his personal limitations.

Works Cited

Gomez, Joseph.  Ken Russell: Adaptor as Creator.  New York: Pergamon Press, 1977.

Hanke, Ken.  Ken Russell’s Films.  Metuchen, NJ: Scarecrow Press Inc, 1984.

Phillips, Gene D.  Ken Russell.  Boston: Twayne Publishers, 1979.

Suttor, Timothy L.  “Ken Russell.”  Religion in Film.  Knoxville, TN: University of Tennessee

            Press, 1998.