Ken Russell's Mahler 1974 Film Movie Poster Rare Australian Printing EX

Description: Ken Russell's Mahler 1974 Film Movie PosterRobert Burton PrintersSydney, Australia Dimensions: 30 x 12 Inches The tri-fold poster is in excellent vintage condition. Unmarked, no stains, no writing, no rips or tears, no edge chipping, no fading. Very faint to indiscernible signs of wear from age, use, storage and handling. Free USA Shipping >>>> 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. 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. Like the scherzos from his symphonies some of the scenes are pretty grotesque, too." 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. Russell says the film had German backers who also pulled out before filming began, forcing the movie to be shot in England and not in Germany. Russell says Puttnam had no creative input into the film in contrast with their next collaboration, Lisztomania. 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." Russell only ended up making one more film with Puttnam, Lisztomania. It was meant to be followed by a film about Wagner, though it was never made. >>>> Gustav Mahler (7 July 1860 – 18 May 1911) was an Austro-Bohemian Romantic composer, and one of the leading conductors of his generation. As a composer he acted as a bridge between the 19th-century Austro-German tradition and the modernism of the early 20th century. While in his lifetime his status as a conductor was established beyond question, his own music gained wide popularity only after periods of relative neglect, which included a ban on its performance in much of Europe during the Nazi era. After 1945 his compositions were rediscovered by a new generation of listeners; Mahler then became one of the most frequently performed and recorded of all composers, a position he has sustained into the 21st century. Born in Bohemia (then part of the Austrian Empire) to Jewish parents of humble origins, the German-speaking Mahler displayed his musical gifts at an early age. After graduating from the Vienna Conservatory in 1878, he held a succession of conducting posts of rising importance in the opera houses of Europe, culminating in his appointment in 1897 as director of the Vienna Court Opera (Hofoper). During his ten years in Vienna, Mahler—who had converted to Catholicism to secure the post—experienced regular opposition and hostility from the anti-Semitic press. Nevertheless, his innovative productions and insistence on the highest performance standards ensured his reputation as one of the greatest of opera conductors, particularly as an interpreter of the stage works of Wagner, Mozart, and Tchaikovsky. Late in his life he was briefly director of New York's Metropolitan Opera and the New York Philharmonic. Mahler's œuvre is relatively limited; for much of his life composing was necessarily a part-time activity while he earned his living as a conductor. Aside from early works such as a movement from a piano quartet composed when he was a student in Vienna, Mahler's works are generally designed for large orchestral forces, symphonic choruses and operatic soloists. These works were frequently controversial when first performed, and several were slow to receive critical and popular approval; exceptions included his Second Symphony, and the triumphant premiere of his Eighth Symphony in 1910. Some of Mahler's immediate musical successors included the composers of the Second Viennese School, notably Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg and Anton Webern. Dmitri Shostakovich and Benjamin Britten are among later 20th-century composers who admired and were influenced by Mahler. The International Gustav Mahler Society was established in 1955 to honour the composer's life and achievements.

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End Time: 2025-01-07T22:14:33.000Z

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