Mahler on the Couch
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Mahler On the Couch was a film created in 2010, directed by Percy and Felix Adlon. It was a historical drama depicting an affair between Alma Mahler and Walter Gropius, and the resulting psychoanalysis of Gustav Mahler by Sigmund Freud.[1][2][3]
Historical accuracy
The affair between Alam Mahler and Walter Gropius did occur, and Gustav Mahler did consult Freud.[4] Alam did marry Gropius after Gustav's death. But as Ty Burr pointed out in his reveiw of the film, "No one actually knows what Mahler and Freud talked about in their meeting."[5]
Critical reception
David DeWitt, writing in The New York Times[3] wrote "The scenes with Karl Markovics, as Freud, are the lingering appeal of this artfully composed film, framed with aesthetic care and scored with Mahler’s music..." and "For all its drama (and creative filmmaking), the crisis that Mahler describes plays out airy and rote. Mr. Silberschneider and Ms. Romaner are clearly strong actors, but a core spontaneity seems missing, and their emoting veers toward melodrama."[3]
Ty Burr, writing on Boston.com, said "It’s an over-stylized and overwrought affair, and intentionally so — any other approach probably wouldn’t play fair to the music or these tempestuous lives." and "The problem with “Mahler on the Couch,” by contrast, is that it’s really Alma’s story, not Gustav’s, and those framing sequences become a distraction. As portrayed alarmingly and well by Barbara Romaner, the character’s not a great beauty but a seductive, destructive life force whose sexuality bursts the constraints of her time".[5]
Kirk Honeycutt writingin The Hollywood Reporter says: "Mahler on the Couch ... manages to pose a serious, intimate study in obsessive jealousy while, like a gaga celebrity hunter, bumping into just about everybody who's anybody in Viennese society circa 1910." and "The film's great gift, though, is Romaner. ... She fully inhabits the role of this complex personality whose passion for love and art collides with her role of wife and mother."[6]
References
- ^ "Mahler on the Couch". IMDB. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Mahler on the Couch (2011)". Rotten Tomatoes. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ a b c DeWitt, David (May 18, 2012). "When Mahler Met Freud". Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ Sadie, Stanley (ed.) (1980). The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. Vol. 11. London: Macmillan. pp. 510–11. ISBN 0-333-23111-2.
{{cite book}}:|first=has generic name (help) - ^ a b Burr, Ty (2012-11-29). "Movie review: Mahler on the Couch". Boston.com. Boston Globe Media Partners. Retrieved 14 June 2015.
- ^ "Mahler on the Couch - Film Review". The Hollywood Reporter. 2010-10-14. Retrieved 14 June 2015.